Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual review

Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual

reviewed by Dr. Eric Flescher, Olathe, KS: (dreric1kansas@aol.com)

Author: David Sawyer McFarland
Publisher: Oreilly Media, , Inc. ,1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472
Released: 2009
Pages: 1066
$45 USA
$45 Canada
ISBN: 978-0-596-522926-6

Strengths: This massive book is well designed and is packed with helpful information. The index is well written. This book includes a very nice set of introductory based guides and information so that novice Dreamweaver users or those who have switched over, can learn how to use the software. There is a “CD” on a website for additional information. Intuitively written book with lots of helpful ideas, information and tutorials. There are tutorials and a program that can be downloaded for free, that allows importation of Go Live files/websites, so that users don’t have to start completely all over. Uses can work with Dreamweaver and your favorite files almost immediately. Excellent guidance section is integrated and goes along now with Dreamweaver CS4. Dreamweaver CS4 now is much more user friendly because it is now integrated with Adobe related interface features.

Weaknesses: The book has only black/white text / color.

Novice/ Intermediate/ Advanced

Rating: 5/5

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Introduction

Dreamweaver has been, for most part , recognized as a web developers’ “tour de force”, for website design. It has remained as the choice for designing websites for many years due to its lofty reputation and being the “standard” for website design. Mostly this reputation has come about due to its complex and feature laden design in one package. Dreamweaver has been a real nightmare for me however. My disdain for Dreamweaver has been a long one. Unwieldy, hard to figure out, even with the guidance of tutorials, it was highly non-intuitive and very not user friendly. In 2000, after dropping my use of Dreamweaver, I was able to produce good websites, within a week, with its new found nemesis, GoLive. Since that time, I have watched with interest the battle between Golive and Dreamweaver, year in and year out. They have always been “neck and neck” with Dreamweaver having a few more innovations. But overall, Golive was more intuitive and a better visual tool. Still, like it or not, Dreamweaver was the “main weapon” in website building, even as both Golive and Dreamweaver became more powerful.

When Adobe took over Dreamweaver, the “writing was on the wall”. Golive would soon be left for dead. My feeling was that Adobe bought Dreamweaver to use the best of Golive, meld it into Dreamweaver and gradually improve other parts of it. My feelings now are borne out by working through Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual. My intention was to delve into its guiding principals and see if I could finally quell my disdain for Dreamweaver.

The Missing Manual book series is written by David Pogue, the New York Times Technology columnist, who continues to be the author at the helm of this series. The words on the front cover of the book say it is “the book that should have been in the box”. For the most part, you can call this the main theme of this series of books. The series books are self help guidebooks for learning how to use software and hardware that usually and only comes with the meager original documentation or manuals.

This book, authored by David Sawyer McFarland, is a media and website developer since 1995. He has produced a massive but thoughtfully written guide. The fact that this author is also a writer, trainer and instructor and has taught many classes involving Dreamweaver, is borne out and is also self evident in the ways that he has thoughtfully crafted this book.

This book is more a guide then a “textbook”. That is the main intent for the The Missing Manual series books, as well as in this book. There are a short hand system of arrows that replaces the use of “much more text laden information” . These guide the user through the learning process in a much more efficient manner. Illustrations and additional visual aids are in black and white. This is a drawback but screenshots are, for the most part, of ample size and very readable. Throughout the book, there are helpful tips, help boxes, notes along with some very nice tables (conversions for different formats. Throughout the book, there are helpful ideas in the way of tips, (called: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) , Power Users Clinic, Work around Workshop, and more), sprinkled throughout the seven parts of the 1065 page massive book. The author helps the user cover “a lot of ground” but admirably, one can start from the beginning.

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In this book, there is guidance within its 26 chapters. These are: Building web pages; Building better web pages; Bringing your pages to Life; Building a web site; Dreamweaver CS4Power; Dynamic Dreamweaver. The complexity grows with some chapters but at least there is a guidance as you progress from which ever place you start. Adobe has built a good user friendly area to learn about many facets of the Dreamweaver. This new area makes learning with this book even better and supplements the assistance of this book.

The Appendix A has an assistance help section with more information on-line which in the long run can help speed up finding more ideas and information. That combined with this book made for a much more pleasurable learning experience then when I first started with Dreamweaver. Appendix B has menu by menu descriptions for Dreamweaver CS4. Unfortunately there is just text here and no visuals and screenshots are available in this section. Finally, the huge index is well done and was very helpful.

Conclusions:

I am not happy that GoLive will slowly go the way of the “Dodo bird”. But I could see the “ writing on the wall” when Adobe acquired Dreamweaver. My only wish was that Dreamweaver would some how become a better program and be more user friendly for me as well as others, (should they choose to work with Dreamweaver). This wish has been fulfilled to a great extent. This book includes down to earth, basic, easy to understand tutorials. My main thought was, I “wish I had this book “ when I was first starting out with Dreamweaver.

What I also like about this book are the “little things”, that make reading and understanding, a more pleasurable experience. Codes, application terminology and more are outlined and explained. There is a better understanding and guidance of the information. Tutorials are well outlined in all parts of the book. By explaining, what is needed and why, applications etc are necessary, one appreciates also and learns better from this book. There are informative answers and examples which make for even greater understanding. You learn because you understand, not because “someone is teaching you and wants your to understand it”. Step by step guides also provide substantial assistance, whether you use Macintosh or PC/ Windows. In fact, I found that even though this software version is made for Macintosh G5 with lots of ram, I was able to workaround many aspects of Dreamweaver with my current ancient old flat panel Imac with 900 mgz! ( You can download Dreamweaver for a free trial by the way).

Finally if you are a Golive or Dreamweaver user, novice to advanced, take a look at this book. While it doesn’t wipe away my frustration with Dreamweaver over the years, this book and the author’s way of writin this book, has given me a new outlook on this application nemesis. Hopefully one day, I can call Dreamweaver a true “friend “ for website building. At least my journey has begun. Time will tell but at least with this book, I as well as others can have a good start or begin to improve and learn website building . Check it out to see if this book can meet your needs with Dreamweaver.