Anonymous
Posted February 16, 2009
David has adapted his most recent version of the Dreamweaver with CSS, Ajax, and PHP to include most of the newest features of the Adobe CS4 release of Dreamweaver. In addition, he has provided readers with the groundwork to extend this application to third-party extensions such as jquery, which was (to me) completely unexpected. Every book I have from the FriendsOfED has always provided solid information and takes into account the ability to learn at your own pace.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.First of all, to give a useful review of this book, I should note I will present it for two type of developers:
- PHP web beginners
- Experienced web developers with decent or no knowledge about Dreamweaver CS4
Let's see how could this book help PHP web beginners. I gave this book to my friend - PHP beginner. He was really satisfied with the content of this book. In one book he had all the information about Dreamweaver, how Dreamweaver evolved through older versions
and information how to define web site, how to handle page layout, reuse Dreamweaver templates. The book contains really useful information how to use CSS panels and tips and tricks for handling your CSS code and refactor styles using Dreamweaver.
The book is not meant to give you full overview of CSS design. For this topic I would recommend CSS Mastery. Also, this book gives you an excellent introduction how to use Ajax functionality in Dreamweaver, how to use Spry Ajax Framework and how to implement useful Ajax snippets into your code.
After chapters about client-side code comes chapters about PHP and MySQL in which you can learn PHP and MySQL basics - basic PHP syntax, creating code pieces, MySQL database and all things needed for starting your first real PHP-MySQL project.
It's really nice to see how to use Dreamweaver wizard for getting data from MySQL database by using PHP code.
What I really like in this book that it contains a lot of tips and tricks for each topic covered by specific chapter. These tips can be quite helpful and I'm sure a lot of experienced developers are not familiar with these tricks.
Here's my review for experienced web developers with decent/no knowledge of Dreamweaver.
I should be in this group :) In the past few years I didn't have so many opportunities to work with Dreamweaver. I've been working more with PHP code than I was making HTML/CSS design and all I needed was Zend Studio or PDT. Also, in the past few years from CS to CS3 version Dreamweaver didn't offer me so many new functionalities. By the time I started using CS4, there was a lot of new and useful features and I wanted to investigate how they work and how can these new features can help me on my new projects.
That's why this book was very helpful. Like I said, it contains a lot of tips and tricks for each topic covered by specific chapter. I didn't take much time investigating topics about PHP and MySQL but these chapters also contain useful information, for example how to quickly create a decent overview of you database data.
Overall, if you decide to use this book for fulfilling your knowledge gaps and when you upgrade your knowledge with CS5 features, you will have really good standards for developing your code with Adobe Dreamweaver.
Anonymous
Posted July 19, 2009
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Posted March 17, 2009
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Posted March 11, 2010
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Posted August 6, 2009
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Posted May 13, 2009
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More About This Textbook
Overview
Dreamweaver CS4 is a massive step forward in terms of integration with the rest of the CS4 suite (Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop, etc.), and also includes whole host of exciting features of its own. The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP concentrates on getting the most out of Dreamweaver CS4, rather than going into every menu item and toolbar icon. The emphasis is on developing websites compliant with the latest web standards, using CSS, JavaScript libraries (with particular emphasis on Spry, Adobe's implementation of Ajax), and PHP.
The book covers all aspects of the new user interface, including workspace layouts, iconic panels, the related documents feature, Live View, Code Navigator, and Live Code. It also shows how to use the improved CSS editing features, and JavaScript code introspection. There is also coverage of other new features, such as version control through Subversion integration, and the improved support for Photoshop integration through the use of Smart Objects.
What you’ll learn
Who this book is for
This book is for both beginners who want a solid grounding in Dreamweaver CS4, and intermediate web designers and developers with previous Dreamweaver experience, who want to get up to speed with the new features.
Product Details
Related Subjects
Table of Contents
Ch. 1 Dreamweaver's New Look - More than Skin Deep 1
Ch. 2 Setting Up a Site in Dreamweaver 59
Ch. 3 Creating a Web Page and Adding Content 103
Ch. 4 Using CSS to Add a Touch of Style 155
Ch. 5 Creating a CSS Site Straight Out of the Box 195
Ch. 6 Building Site Navigation with the Spry Menu Bar 233
Ch. 7 Using Spry Dynamic Effects and Components 257
Ch. 8 Going Beyond the Basics with Spry and Ajax 307
Ch. 9 Building Online Forms and Validating Input 371
Ch. 10 Introducing the Basics of PHP 425
Ch. 11 Using PHP to Process a Form 459
Ch. 12 Reducing Your Workload with PHP Includes 503
Ch. 13 Preserving Design Integrity with Templates and InContext Editing 539
Ch. 14 Storing User Records in a Database 583
Ch. 15 Validating Database Input and User Authentication 637
Ch. 16 Working with Custom Forms and Multiple Tables 683
Ch. 17 Handling Checkbox Groups, Searches, and Dates 743
Ch. 18 Using XSLT to Display Live News Feeds and XML 805
Ch. 19 Using Spry Data Sets to Refresh Content 843
Ch. 20 Deploying Your Site on the Internet 889
Appendix Generating XML with PHP 905
Index 917