Matt Review - Dreamweaver MX Foundations, MX from the ground up - Al Sparber and Gerry Jacobsen – PVII Press
WOW. This is the second great book in a row that I have reviewed.
When Al Sparber handed me the manuscript for the Dreamweaver MX Foundations book, he smiled and with a twinkle in his eye told me rather matter-of-factly, "This one is different". "Of course" I replied. "No." he says. "This one is different..."
What a joker... This book is absolutely unique.
The good…
Dreamweaver MX Foundations is excellent. Let's get that on the table now and cut to the chase. Excellent and unique.
Dreamweaver MX Foundations is the first real e-book on the scene for Dreamweaver and as far as I know, and I don't know that far for other apps, it may be the first e-book from a third party for a piece of software. I had to think if that was a good thing, I like the feel and of print and I like books as a concept. To use an e-book I had to think about. I have the manuscript and I reviewed a lot of that, but I did take time with the e-book and I think that it is really workable. Best part of that is that you are dealing directly with the authors and they are able to make a good percentage on the book. When you buy from the publishers, you get a good deal, but there are a lot of people in that food chain and the actual authors don't always get rich off the titles. In this case, the cut to the authors is large enough that they are going to be happy to think of more titles to create. There is also a superb support forum and on-line community around the book and Project VII itself. Of all the people working with Dreamweaver, they have been the most successful in creating a real long term presence and that is something that you can plug into even if you don't have the book.
Foundations is not a traditional computer book that covers all aspects of an application. It doesn't even cover the site management functions of Dreamweaver. It doesn't cover each feature. It even tells you which features not to use (Layout mode... No one in the community can seem to pass up the opportunity to take a jab there :-P )
What it does is help you create a very rich page the "right" way. From the ground up with CSS style sheets that works in every major browser and a lot of the minor ones. This is an exact blueprint to building what a lot of us have a lot of trouble with. It covers from the setup of the UI in DMX through page creation, Fireworks to create the graphics and then intensive CSS for styling the page.
The book is illustrated with something like 300 illustrations, it's electronic after all, you can take the space you need. The illustrations are well thought out and called out to show the important things in the image. In the cases of code samples, they are illustrated with the UI shown that creates the code. This is great if you are not really sure what you are creating and then want to go into the code to see what was generated.
The other features I really like are:
* Included Extensions and snippets that you use directly in the chapters in the book.
* Comprehensive footnotes with huge chunks of detailed information (including what an "octothorpe" is.)
* Good coverage of how to use Fireworks effectively in support of the page you create. In fact, 35 pages of Chapter 7 are primarily Fireworks.
* Using the Address tag and how to do that effectively.
* Setting the tab index on links.
* Separate style sheets for different browsers and a neat trick on how to make that work better.
* Using saved queries.
The bad…
There are a few problems with the book I think. Most of them are differences in my opinion and that of the authors so I can discount that and simply present that while creating your entire site with complex CSS is a good idea, it is not the only way to do it and not always worth the time if you have to start from scratch. IMO, sometimes tables and simple HTML is enough and not worrying about one or two edge case browsers is OK. If, that is, you are convinced that you don't have that many users with edge case browsers like Netscape <v6.
Also the advice to change your code formatting to not indent, drives me CRAZY. I would never accept code that is not indented. However, again, that is a user preference and if you can work that way then that is your call.
The one thing that I think is an issue is that there could be more coverage of other parts of the application because these guys are so good that their explanation would be of tremendous use. It would also be nice so that the book could stand alone which Foundations cannot in that as a beginning user or intermediate, you may well need another book to talk about some of the things that you want to do that are not covered. I think that is a problem when you focus well, that is the things that are not in focus seem all the more missed because of the strength of the areas that are covered.
The review…
Dreamweaver MX Foundations is truly by expert Dreamweaver users that write about a subject they know and not by an author that knows how to learn applications and then explain that to others. Gerry and Al are true believers and it shows. Regardless of the problems I percieved and listed above, I give Dreamweaver MX Foundations 9 out of 10 Matts.
I would say that Dreamweaver MX Foundations should be a part of every intermediate developer's Dreamweaver library and especailly if you are working to create cross-browser, standards compliant CSS based pages in which case it is a must have.
Available from Project VII ($45)
1:32:32 PM
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