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The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax & PHP

By: David Powers
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: FRIENDS OF ED
ISBN: 1590598598
ISBN-13: 9781590598597
Released: 23 Jul 2007
RRP: £33.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Informative and Confidence Building - By: Peter Stamer, 11 Dec 2007
Ajax, Spry widgets, Spry effects? - having upgraded to CS3, I had no idea what these were & was very tempted to stick with what works fine for me: frames!

However, I discovered this book & it is proving to be very useful. It callls itself `The Essential Guide' & this is what I am finding it to be. Not too heavy, not jokey, just well-written, with clear explanations, loads of screenshots & insights into what to do, what to avoid & what can be ignored.
Unfortunately it is over 700 pages long & I'm only 10% through (although it doesn't need to be read in page order) but I felt it valuable to draw your attention to the book sooner rather than possibly never.

Is it for you?
As the author, David Powers, writes:

`If you're at home with the basics of (X)HTML & CSS, then this book is for you. If you have never built a website before & don't know the difference between an tag & your Aunt Jemima, you'll probably find it a bit of a struggle. .... the idea is to adapt the code generated by Dreamweaver to create websites that reallly work. I explain everything as I go along & steer clear of impenetrable jargon.
Although you do some hand-coding with Spry, most features are accessed through intuitive dialog boxes.'

`I don't assume any prior knowledge (of Ajax & PHP) ... Dreamweaver takes care of a lot of the PHP coding, but it can't do everything, so I show you how to customize the code it generates. Chapter 10 serves as a crash course in PHP, & chapter 11 puts that knowledge to immediate use .... This book doesn't attempt to teach you to become a PHP programmer .. but (should give you) sufficient confidence to look a script in the eye without flinching.'

Besides comfort food for the not-well-informed (like me) e.g. why Ajax is so callled (p.34), & what's the connection between Ajax & Spry (p.38), you're also given warnings why search engine spiders won't index your Ajax-reliant content (p.38), why you should avoid heavy use of Spry on your site's opening page (p.39), that Spry-changed content cannot be bookmarked, & why the back-button may not work as expected (p39). As you can see, even on just these three sample pages there's some valuable stuff.

I look forward to delving deeper, and, from what I've read so far, I feel confident that this is an excellent guide & commend it. If I find otherwise as I progress, I'll update this review.
Another brilliant book by David Powers!!! - By: Mr. Mark J. Taylor, 10 Dec 2007
I had already purchased David's "PHP for dreamweaver 8" book which I had found extremely good & useful. David's new book EGDWCS3 is absolutely brilliant. David carefully guides you through simple practical examples using PHP, MYSQL & Dreamweaver CS3 which eventuallly culminates in fully working solutions to the most common requirements when developing dynamic websites. As if the book isn't good enough - David is a daily visitor to the Friendofed forum & will happily answer any queries you have on the book in a very friendly way.

This book is superb - buy it now - you won't be disappointed!