[.ca] Dreamweaver MX Complete Course (ISBN 0764536869)

Total Confusion:
I am stunned by the number of high ratings for this book. If you knew next to nothing about Dreamweaver, you would never to able to understand how to use it. When you are given directions without rationales and then something crashes, you are stuck and have to try to figure it out for yourself. This book is a waste of money and your time.

really bad:
Do not waste your time or money on this poorly written book. You will spend a lot of time trying to figure what you are supposed to do because the examples in the book do not match up with what is on your screen. I do not understand how this book was ever published the way it is because if somebody like an editor actually went through this they would see that it does not work.

Love/hate:
What a hoot! I came to review this book and the contrasts seem to be love it or hate it. Well I loved it and created my very first web site! I had to do some stuff over but most of it was because I had my cursor in the wrong place or I didn't read an instruction carefully enough. Yes, I found some errors--jeesh people do we expect authors to be perfect. I wish but unfortunately I've discovered they are human LOL Oh, and yes, I did finish the entire book and I did so pretty quickly. I like the fact that there isn't a lot of underlying explanations. If I want underlying I'll buy a Bible or other such book. I also like the casual writing style--but that's me. I felt like the author was really trying to help me personally build a website--and she did just that. This was worth every dime I spent and I'm now going to purchase her Web Design Complete Course book. I love this teaching style, pictures and numbers.

Excellent Starting Tutorial:
Apart from Mirroring Michael Woznicki's review, I'd have to add that this book is a pleasant gem in a field of rocks. In a market where technical texts seem to be rated by the amount of content rather than quality of content, this book is a breath of fresh air. Yes, its a bit directive but it quickly takes the reader through the process of building and then extending a web site. No fuss, no muss, no mining for nuggets. It helps if you understand the fundamentals of what a website is made up of, but those are very simple concepts that might be worth a page or two of text and illustration. And yes, there are a few small errors in the book but nothing an experienced Mac or PC user shouldn't be able to figure out. For the purposes of learning how to use Dreamweaver MX, this book excells wonderfully. BTW, the Macromedia suite of products really is a professional web development environment. If you're new to computers or web development in general I'd recommend using a product like Frontpage rather than Dreamweaver for creating your web page.

Directions without explanation of underlying logic:
I am a graphic designer learning web design software. I gave this book several tries, but quit the Complete Course tutorial after the third lesson. I found I was not learning much I could use outside the tutorial as the approach was directive without explaining the underlying logic. Without that basic understanding, I did not have enough information to trouble-shoot beginner errors. Several times I just quit the program when I couldn't figure out how to undo something. Most of my questions were answered either accidentally by random clicking or through a web-search. (Examples from early chapters: the books instructs you to type in the hex color numbers for various attributes, but does not tell you that if you eliminate the # in front of the numbers that the color will show in Explorer but not in Netscape. Or, it does not define what an S or V value is, but rather tells you about a problem they can cause if an object is left or right justified.) I switched to Dreamweaver MX Hands-On-Trainin. The tutorial is much more basic but provides a much fuller base of information.