Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual

By David Sawyer McFarland
First Edition July 2001
Pages: 480
ISBN 10: 0-596-00097-9 | ISBN 13: 9780596000974
(Average of 6 Customer Reviews)

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Book description

Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual is the ideal companion to the complex Dreamweaver web design software. After orienting new users with an anatomical tour of a web page, author Dave McFarland walks you through the process of creating and designing a complete web site with Dreamweaver. Armed with this handbook, both first-time and experienced web designers can easily bring stunning, interactive web sites to life.
Full Description

As the Web's popularity continues to soar, so does that of Macromedia Dreamweaver, one of the most elegant and powerful web-page creation programs you can buy. Dreamweaver deploys a rich, well-designed, WYSIWYG environment for building cross-platform, cross-browser web sites; but unlike most visual editors, it doesn't clutter up the underlying HTML code by inserting unnecessary tags that make large web sites difficult to manage. Dreamweaver is a favorite of multimedia designers, thanks to its smooth integration with other Macromedia applications like Flash and Shockwave. Dreamweaver 4 extends Macromedia's lead in the web-design market. The new, more sophisticated Version 4 incorporates the latest developments in browser technologies--and the best way to get the full advantage of these improved features is with Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual, the ideal companion to this complex software. Under the guidance of Missing Manual series editor David Pogue, author Dave McFarland brings Dreamweaver 4 to life with clarity, authority, and good humor. After orienting you with an anatomical tour of a web page, the book walks you through the entire process of creating and designing a complete web site. Along the way, a unique "live examples" approach lets you see and test, on the actual Internet, real web pages that follow the development progress of the book's chapters. Armed with this book, both first-time and experienced web designers can easily use Dreamweaver to bring stunning, interactive web sites to life.

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Featured customer reviews

Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual Review, November 01 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Reader [Respond | View]

I have never been tempted to take the time to write one of these online reviews until I read this book. It's been so helpful to me in my work and has saved me so many hours of unnecessary labor that I thought I ought to tell people about it.

I've got lots of these kinds of books - from the dummy books to the huge bibles - but Dreamweaver:The Missing Manual is leagues better than any of them!

By the first few pages, I knew that this book would be fabulous, and it is. I like it because it is written for an intelligent reader, yet it uses non-techy language. Plus, there are lots of humorous references, which makes reading it fun.

Importantly, it doesn't assume technical knowledge on the part of the reader. It explains the whys along with the hows. This is of utmost value to me - I find the "whys" missing in many books. Often, a tutorial will say, "Do this. Then do this. Then do this." Well, any monkey can follow 1,2,3 instructions, but if you don't know WHY you're doing something, you won't be able to apply it to something else later on. I am constantly frustrated by that. I wanted more than a beginner's book, but I wanted the complex stuff explained in simple language. This book does that.

I started to bookmark the pages where I learned something valuable and realized I was marking the whole damned book - that's the type of book this is.

Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual Review, October 31 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Kathy McT [Respond | View]

Has anyone been able to download the Ch. 7 (frames) tutorial lately? I'm working my way through the book, and was all set to work with frames today--only to find that neither the finished example nor the tutorial files was available--the dreaded "site not found."

All the other chapters seem to be available, so I'm wondering if this is just a temporary situation, while files are upgraded/whatever.

Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual Review, October 23 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Dave McFarland [Respond | View]

The reader review comments refer to the tutorial files. It's not that they

are missing; it's that they are on the companion web site for this book

which is located at http://www.sawmac.com/missing/

This is mentioned in several locations in the book: actually it's mentioned
at the beginning of EVERY tutorial.

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Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual Review, October 17 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Nick Davison [Respond | View]

The Missing Manual's Missing Website

Great as the rest of the book is, it's kind of ironic that the missing manual has a missing website. As with the other reviewer, I'm having trouble with page 24's, "In this example, you'll use the folder you downloaded from this book's website [had we uh, put the folder on the uh website]."

I'm used to O'Reilly providing great tutorial downloads and I'm sure this one's equally good - if someone could just be bothered to put it on the site and include a link to it.

Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual Review, September 21 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Alan Duchan [Respond | View]

I'm really writing this to Joe Foat who was having trouble finding the tutorial files. If he will email me directly (duchan@canisius.edu), I think I can help him. I did find the files and would give hime help now except that the information is on another machine, which I won't have access to until next week.

By the way, I do not find it surprising that your message was written on 8 September and there has been no reply, at least no reply from on this list. I sent an error report some days ago and have not had a reply, not even an auto-answer reply.

Alan Duchan

duchan@canisius.edu

Dreamweaver 4: The Missing Manual Review, September 08 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Joe Foat [Respond | View]

I can't do the tutorial because I can't find where the DWTutorial1 folder is located as referred to on pages 26 and 32. Is there a CD which is supposed to come with this book?. None is referred to in my reading so far, and I have done a search for DWTutorial1 via the win98 Find File tab above the start bar, but come up with nothing. Can anyone help? or will this be a dud buy.

Joe

Media reviews
"One of the beauties of the Missing Manuals is that there is always something new to discover and the research is quite thorough...I kept finding snippets of information, in the way of Tips or Notes, that would give just that bit extra."
-- Graham K. Rogers, Bangkok Post

"I have reviewed quite a number of Missing Manual books and I am always impressed with them. David Pogue is a Mac master and the depth of his knowledge shines through."
-- Roger Bernau, ACT Apple User Group Incorporated

"I would rather go without food for three days than miss any of the Missing Manual books."
--Al Fasodt of "The Post-Standard," June 5, 2003

"David Sawyer McFarland has done a good job of providing respectful help to beginners and tips for experts. What's more, he has done it with style and humor, both of which I think I might lose were I as immersed in Dreamweaver minutia as he must have been to write this book...This 'Missing Manual' doesn't just present information. Nearly every chapter includes a tutorial, using files you can download from the Missing Manual web site. The fictional web site ('Cosmopolitan Farmer') used for the tutorials is fun; the instructions seem clear and complete? Web beginners these days don't have the luxury of that slow start. They do, on the other hand, have much better tools. Dreamweaver is one of them and 'The Missing Manual' is a broad--and deep--reference for it."
---Kate Wolfe-Jenson, Applelust.com, March 2002

"...chock full of valuable information...would highly recommend this book for any serious web developer who wants to expand their Dreamweaver skills, or to anyone coming from another HTML editor who wants to get up to speed quickly with Dreamweaver. This is not a 'learn Dreamweaver quickly' book, but a learning resource of great value."
--Joyce Evans, The Internet Eye Magazine, April 1, 2002

Read all reviews

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"One of the beauties of the Missing Manuals is that there is always something new to discover and the research is quite thorough...I kept finding snippets of information, in the way of Tips or Notes, that would give just that bit extra."
--Graham K. Rogers, Bangkok Post