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Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual: Great Looking, Sophisticated Web Sites--Create, Maintain, & Update Them

January 31, 2006

Sebastopol, CA--"Whether you need a simple five page web site to let your friends know about your summer vacation or a thousand page e-commerce site with database connections and dynamically generated content," says author David Sawyer McFarland, "Dreamweaver can help." And though it's full of incomparable, stellar features, it comes without one of the most important ones of all: a printed manual. Building on the authoritative, witty writing of its bestselling predecessor, Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, US $44.95) is the all-new edition of the must-have book that should have been in the box.

A web designer and renowned Dreamweaver writer and teacher, McFarland shows readers how to build, maintain, and update sophisticated, great looking web sites with Dreamweaver 8. "In this book you'll find step-by-step instructions for using every Dreamweaver feature, even those you may not have understood, let alone mastered, such as Libraries, Layout view, Behaviors, Dreamweaver's Dynamic web site tools, and Dreamweaver 8's new XML and XSLT features," says McFarland. What's more, readers will find clear, unbiased evaluations of each feature to help them determine which ones are most useful, as well as how and when to use them.

This one-of-a-kind guide includes "Up To Speed" sidebars for keeping beginners in-the-know and "Power Users' Clinic" boxes with advanced tricks, workarounds, shortcuts, and advice for more experienced web designers. Hands-on tutorials guide readers at all technical levels through the construction of a state of the art commercial web site, complete with Flash buttons, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), forms, and even dynamic databases. "If you take the time to work through them at the computer," McFarland promises, "you'll discover that these tutorials give you unprecedented insight into the way professional designers build web pages."

Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual shows readers how to:

  • Navigate Dreamweaver's interface and understand the basics of building a web page
  • Use more advanced features, such as tables, layers, and Cascading Style Sheets, to gain greater control of the design of a web page
  • Add interactivity to a web site with forms, JavaScript programs, animation, multimedia, and more
  • Manage the pages and files in a web site, test links and pages, and move the site onto a web server connected to the Internet
  • Take full advantage of time-saving features such as Libraries, Templates, and History panel automation
  • Gain a better understanding of database-driven web sites, including how to build a dynamic web site, how to connect Dreamweaver to a database, and more
  • Two appendixes provide a list of Internet resources for additional web design help and a menu-by-menu explanation of Dreamweaver 8. Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual has the technical chops, the practical wisdom, and even trusted design guidance for creating and maintaining modern, interactive web sites that look great.

    Early praise for Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual:

    "Boy, do I wish I had this book when I was learning Dreamweaver! Dave gets you started quickly and, even more important, keeps things crystal clear as the topics get more complex. No wonder it's the bestselling Dreamweaver book out there."
    --Deke McClelland, author of Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One

    Additional Resources:

    Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual
    David Sawyer McFarland, Edited by David Pogue
    ISBN: 0-596-10056-6, 960 pages, $44.95 US
    order@oreilly.com
    1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000

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