by Daniel Short and Garo Green

Publisher: Lynda.com Books | PeachPit Press

So you want to learn a new application. Or you may want to discover what’s new in the latest version. How do you go about it? Read the manual? I don’t think so. Take a class? Could be expensive, there might be homework, and you could get called on. Too much risk. Maybe you’re one of those people who just like to jump in and stomp around for awhile until you figure out how things work.

Well, I’m sure we’ve all tried one or more of these approaches with varying degrees of success. Myself, I’m a big fan of “step by step” books. You know, the ones with the disk full of practice files in the back? Microsoft, for example, has a series of books for each of the Office applications that are actually called the Step by Step series. I’ve learned a lot from them, but I’m also becoming a big fan of the HOT (Hands On Training) series by  Lynda.com books.

What I like about these books is that you get to work on actual projects and files, and do things with the application that produce tangible and visible results. It’s the old learn by doing technique, and I find it a very comfortable learning strategy.

Dreamweaver 8, Hands on Training, is certainly not the latest Dreamweaver offering from Lynda.com since Dreamweaver CS3 has been released since it was written. But I was already well into the book, and I don’t like to quit. And it isn’t like I don’t have a lot to learn. I have also browsed the CS3 version of this book, and it’s laid out almost exactly the same, with a chapter or two devoted to the new features in CS3 like the Spry widgets. In what may be a glimpse of the future, the CS3 book is also available on DVD, loaded with instructional videos. I have sampled these videos and they’re excellent.

The Dreamweaver 8 HOT book has something to offer as I would guess there are many still using that version. There is instruction for the absolute beginner and some choice nuggets to be mined along the way for even the advanced user. There is an opening discussion of XHTML, CSS, Javascript and Web Applications which effectively defines terms and basic concepts quite well even for the novice.

There is a wonderful long chapter on CSS and a tribute to tables. Yes, tables are going to be around a while longer so get over it. I even got to take a brief excursion into Fireworks, not to mention the world of Accessibility, which we all need to pay more attention to. What I mostly learned about Dreamweaver is that it is a machine with dozens of widgets that can perform a lot of programming tasks that many developers probably find easier to do by hand. For example, you can create rules for your document, export your rules to a style sheet and attach that sheet to your document using forms and right click menus and other tools as well. The question for developers is whether doing that is easier than simply writing the code. What the book provides is a plethora of exercises and opportunities to see how all the features work, and then developers can decide what works best for them. I, for one, just love all those autocomplete features and dropdown menus trying to guess what you want to type next.  Really, I do! And when you use the Styles palette to add rules, it rules out a lot of typos which is a great advantage for me. And until I learn to write Javascript, I will let Dreamweaver do it. As for the quality of the XHTML and Javascript maybe not being the best, I will take that under advisement for the time being. But there is no question that Dreamweaver can make a developer’s life a little easier. And there are plenty of features in Dreamweaver 8 to appreciate before many of us start worrying about upgrading.

One things novices will have to keep in mind is that the practice files and folders contain many elements that were built by someone else. This book is not a cookbook for making things from scratch. It’s also true that owning a hammer doesn’t make you a carpenter. Being well grounded in HTML and CSS, and basic web design concepts is essential to taking advantage of Dreamweaver’s capabilities. The book also nicely illustrates the importance of checking your code when you use the Design view and the Properties Inspector to make changes in your page.

The authors also do a creditable job of taking the reader through exercises which illustrate both traditional development methods and the evolution (or should I say revolution) of Web Standards. For example, we learn to use graphic elements and Javascript to create menus and links and then we learn to create the same menus using XHTML and CSS. Experienced developers may find this annoying, but newbies will appreciate it.

All of these books have essentially the same structure for each chapter. They tell you what you’re going to do, you do it, and then there’s a summary. Pretty basic stuff. What I find missing is the why. They rarely tell you why you’re going to do something. If you’ve ever read Eric Meyer on CSS or More Eric Meyer on CSS, you will appreciate what I’m saying. Mr. Meyer always tells us why we are about to write a certain CSS rule. That, I think, makes all the difference. In this book, you kind of have to go back and figure out the why for yourself if you are not an experienced developer. If you don’t, you may complete the exercise successfully but you’ll forget what you did an hour later.

Overall, though, I give the HOT books by Lynda.com high marks. The authors have a great sense of what might trip up the reader and cover most of the bases with extensive margin notes and sidebars. There are excellent appendices with lots of resources, references,  and a discussion of Dreamweaver extensions.

There is also an excellent sequel called Dreamweaver 8, Beyond the Basics which takes the reader farther into the world of developing for Web Standards.

All the HOT books are available at Amazon.com which is best reached through the links at the NEAUG website.

~ Mark Madison