Rating: 
Summary: Even a technophobe can use this book.
Review: I recently purchased Dreamweaver MX and found that I could not use it at all. I puchased this book based upon a recommendation from a friend. Now, less than a month later, I have a basic website up and running. If you want to see what this book helped me do, go to, "www.MrGustafson.com" I highly recommend this book. Do not waste your money on any others.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: As a graphic artist with a severe case of left-brain subject-avoidance, I approached this book on building Dynamic Web Applications in Dreamweaver MX 2004 with a goodly amount of apprehension. Jeffery Bardzell's intelligent, engaging style allayed all of that in the first few paragraphs. His presentation is clear, direct, and sets you up to win. The book is a healthy, 16 lessons long, with each lesson progressing through short steps that are visually reinforced by screenshots. By the end of the book you will have upgraded a static HTML site filled with obsolete code, to a standard compliant, CSS formatted, dynamic, XHTML site, and will have mastered the fundamentals of dynamic application development. I can't wait to go out and develop my first database-driven site! Thank you, Jeffery. Linda Rathgeber
Rating:
Summary: Want dynamic this is the book
Review: I am around 6 years in the multimedia business, mastering most of Adobe and Macromedia programs.
For building web sites, I mostly use Dreamweaver and flash. I never build a real dynamic site.
When I got the book, I was ready to use 20% to 30% from the list of contents, but actually, I did read it all.
I can't describe how good it is. No meter what is your level/experience if you want to go dynamic this is the book.
I had to learn at the same time to build two sites one with ASP on SQL and one with PHP on Linux system and surprise surprise it even did work. I want to thank Jeffrey for the great book.
Rating:
Summary: I Expected the Worst and Found the Best
Review: I bought this book because Macromedia didn't provide any manuals with their Studio MX 2004, other than some useless PDF files, and I wanted to know how to use the new MX 2004 version. I thought that this book would have the usual crud with a few pearls of information that in the end would probably make it worth the price. Instead, I found a book that is pure gold. It's well written and if you stay with it, it will teach you quite a bit. If I was to teach a course on Dreamweaver MX 2004, this would be my manual.
Rating: 
Summary: Read with caution
Review: I bought this book upon seeing all of the wonderful reviews it was given here on Amazon. I had been designing web pages professionally for about a year, and was ready to make the move to dynamic development. I had only a little knowledge of web programming and attendant technologies and thought this would offer the best place to begin. Unfortuntely for me, it was a little too simplistic. The book is mapped from beginning to end on an imaginary site, Newland Tours; the reader follows along, doing the steps given, to turn the site from static into dynamic. The problem for me was two-fold. I learn by understanding the fundamentals, and theory, first, and then by trial-and-error. This book allows for neither. The author barely scrapes the theory or "why" behind any of what is shown; in fact at one point he states that it would be beyond the scope to do so - which is precisely the trouble with much of the book, everything one might want to know seems to be beyond the scope. Much of the book is "do this, do that, save and close." If you make a mistake, you can fix it easily enough by loading the completed page - but this proves to be a double-edged sword. Since the fundamentals of structure and syntax have not been thoroughly realized, the reader may feel as if he has no idea of what went wrong in the process, and it becomes tempting to load the finished pages and move on. In fact, the author encourages this in several spots. So those like me, who like to explore and learn from our mistakes are rather left by the wayside, ironically, in the book's attempt to make itself more newbie-friendly. Additionally, the pages are bloated with disruptive screenshots, but the code is often obscurely placed, with its attendant notes even more buried inside a paragraph of "advice." This advice follows every single step in the book, but is so overwritten that it fails to convey its intentions in many cases. A paragraph may read like this: "You have to ... You have to ... You have to ... And you have to ..." Again, for a person who learns by trial-and-error, this is slog-through material. Finally, it was an unfortunate publishing choice (and perhaps not the author's) to try and cover all three scripting languages in one introductory book, particularly one so overly simplified as this - in fact it doesn't make any sense at all. It's akin to trying to learn algebra, geometry, and trigonometry concurrently. It's confusing, annoying, and most often results in skipping or skimming over large chunks of text, even pages and sections. The fact that every one of the author's examples is given in ASP, and that PHP is on several important occassions almost ignored (the form-to-mail script, for instance, is hugely underwritten, with the flimsy excuse that it is too involved to go into) doesn't help. If you -really, really, really- are clueless in the realm of dynamic web programming, and you like to have someone map everything out for you, and you don't necessarily feel the need to apply this to your own site, but rather just want a general overview to gain some familiarity, this book will be useful (if not helpful). However, if you are actually hoping to build your own site dynamically after going through this book, you might want to consider buying one of these, instead: Sam's Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All-in-One ;
PHP and MySQL Web Development, by Welling/Thomson, second ed. -- or any other book suited to your language of choice (ASP, CFML). Both are much more informative and far more open-ended.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for those who really need their hands held.
Review: I bought this book upon seeing all of the wonderful reviews it was given here on Amazon. I had been designing web pages professionally for about a year, and was ready to make the move to dynamic development. I had only a little knowledge of web programming and attendant technologies and thought this would offer the best place to begin. Unfortuntely for me, it was a little too simplistic. The book is mapped from beginning to end on an imaginary site, Newland Tours; the reader follows along, doing the steps given, to turn the site from static into dynamic. The problem for me was two-fold. I learn by understanding the fundamentals, and theory, first, and then by trial-and-error. This book allows for neither. The author barely scrapes the theory or "why" behind any of what is shown; in fact at one point he states that it would be beyond the scope to do so - which is precisely the trouble with much of the book, everything one might want to know seems to be beyond the scope. Much of the book is "do this, do that, save and close." If you make a mistake, you can fix it easily enough by loading the completed page - but this proves to be a double-edged sword. Since the fundamentals of structure and syntax have not been thoroughly realized, the reader may feel as if he has no idea of what went wrong in the process, and it becomes tempting to load the finished pages and move on. In fact, the author encourages this in several spots. So those like me, who like to explore and learn from our mistakes are rather left by the wayside, ironically, in the book's attempt to make itself more newbie-friendly. Additionally, the pages are bloated with disruptive screenshots, but the code is often obscurely placed, with its attendant notes even more buried inside a paragraph of "advice." This advice follows every single step in the book, but is so overwritten that it fails to convey its intentions in many cases. A paragraph may read like this: "You have to ... You have to ... You have to ... And you have to ..." Again, for a person who learns by trial-and-error, this is slog-through material. Finally, it was an unfortunate publishing choice (and perhaps not the author's) to try and cover all three scripting languages in one introductory book, particularly one so overly simplified as this - in fact it doesn't make any sense at all. It's akin to trying to learn algebra, geometry, and trigonometry concurrently. It's confusing, annoying, and most often results in skipping or skimming over large chunks of text, even pages and sections. The fact that every one of the author's examples is given in ASP, and that PHP is on several important occassions almost ignored (the form-to-mail script, for instance, is hugely underwritten, with the flimsy excuse that it is too involved to go into) doesn't help. If you -really, really, really- are clueless in the realm of dynamic web programming, and you like to have someone map everything out for you, and you don't necessarily feel the need to apply this to your own site, but rather just want a general overview to gain some familiarity, this book will be useful (if not helpful). However, if you are actually hoping to build your own site dynamically after going through this book, you might want to consider buying one of these, instead: Sam's Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All-in-One ;
PHP and MySQL Web Development, by Welling/Thomson, second ed. -- or any other book suited to your language of choice (ASP, CFML). Both are much more informative and far more open-ended.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Beginning For Dynamic Web Site Development
Review: I decided, after many hours of reviewing "canned" scripts for a voting application, I had to learn how to develop my own dynamic applications in order to achieve required voting features. As a longtime user of Dreamweaver for static HTML applications, I purchased the referenced course with the expectation that I would be able to understand the concepts and learn the basic fundamentals of dynamic web site development. I had little understanding of data bases or server side programming languages (I learned Fortran eons ago).
This step by step guide took me through the development from a sample HTML 4 static site to an XMHTL compliant, fully dynamic web site not only using the built-in support functions of Dreamweaver, but hand coding the scripting language and SQL commands as well. Spread out over several months, I completed the course cover-to-cover. At each step I made sure I understood the concepts of dynamically modifying static HTML with the selected server side language and the SQL required for retrieving data from/inserting data into the data base. You were also instructed how to setup a "localhost" development environment, wherein each step could be tested immediately upon completion. I used the PHP/MYSQL model since it was available on my host ISP. But during the course, I also setup both .asp and coldfusion (.cfm) server models.
This learning by doing course reinforces the concepts and fundamentals that just reading alone could never accomplish. Once armed with this basic knowledge, I began to develop my customized voting site. And, using online tutorials, bridging gaps in the basics of PHP and SQL syntax. During coding, the manual proved to be an invaluable resource, both from a conceptual and a practical (coding) point of view, although the complexity of the requirements required significantly more php coding than in the course.
Now that I have completed my program, and it is functioning flawlessly online, I could not have done it without taking this course. There may be similar courses available, but by using the features of Dreamweaver in conjunction with the tutorial, yields a superior teaching tool that reading books alone cannot provide. And Dreamweaver is exactly as the name implies, weaving your concepts (dreams) into a functional fabric of operating programs.
Gerald Peters
Rating:
Summary: A must for new dynamic page designers!
Review: I found his book amazing! It's the best book I have read to understand, what I thought would be very complicated to learn. The best part for me, a beginner with Cold Fusion, is learning how to use Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX 2004's tools to create cold fusion pages quickly and easily. The book uses a complete website example to step through various types of dynamic web pages and coding. The book includes helpful screen examples of the design and code view allowing me to compare my creations to expected outcomes. To pick up things I might have missed in the first reading, I went through the book completely a second time, and found things I didn't remember the first time through that I am using in my daily web designing. I keep referring back to the book and the accompaning CD for reference. For a beginner, wanting to learn to create dynamic pages, this is a must! Thank you Jeff Bardzell for putting out such a wonderful and useful book!
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant book for beginners, lacks in "the next step".
Review: I had little knowledge of coding with PHP before I bought this book, and that's precisely the reason I picked it up. I figured that I should learn how to use PHP specifically with my wonderful Dreamweaver MX, and this is the perfect book for that. It is excellent for allowing the lightbulb in your head to turn on and gets ideas and possibilities flowing in your head in only the first few chapters. I couldn't wait to start on my own site. Within one week, I had finished the book and made large advancements in designing my own PHP based site and am loving it. It is great to go back to for reference on the hand-coding, and has allowed me to use the skills learned, twist them around and, with the helm of DW, to develop better applications. I have had this book for three weeks and it has let me rocket past my expectations. The only problem is that I wish there were more. Now that I understand the basics, I would like the "advanced" copy of the book. I want to know more about how the PHP relates with the SQL, and samples of how could go further into my development. The book lacks on "the second step", but I suppose that would require a second book. One reviewer stated that the book allows for no trial and error, I believe that the trial error should take place after you're finished with the book, not while reading it. Once you get to toying with your own site is when you make the errors, and then you can go back to the book and find out where you went wrong. Great book, don't hesitate, buy it if you're a beginner...it's worth it.
Rating:
Summary: The Bottom Line
Review: I have 2 books about ColdFusion. This one and ColdFusion MX Bible. This book: Wonderful if you want to learn how to create applications with Dreamweaver MX 2004 specifically, as it goes through all the dialog based application development. The other book (ColdFusion MX Bible): Great if you want to learn how to hand-code applications using ColdFusion MX. Very in-depth covering all aspects of ColdFusion. This book does not deal with dialog based apps like Dreamweaver. You can hand-code with DW, however. Both books are excellent. I have both because I want to know the code behind my apps but I don't necessarily want to have to always type code.
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