Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book !!!
Review: First of all let me tell that 2 weeks ago I had no idea what Dreamweaver MX 2004 was. After read the first 3 chapters I was very impressed with the quality and guidance of the author. However, after read the chapters about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) I was convinced that this is THE BOOK to read if you really want to master Dreamweaver. Congratulations David, you did a very nice job.
Rating: 
Summary: Wish I could give this a better review but...
Review: I have bought Missing Manuals before, and have been very pleased with them, but I think that their motto "The book that should've been in the box" has caught up with them. This is because it is my experience that if a piece of software does come with a manual, no matter how big it is, it usually doesn't include what you want to know, or, if it does, it's not easy to find. Sadly, I feel that this is the case with DREAMWEAVER MX 2004: THE MISSING MANUAL. I am an experienced webmaster, so I am looking to Dreamweaver MX 2004 to help enhance the skills I already have. In turn, I looked to the Missing Manual to help me unlock the things that I wanted to do with MX. With books such as these, you should be able to skip around by looking in the index and find what you want to do, which in my case was to do an image rollover using an image map. The book, looking at the listings that were in the index, was no help. Maybe if I read the book cover to cover I'd figure out what I needed to know by the time that the Red Sox won another World Series (oh let that be next year!). By contrast, I looked on the website for the Hands On Training H-O-T books (lynda.com) and they actually had a free sample chapter on image rollovers. The chapter didn't cover exactly what I wanted to do, but it did give me enough instructiion that I was able to figure everything out within 10 minutes. I have bought the H-O-T book, and suggest that before you buy this Missing Manual that you look at, and consider, the H-O-T book. You may be better off.
Rating:
Summary: It's true to its title
Review: I love the Missing Manual series of books and this is one of the best. I'm an avid Dreamweaver user, and The Missing Manual has made me much better with it. Although this book can be a little wordy it's worth reading every word from beginning to end...it's packed with great info!
Rating:
Summary: Another winner from David McFarland
Review: I received my copy yesterday morning and David has another winner with this updated book for Dreamweaver MX 2004. It definitely is the book that 'should have shipped with the program' and I would recommend it to everyone - even those Dreamweaver users who've been using this product through its many incarnations. The writing style coupled with the good solid information here will be the book I keep next to my work station. Just like his previous book on Dreamweaver MX.
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Summary: Best Class for the money!!
Review: I totally recommend this book. It is chuck full of information. If you are trying to learn dreamweaver and are trying to figure out what book to get.. this is all you need!! I've been treating the book like a class going through a chapter a day and it is just awesome!! I recommend going through cover to cover. If you think you know everything about the chapter go thru it anyway because otherwise you might miss a helpful little tidbit of info that you didn't know. I am in the last section now and I definately got my moneys worth, (unlike a lot of college classes that were a waste of time and money). This is the book to get!!!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent text
Review: I'm half-way through this book, and so far, it's been a blessing. The author has structured this text in a way that allows a reader to get started using the software, and create web pages. He explains things thoughtfully and speaks to the beginner. With this book I also purchased Firework MX Bible--a big mistake. That book is thick, filled with copius descriptions of every possible tool, but teaches you nothing about actually using the software to create web objects.
Rating:
Summary: Great for DW newbies or switchers from other web programs
Review: I've been designing web sites for a number of years now and my program of choice was Adobe GoLive. However, I recently decided to switch to Dreamweaver MX 2004 because I wanted to take advantage of the program's advanced CSS and CSS-P capabilities. But I waited to make the switch until I knew this "Missing Manual" was available. I'd heard it was going to be released, and because I already own some other "Missing" titles, I instinctively knew this would be the book to get. I wasn't disappointed. This book is EXCELLENT, both for newcomers to web design with Dreamweaver, but also for "switchers" like myself, who have experience with web design, but not with Dreamweaver. The book takes a step by step approach. Some of Dreamweaver's features overlap with GoLive's, and some are common to all visual web editors; but that doesn't matter. You'll still enjoy reading this book, and you'll pick up lots of useful tips along the way. The tutorials are PRICELESS. You simply download the files from the book's web site, and work through them, step by step, with the author holding your hand all the way. I really like the approach: learn the features, then learn to use them in a tutorial. One very small caveat is that if you are looking for EXTENSIVE coverage on CSS layouts (without tables), you won't find it here. Yes, there is a chapter on how to lay out pages with nothing but CSS positioning, and there is a tutorial, which are a wonderful start to the subject. But you'll need something like "Eric Meyer on CSS" in order to take your CSS layout skills to the max. This book easily deserves the 5 stars I gave it.
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Summary: Finally a book to fill in the gaps and a great one at that!
Review: One thing I have learned over the passed 15 years is that very few software packages ever come with user guides that are useful. Working with any application is always a challenge and the right help makes everything goes so much easier. The "Missing Manuals" series has provided some of the best reference manuals out there today and this book is another example of the quality work released by O'Reilly press. The author has proven to be very knowledgeable in the DreamWeaver application arena. I found the book to be easy to read and follow along with and the material fills in the gaps left out by the user manual. The instruction is written to all levels making sure that everyone can use this book and the figures included give a visual learning environment. Now in the updates if color was included this would enhance the learning process. There are a number of step-by-step instructions to follow along with, giving you the opportunity to practice what you read. I think that a there could be more exercises included in the next edition, but what you have is certainly enough to get by. There seems to be coverage of all aspects of DreamWeaver MX 2004 in this book, from the web page to the web site and everything in between. I was able to find answers to several questions I had with the software and I know of several people who have benefited from the book already. Overall this is one great book and for those who need to use the software or those who want to get better you should be reading this.
Rating:
Summary: God bless this book!
Review: Out of every self-learning book I have ever read concerning any program I have ever wanted to learn, this book is by far the best. Just buy it and you will see what I mean.
Rating: 
Summary: Review: Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual
Review: The Dreamweaver MX 2004 book is, as its series title says, the "missing manual." The Missing Manual series is a highly respected and popular technological series, edited and managed by David Pogue, and published by Pogue Press in cooperation with O'Reilly & Associates, Incorporated. This book was written by David Sawyer McFarland. The Dreamweaver MX 2004 book is targeted at beginners--or people with just a little experience--and even web design experts. "The Missing Manual" series of books has never failed to be good, even great, so I was looking forward to reviewing this book. Out of the starting gate, organization is a key factor in the book's layout. A clear, easy-to-follow table of contents provides a quick reference to parts of the book the reader may or may not want to jump right into or skip completely, depending, of course, on the reader's experience level. This table of contents is followed by a short introduction chapter which tells what's new in Dreamweaver, describes differences, or parallels, between HTML and XHTML, and explains a little bit about cascading style sheets (CSS). Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual continues this great organization by separating the book into six distinct sections: Part 1, Building a Web Page; Part 2, Building a Better Web Page; Part 3, Bringing Your Pages to Life; Part 4, Building a Web Site; Part 5, Dreamweaver Power, and finally, Part 6, Dynamic Dreamweaver. The progression from Part 1 to Part 4 is a great help to beginners, and the final two parts provide much assistance to beginners moving into the expert zone of webmastering. What I found to be the best feature of the book was the supplemental material and resources offered by the author. They are available at the author's website in the form of downloadable files, tutorials, and several links to other websites for even more help and answers. However, the feature that is perhaps the most useful is the capability to link to a working example of the web pages you are supposed to build and actually see a live model in action as comparison. The fonts used, Formata and Minion, and the layout of Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual were very easy to read and follow--easy on the eyes, at least to mine. There is one thing, though. In future editions, I would like to see spiral binding so that the book could lay open when using it at the computer, especially when referring back and forth from the book to my computer screen. I had to apply different methods of holding the book open, i.e., cordless phones, clipping heavy pens to the pages, etc., and this was just inconvenient. Bottom line: Does the book live up to its title? Yes. Do I recommend Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual? Yes.
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