Rating: 
Summary: Extremely useful
Review: As a contract web designer for one of the areas largest credit card banks, I was well versed in static web page creation. Sure the online credit card application forms are dynamic, but my job was to create a static page that was later married to dynamic content by someone else. I knew that there was more to web design than static page content. This book gives you the bridge to take you from static to dynamic which definitely increases your salability as a web designer. Jeffrey Bardzell writes with an extremely clear style that makes for the understanding of some potentially deep information to be easy on the brain. Having read tons of software books in the past, it was sometimes very frustrating to figure out what the author was trying to convey. Not so with this book. Early on in lesson 4, I ran into a techo glitch (on my side) in setting up my computer with ColdFusion. I emailed Jeffrey and he solved the issue with a quick return email. I also teach graphic arts at a local college and the one thing that I constantly strive for in teaching is clarity of information. Jeffrey has done this on a consistent basis and I appreciate not only the great exercises of the book (I believe that you only learn by doing), the clarity of each step with the how's and why's, plus the feeling that I got that I can really learn this stuff. I would highly recommend this book if your want to take your skills to the next level.
Rating:
Summary: My first review because this book deserves it!
Review: Excellent book. I have taken advantage of these reviews for years now, I love Amazon for this feature. It is time for me to finally give back to you all.I had a little html and asp, but I wanted to learn the best practices and techniques of ASP quickly. I needed it yesterday like always. This book allowed me to utilize Dreamweaver to its fullest and also create my own asp code to access my SQL Server 2000 data. I even implemented some of their page ideas into my site to save some time. The order that they teach the different skills is perfect, they build on each other and make it very simple and fun to do (that isnt easy with asp). I now use asp in all my pages on my site. I wish they had one of these for ASP.NET for my next step. The only complaint would be that it is a short book, but well worth it. This is a great beginner and intermediate book.
Rating:
Summary: My first review because this book deserves it!
Review: Excellent book. I have taken advantage of these reviews for years now, I love Amazon for this feature. It is time for me to finally give back to you all. I had a little html and asp, but I wanted to learn the best practices and techniques of ASP quickly. I needed it yesterday like always. This book allowed me to utilize Dreamweaver to its fullest and also create my own asp code to access my SQL Server 2000 data. I even implemented some of their page ideas into my site to save some time. The order that they teach the different skills is perfect, they build on each other and make it very simple and fun to do (that isnt easy with asp). I now use asp in all my pages on my site. I wish they had one of these for ASP.NET for my next step. The only complaint would be that it is a short book, but well worth it. This is a great beginner and intermediate book.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for all skill levels!!
Review: From my experience with other "Training from the source" books put out by Macromedia Press, I had some high expectations for this book. It did not disappoint! The author takes you through upgrading a fictional news site from standard HTML to an XHTML Dyanmic website. The two server languages that are used in this book are ASP and Coldfusion. For each sample of code in the book, the author provides you with BOTH code examples. Very nice! I consider myself an intermediate level web designer, with a little knowledge on ASP and Coldfusion. This book has definitely help me understand why Dyanmic sites are going to replace standard HTML code. Although it is not bogged down with serious coding, it covers the most commonly used dyanmic procedures. I do recommmend buying the regular Dreamweaver MX "Training from the source" book first if you are a beginner. Overall, this book is worth every penny!
Rating:
Summary: Great book for all skill levels!!
Review: From my experience with other "Training from the source" books put out by Macromedia Press, I had some high expectations for this book. It did not disappoint! The author takes you through upgrading a fictional news site from standard HTML to an XHTML Dyanmic website. The two server languages that are used in this book are ASP and Coldfusion. For each sample of code in the book, the author provides you with BOTH code examples. Very nice! I consider myself an intermediate level web designer, with a little knowledge on ASP and Coldfusion. This book has definitely help me understand why Dyanmic sites are going to replace standard HTML code. Although it is not bogged down with serious coding, it covers the most commonly used dyanmic procedures. I do recommmend buying the regular Dreamweaver MX "Training from the source" book first if you are a beginner. Overall, this book is worth every penny!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book
Review: Great book. I've struggled through explanations of Dreamweaver asp pages and database interactions in a number of books and was never satisfied with what I was learning. I always felt they were making it overly complex. Now, after working through this book, I feel justified. They were making it overly complex ... and Bardzell makes it easy.
Rating: 
Summary: Aimple enough yet info packed
Review: I like the book! It gives you both ASP and Coldfusion code to work with and explins each action and what it does.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Way to Learn Dynamic Web Applications
Review: Jefferey Bardzell has done a masterful job of teaching how to use Dreamweaver, ASP and Microsoft Access to create truly interactive web sites. His presentation is very clear and the detailed examples are perfect. If you follow the book you will build a real world web site using most of the techniques you would ever need to build dynamic web applications. It covers communication between html pages and accessing databases on-line. He deliberately takes you through both hand-coding and using Dreamweaver.
The editing and accuracy in this book is superb. For the one place where I encountered a problem there was a work around on the book's web site. This book is the real thing and definitely worth the money.
To get the most out of this book, the reader should have some programming experience to fully appreciate the hand-coding examples. It is definitely not a book to start learning Dreamweaver.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing Static Here
Review: Jeffrey did a wonderful job on this book. He takes a complex subject and makes it understandable. He takes a static site and makes it dynamic. It includes cleaning up the code and making it XHTML compliant. The explanations of the difference of XHTML and HTML are very clear. The creative use of Find and Replace to strip out old tags and close others is very useful. In the redesign of the static site you'll use ASP and ColdFusion, add CSS and add an invisible navigation to accessibility reasons. You'll see the pros and cons of the various server models as well as adding a web form and configuring a server for SMTP message service. The book then moves into databases. A few basics but quickly move to displaying XHTML-formatted database content dynamically. You'll create a recordset to retrieve data to build a list of URLs dynamically. You'll also add images dynamically and generate the ALT attribute dynamically. A search is done and a registration page. An administration section is built to manage the content using update pages. If you are already familiar with Dreamweaver but want to learn how to use ASP and ColdFusion portions of the application, this is a great place to start. It's difficult for books that need to cover the entire application to go into this kind of detail. Plus I suspect that there are an awful lot of static sites out there that need to become dynamic (including mine). This book walks you though the process.
Rating:
Summary: Great tutorial, AS USUAL
Review: My first introduction to this series of books was when I took a Macromedia Director class for a "certified instructor". At first, I was disappointed in the fact that I would actually pay someone to go step by step through a book. In the end, I wasn't disappointed at all. Typical to Macromedia Press, this book is meant as a walk-thru tutorial covering many of the features you need to get up and running. User Authentication, forms, Post, Cookies, etc. are all well explained and can be applied immediately to your own web applications - and all the code works!! No troubleshooting is necessary. Although the book is designed to be a complete "course", it is a great reference and has the ability to use all the content or just 1 or 2 chapters. This book is a MUST if you are new to dynamic websites!!
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