Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Bible

Rating:
Summary: Don't do it if you are a beginner
Review: I purchased this book hoping that there would be step by step instruction. In some cases there are but often there is not. A good book will give a quick rundown of the major features and then show you how to use them through example. Not so in this book. I learn by doing and not by reading and if you are the same way I do not recommend this. I tried doing one of the walkthroughs and found that it was not a complete walkthrough and that at times the actual main menu choice was left out. Example: "Choose Insert -> New Symbol. You have to know that it is in the Edit menu or you have to hunt it down as did I. Not having complete walkthroughs and assuming knowledge leads to frustration and a much longer learning curve. I can only guess that if you have some familiarity with these products already, it will be helpful, but do not purchase this book if you are a beginner with these programs.

**Note** I have found this type of thing to be true with most books from the Bible series. I keep hoping one will work out, but so far, I have about 4 of them and none have them been worth even a quarter of the purchase price.

Rating:
Summary: For visual content of webpages
Review: Macromedia offers a bundle of tools that span visual web site development. I say visual because the emphasis of the tools is on building complex HTML web pages and groups of these pages, where the groups might typically constitute a website. The tools basically construct static web pages with intricate graphical content.

For example, Flash is wonderful for making animated graphics. While Fireworks claims to be better than Photoshop for editing still images. I am not sure whether this is indeed so. But the book's narrative on Fireworks shows impressive functionality.

I should qualify my earlier statement. You can certainly add sound effects in Flash. And there is some ability to have dynamic webpages, using DHTML. But the book really doesn't emphasise it. Just gets a passing mention.

Overall, the Studio should handle many needs for web developers. Though note that the construction of dynamic pages is most often done via JSPs or Active Server Pages, which is outside the scope of Studio.

Rating:
Summary: This book is too overwhelming for beginners.
Review: The small non-profit company I work for needed a website, and I drew the short straw for designing and maintaining it. We bought the Studio MX suite, and I hoped this book would cover everything I needed to design a simple, yet cool website.

The thing is it DOES cover EVERYTHING I needed, but it is SO overwhelming in all the details, I was pulling my hair out and wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

You really have have some experience with website design before attempting this book. I had no idea what to do, and couldn't filter out what applied to me and what didn't; I needed a little more hand-holding than this book offered. Now that I've been through the H.O.T. and Naked series of help books (which others complain of being too basic), I'm much more comfortable with this book. I'll definitely be using it as a reference as I add dynamic content to the simple website I've built.

Overall, this book is an excellent resource for intermediate or advanced users. Beginners should shop around for other books before buying this one.