Macromedia Studio MX All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies

Rating:
Summary: Great book for Beginners
Review: Great for those new to Macromedia Studio. This book will teach you all the basics to get up and running in minimal time. After this book you will be ready to explore any portion of Studio MX in greater depth as you will have a good grounding in the basics. Well worth the price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: Is there a worse book on MX?
Review: I've bought dozens of books over the years for all Macromedia and Adobe products and this one is probably the worst. It's like a dictionary that doesn't have the word you're looking up but - sure enough - the word "chair" is in there.

I have yet to find anything I need in this waste of shelf space. It does, however, tell you that File > New creates a new document.

Rating:
Summary: Useful Book; A Little Too Much for Dummies
Review: Macromedia Studio MX All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies is definately a value-packed, thick, useful book. There is good reference material and getting-started info on Dreamweaver MX, Fireworks MX, Freehand 10, Macromedia Vlash MX, & Cold Fusion MX along with two sections on design basics and integration of studio components.

As I said, with such a breadth of information the book is definately a bargain. However, that advantage is also the book's primary downfall I feel. It says 7 books in one, but if that is true it is SEVEN SHORT BOOKS. Each book is definately not the standard "For Dummies" length. This lends itself to make it 7 abridged-sized books. The adbridgement comes by removing all of the discussion on the more advanced features of the program. Unfortunately the extreme basics are also belabored.

All of that means that the book will be useful to help you get started in Macromedia Studio, but after you have a little more than a few hours of experience in the software suite you will find the book increasingly useless. Because the features which a mildly seasoned user will find difficult to master are not covered, this book is not such a great value if the purchaser already has mild to moderate background experience with MX software.

So with that review in mind take it or leave according to your lot. If you are new to Macromedia Studio MX and want some help for the first month or so getting up and running, this is a great resource. But if you have already pushed through the growing pains of climbing the learning curve, you may want to pass on this one for a more advanced text.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reference Book
Review: Macromedia Studio MX for Dummies makes nearly the whole Studio Mx easy to understand.
When I first purchased the book, I had virtually no experience at all with any Macromedia products.
I was mainly experienced with Microsoft FrontPage and somewhat familiar with basic html.
I was really impressed by the sections on Dreamweaver and Fireworks--the book made the programs so easy to work through.
Literally within one hour, I had learned how to swap images, rollover text with flash, compress files with Fireworks' export wizard, hyperlink the build-in flash buttons in Dreamweaver, upload via FTP, etc...
The section on FlashMX is great, but if you want to go 100% flash, you'll need to buy a more in-depth book.
Within several hours, I had created a 5 page website utilizing the knowledge that I had garnered from MS MX for Dummies.
I highly recommend this book for anyone that has not utilized Macromedia products before.

Rating:
Summary: Little in the way of examples
Review: OK - I'm totally new to web design, and that is why I thought a 'Dummies' book would be an appropriate start (I am a seasoned programmer, though, so I didn't expect this to be especially difficult). I do have a very basic website up and running.

I haven't gotten anywhere near all the way through the book, and already I've ordered a couple others, because it seems like I'm not getting a lot out of this. Maybe if a person already had some experience with earlier Dreamweaver products it might go easier.

My biggest problem so far is that it seems to me more of an item by item description of the myriad features - with little detail with regard to what they're for and how to use them. An early question for me was why and when to use tables versus frames versus layers for page design, and so far I have not found such info in this book. I've had to look elsewhere.

I learn best by following a detailed sample project from start to finish. There is as of yet no sample to work with here. There are lots of screen shots, but they rarely seem to add much knowledge, and I often spend a lot of time trying to figure out how that screen was even achieved, and what the authors are trying to tell me.

I've just started the ColdFusion section of the Dreamweaver sub-book, and I understand the very basics of what ColdFusion is. But the text is not leading me through an explanation. The screen shots are just comparing previous versions to the MX version, and the text is talking about things like "When you have a ColdFusion page open", but not how to open a ColdFusion page.

I see the book has gotten some good reviews, and the bad reviews seem to be written by experienced web developers who think the book is too shallow. Perhaps my brain just works differently, but I wanted something that would walk me through a project, showing me things on the way. Not just a overview of the features, without an entry-level discussion of what they're for and how to use them.

As I said, I do much better with a walk-through of a project when I'm a newbie. Examples, not just expanded descriptions of individual features. I don't expect discussion of the more advanced features, that would require more focused texts. What I did want was to be hand-held through the basics of creating a website.

I would not recommend this book, and I doubt I'll finish it. I'll probably just go back to the help files that came with Studio, and hope that my next book actually has sample projects to follow.

Rating:
Summary: Getting started...and beyond?
Review: Yip, worth the pennies you're going to spend on it. It has a no-nonsense approach and gets you up and running in no time at all. It doesn't include the typical html-this-and-html-that intro chapters (that are included in virtually all the other web development-related books) and jumps away with the cardinals immediately.

It is obviously not a topical alpha-to-omega subject matter type of book - for this buy separate titles specialising in the Macromedia component you're interested in.

But if you are a hit-the-ground-running type of being, this will show you how all the Macromedia components integrate with each other and beyond. The book is definitely worth the odd 8550 square millimeters (footprint that is!) on your bookshelf. Enjoy!