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From:David Powers , friends of ED ,
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16 of 16 customers found the following review helpful:
Big ambitions .... decent execution, 2007-11-30
As can be gleaned from the long title, this is an ambitious book. In almost 800 pages, David Powers overviews a wide array of technologies that can be used to build highly dynamic Web sites. The focus of the book is Dreamweaver CS3, the newest iteration of the leading Web development software from Adobe (formerly from Macromedia). After Adobe acquired Macromedia, it released Dreamweaver CS3, which incorporated the Spry framework--a library of code for creating AJAX applications. The book examines these changes, and provides demonstrations on creating Web sites using these new tools and making them work with other Web-related technologies such as PHP, CSS, XML and relational databases. Sample code is provided on the publisher's Website.
The first chapter highlights changes to Dreamweaver including Device Central and Adobe Bridge. Device Central is a feature that allows developers to preview what pages look like in handheld devices such as cell phones. Bridge is a program included with CS3 that manages images, multimedia and many other types of resources. Chapter 2 explores Spry effects, which provide ways to shake, squish, fade and otherwise manipulate elements on a Web page. Chapters 3 and 4 show readers how to create a local testing environment and how to set up Dreamweaver to work with PHP.
Chapters 5 and 6 detail CS3's support for CSS. This is helpful for those who, like myself, have written CSS by hand and have neglected support provided by Dreamweaver. The tools for handling CSS include the ability to drag page-specific styles to an external stylesheet and the ability to easily see which style rules affect a particular element on a page by using the CSS Styles panel. This section also discusses using CSS layout designs supplied by Adobe.
The next three chapters begin an in-depth exploration of various Spry widgets, code that allows a user to easily create fly-out menus, tabbed and "accordion" style interfaces, and other "oh, wow!" effects. Chapters 9 through 12 introduce PHP and discuss how to use it to send form results in an e-mail, validate user input, and include external files in a PHP page.
The next five chapters discuss setting up Dreamweaver CS3 to work with a MySQL database administered by the phpMyAdmin program. The chapters also discuss access control using PHP sessions and storing and retrieving data using PHP and the MySQL RDBMS.
Chapter 18 discusses using Dreamweaver and XSLT to display XML documents in a Web page. It also provides a brief introduction to XPath, the language that allows coders to find information in an XML document.
Chapters 19 and 20 are likely to be the most interesting for seasoned Web developers because they introduce Spry's support for dynamically displaying XML documents using AJAX. This feature allows developers to quickly create photo albums, calendars and other applications that can display new information on a Web page without reloading the page. The chapters also discuss how to retrieve information from various sources including an RBDMS.
In all, this is an ambitious book--perhaps too ambitious at times. Those without a basic foundation in the technologies discussed will likely find themselves occasionally lost. It also suffers from a few organizational problems. Certain chapters feel a bit thrown together, with disparate elements competing for the reader's attention.
However, the author does a good job of going beyond the Dreamweaver manual and showing the user how Dreamweaver can be used to build real-world Web applications. He also does a good job of explaining Spry's (and AJAX's) dark side--the complexity and size of the code, poor or non-existent accessibility for the impaired, and the requirement that JavaScript be enabled on the user's browser. He helpfully suggests workarounds for these issues.
23 of 23 customers found the following review helpful:
A Wealth of Knowledge..., 2007-11-30
If you are VERY comfortable with PHP and MySQL, this may not be the best book for you. (I say that with some reservations, though, because of the vast wealth of knowledge in this book between page 1 and page 729.) Also, if you don't know how to code in PHP, the "Introduction to the Basics of PHP" in Chapter Ten may not be enough instruction for you to comfortably appreciate this book. BUT, if you have some knowledge of PHP (for example, you are a self-taught PHP coder like myself), need the power of PHP and MySQL, and are curious about any benefits there might be from this new technology SPRY (Adobe's implementation of AJAX), this will be an excellent book for you. The writing is clear, concise (in spite of its detailed explanations), and logical.
The strength of Powers' book is providing you with the vast majority of tools you will need to create, test, and implement a dynamic Web site using the power of PHP, MySQL, SPRY, and more. For instance, Chapter Four has detailed instructions on setting up a PHP server on your hard drive to enable you to test your server-side programs. Those instructions begin with downloading the PHP installation files and end with trouble-shooting possible configuration problems, including all necessary steps in between.
The book continues with how to set up a PHP site using Dreamweaver, learning the rules, tips, and benefits of cascading style sheets (CSS), the advantages and creation of a SPRY navigation menu bar, and an in-depth examination of on-line forms and data validation. Since the next logical step is doing something with the form data, the MySQL database product is tackled beginning, again, with its installation, continuing with the use of the phpMyAdmin feature, and ending with the storage of database records (including access control and security issues). As if this was not enough information to digest, the book ends with a guide to and uses for XML and XSLT in your Web site.
One more big plus from this book is that it offers the code (tested and commented) for a number of commonly used functions on Web sites today. If you are looking for a login function, form validation function, mail function, (and the list goes on) you'll find the code in this book.
Again, there is a wealth of knowledge in this book from front cover to back cover - well organized and easy to grasp.
4 of 4 customers found the following review helpful:
A book that lives up to it's title - by a great author, 2007-10-20
Author David Powers helps Dreamweaver users take it to the next level with the Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax and PHP.
Powers, a Dreamweaver and PHP expert, guides the intermediate or ambitious beginning Dreamweaver user through the powerful and intricate upgrades of the latest version of Adobe's Dreamweaver CS3 (version 9), and then spices it up with the world's most popular open source scripting language, PHP.
Power's easy to read style keeps the tutorial like text moving along with pertinent information and many useful tips and techniques that will bring any Dreamweaver users skill level up a notch.
All the scripts are available as a download so the reader can work right along with partially started examples to build an elegant and functional website using a combination of Cascading Style Sheets and Java Script and XML (AJAX).
Finally, Powers teaches some functional basic PHP lessons and shows the reader how to integrate this highly useful and popular scripting language into making the site even more functional using concise, real world examples.
Readers already familiar with the basics of Dreamweaver will benefit the most, although it is possible for a newbie to follow along thanks to Powers easy to understand style and directions, especially the PHP section, which is for beginners.
Another "must have" David Powers book for the Dreamweaver and PHP user.
22 of 22 customers found the following review helpful:
Widgets forever..., 2007-09-30
A fabulous book so easy to follow and informative.
This brings Dreamweaver to today and has dropped completely the outdated use of tables that others (such as H.O.T.) seem to be stuck with when the industry trend is only to insert tables into a page when using excel spreadsheets and such and never to use them for page building.
The extensive introduction of Widgets is a delight and has completely replaced those Javascript drop menu's avoiding all the pitfalls they entailed. The author leads you into dreamweaver in the usual way, most of these titles use, then easily run through tutorials that demonstrate how to build a site from simple CSS templates and from scratch. Step by step the author leads one from simple site to the introduction of widgets (new to DW CS3) through to PHP pages and on to databases and includes.
Very easy to folow and brings one up to date on the new CS3 architecture.
5 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
"Essential" is absolutely correct!, 2007-09-04
This book gave me everything I was looking for, and a lot more. I was looking for an overview of the spry network and php server-side coding and this has given me that. I also got a ton of essential shortcuts, heads up on Dreamweaver bugs, and some great tips. All this and I'm only halfway through the book! I sure got my money's worth on this one and would highly recommend to anyone getting their feet wet in the Dreamweaver/Spry/PHP pond.
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