I had to buy this book for a class. I have used the CIB series before and have enjoyed them. But, I read the reviews and I felt like why the school would even get this book. But, it is not that bad for just learning the bare minimum basics. There were some errors though. You had to download updateds for a few chapters online, which can be a pain. I have never used Dreamweaver before, so it seemed to help me learn the basics. But the class is now over and we were required to do all of the chapters. I just don't feel like I am extremely comfortable with Dreamweaver. I feel like I just skimmed the surface. Some of the chapters lacked detail (especially the form chapter (Chapter 10) and Publishing to the Web (Chapter 12). I found myself going over and over some things just to find that there may be a book error. Then other chapters were just so simplistic that the lesson was pointless. But, anyway I also bought the Missing Manual for Dreamweaver and since it is 1000 pages, hopefully I will learn more about the program.

If you're new to Dreamweaver CS3 and are looking for a "clear" step by step learning guide, I suggest you pick another book. This book is full of typo's, mistaken steps, wrong instructions and is very short on explanations. I've used many step tutorials and this is by far about the worst I've come across. Returned the book for a refund.

I had written my original webpages (many years ago!) with Adobe PageMill. I finally had to upgrade my computer, and thus the software. Getting Adobe CS3 Design Premium was a no-brainer for my situation, but when I opened Dreamweaver, I found it was terribly foreign to me. Figuring Adobe would be a good place to start my self-training (and seeing that the reviews here on Amazon were all over the map), I purchased Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Classroom in a Book.

Just like a beginning computer class at your local community college, the book follows a prepared lesson plan for "hands-on experience". Unlike such a class, there's no way to ask for clarification, more examples, or get lesson material errors corrected. Although I started out learning things I definitely needed to know, I soon stalled out when I tried to generalize what I'd just worked through to a real-life creative effort. The book simply is not a resource, but a series of pre-determined exercises to get a person actually doing a few things with the program. It's value is definitely transient, not lasting, and thus not worth the purchase price by any means.

Also rather disturbing were the incorrect keyboard shortcuts and directions in general for Mac users. In fact, I experienced a repeated freeze-up when using a particular set of shortcut instructions (the "normal" command path worked fine).

I ended up browsing other Dreamweaver texts at a local bookstore (where I could see layout and formatting of each book) and selected "Visual Quickstart Guide -- Dreamweaver CS3" as a result. In it, I learned a LOT more about what I could do with Dreamweaver, and it's laid out in a way that promotes its use for reference during my learning curve. I tried to finish off the last lessons in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Classroom in a Book after that ... I lasted only a few pages before I closed the book in disgust. Once the toolbar, panels, and workspace became familiar, the rote exercises lost all usefulness.

I'm sure that Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Classroom in a Book has an audience out there, but it's not me -- someone with no Dreamweaver experience and just a smattering of website design experience. It's definitely not going to suit previous Dreamweaver users, either. Unless you're very certain that your experience level and needs line up exactly with the few folks who gave out 4- and 5-star reviews, you'll be better off finding some other vehicle to learn Dreamweaver.

This is a great book, especially for beginning users of Dreamweaver, but also for those who may have had a class or two in college and feel like they need a little bit more in-depth instruction.

I have used several of Adobe's Classroom in a Book (CIB) workbooks and this is just another example of a great class. I learned a bunch, was reminded of things I had forgotten about Dreamweaver from previous versions/classes, and thoroughly enjoyed the quick, easy-to-use format! I got more out of this book than I did out of an extremely expensive week-long course. The only down-side - there are a few type-o's in the text (it must be a gift - I find them in ALL the books I read!). Other than that - I loved it!

After working with Dreamweaver and this book extensively I have come to the conclusion that it must have been written by someone in India to save money. It lacks the proper descriptions and illustrations that are critical to learning from it, parts and points are missing in the lessons that make it very difficult to use and in chapter 9 entitled " Working With Spry " there is a bug in the software making the lesson impossible to finish ! You can (and I did) learn from it but it's torture. Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Revealed by Sherry Bishop is way better.

I purchased this book to try to teach myself Dreamweaver. I have never read any of the Classroom in a Book series and I'm feeling very ripped off. I've never used the application or any other web authoring software and I don't know HTML, so I though this was a good place to start. WRONG! The information presented in the book is so superficial, hard to understand and asks you to follow their instruction without any background or understanding of what you're really doing. The worst thing is, I also bought the Classroom in a Book for Flash at the same time. Truly a waste of money.

They have you clicking on commands without knowing why. If you plan to build a website exactly like the one in the book you'll be ok. If you want to set up a CSS style sheet with your own design, good luck. In other words they do not teach, they do not explain. The book merely has you following along to finish a website they have already started for you. I got through chapter 7. I'm at Amazon today to find another book. Complete wast of my valuable time.

this book is pretty much worthless. it's full of "lessons" that are mind numbingly boring and do little to actually help the user learn how to use the program. trust me, don't waste your money on this, just buy a higher rated book.

I feel the need to warn people about this book before they throw money away and most importantly before they decide to give up learning dreamweaver forever. To set the record straight, I am no fool, I am an electronics engineer and I am constantly studying highly technical advances in my career. This book is the worst I have ever come across. It is so full of mistakes that it is impossible to figure out properly. I kept finding myself looking up data in "other" books to figure out what the author was trying to say. Some of the exercises were so far off that it appears the author was on medication or something. I got to a third of the way and finally threw in the towel; I just could not bear another word. I have bought the whole series of the classroom in a book. The first two I read had mistakes but it was bearable but this last book finally put me off totally ever reading another book from the "so called experts" of that company. It's actually a crime to get money for a product that is totally unusable. The word classroom should also be indicative of teacher / student, nothing is explained, it is assumed that the reader automatically knows new terms and abbreviations. The author is totally detached from the reader. I downloaded the errata sheet but that matched the book exactly... Atrocious!
Marc Chelin

Couldn't of switched from Golive to Dreamweaver with out using this book to learn the software.

(Disclaimer: I did not use my own money to buy this book; it was part of a tuition reimbursement package. Had I coughed up my own cash, I would probably have given it two stars instead of three.)

This book is geared toward Dreamweaver beginners, and contains a decent set of concise tutorials aimed at giving the user a taste of all the main features of the program. The two bonus chapters (available when registering the book at Peachpit's web site) - on templates and code - are especially welcome, at least to those of us used to doing all of this by hand. The book will NOT teach you XHTML and CSS - if you are unfamiliar with those languages, this book will likely leave you feeling led around by the nose - and led rather badly, as well.

Which brings me to the editing. I have to agree with all of the editing issues cited in other reviews. A few mistakes are understandable; but it's not clear that anyone actually tried the instructions in these tutorials before sending the book to press. One specific example: in many cases the book instructs you to tab to the next field, when Dreamweaver has already moved to the next field for you. (Note I'm on a Mac; this may be different for Windows.) I was able to get all of the tutorials to work with a little trial and error; but if you are not clear on the goal of what you are doing, this kind of error can really throw you off.

In short: Decent book that was apparently not proofread. Someone should fix it.

This book is easy to follow and will have you up and running in no time.

The latest if the popular series of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Classroom "Classroom in a Book" was for me, still a good purchase. However not a great one.

I have used Dreamweaver in the past, but I am feeling a little rusty after too many years of FrontPage use and i was hoping this would help make the much a easy thing for me. The first editions of the CS3 did have some errors in the which were pointed out and corrected rather fast. One of the nice benefit of working with Adobe Press, they do tend to respond fast and very professionally. That is very appreciated.

I use it as a light weigh training guide, with a good number of hints and good examples. I might be a little tough on the book only giving it a thee star rating, but coming from the awesome job that Abode did on the
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom, the Dreamweaver version has some very tough standards to live up to as far as books ago.

If I was going this again as a first book on Dreamweaver ? That might be a toss-up, but gut feeling is I might aim for the "Missing Manual Series" of Dreamwear CS3 by David McFarland also.

Right now I'm giving this book a "C." I've read through at least three other html editor-type manuals, including an Adobe Go Live manual, MX 2004 Hands-on Training, and (going back a ways) Adobe PageMill. The assumptions made in this brief CS3 CIB text are okay with my skill level, but what about the rank beginner? The book also needs a glossary, to help the user understand all the CSS terminology. I'm not through the text yet but I'm disappointed. I remember really liking a Photoshop CIB I had a few years ago but this Dreamweaver tutorial seems thrown together to me.

I had been using Dreamweaver but never had a book or class, so decided to try this book.

On the plus side, I learned many shortcuts from this book, and the CD with all of the examples was a nice addition. The screenshots are good, and the chapter on CSS was detailed enough.

On the downside, there are a lot of misakes in this book. Since many people who use this kind of book will have had no experience at all with the software Adobe (and other computer book publishers) should use extra care while proofreading. Also, the chapter on Spry was kind of light and didn't touch on a lot of the widgets and what could be done with them.

I think its a good book for those how don't have a clue about dreamweaver, It don't go into the deapth of dreamweaver, but is well explaind and will be a quick way to get into html/xtml design. well whorth the money.

Having been a Go Live user for a while I needed something to help me make the change to Dreamweaver. Usually, the Classroom in a Book series are brilliant, this one not so. As a self-confessed dummy when it comes to technical things like using Dreamweaver, I found there were at least three chapters where I couldn't complete the exercises as shown. Generally very good. I would recommend it but only if you bought a companion book like Dreamweaver CS3 for Windows and Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guide)to fill in the gaps. It was good, worthwhile, not great.

This series is generally very good. This book had a few troublesome problems. The lessons are good but the files on the accompanying cd are flaky. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out why something was not working. Beware the odd flaws in the exercise files!!!! Can't see the stylesheet linked to the cd? Neither could I. Not your problem. Buy a different book.

I bought this book because I remembered using the CIB series to learn Photoshop 3. That book was very good. This one is not, and is definitely not worth the $54.99 list price.

There is very little explanation of WHY you do each task, and most (if not all) of the examples are nearly complete already - you just add the last bit of the project. You don't create anything from scratch, you just follow along and complete the project with little to no explanations about what you're doing or why.

Also, the lesson on creating forms informs you 4 pages into the lesson that although the lesson teaches how to create a form, the form won't actually do anything when you click "submit" because you'll need to "see Dreamweaver Help, 'Building applications visually'" to learn that part.

While constructing forms that can't do anything may seem helpful, I expected a little bit more from a book that lists for $55 and has "Adobe Press" as the author/publisher. I would have thought this book would be the most thorough beginner class you could find, but instead it's more like the first day of the beginner class, where they give the overview of what you'll learn.

I feel especially disappointed when I see other books such as the Dreamweaver CS3 Bible that are four times as thick and $5.00 cheaper.

the best css, html, xhtml, javascript, flash, photoshop, flex, actionscript wrapped into one book

A MUST

Dreamweaver CS3 is undoubtedly the single best web/html authoring application to have ever been published, i.e., at the time of this writing, but this instructional manual is not worthy of the software. Note that reviewers who give this book high marks seem to do so while making no comparison to anything that is, or potentially might be, better. In other words, `the book has been of some help' (as compared to having no help at all). Well, I'll grant it that much, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement.

I have found it to be clumsy, opaque, disjointed, pretty much annoying. But yes, it's slightly better than nothing. I definitely recommend taking a look at reviews for other Dreamweaver manuals.

Dreamweaver CS3 is undoubtedly the single best web/html authoring application to have ever been published, i.e., at the time of this writing, but this instructional manual is not worthy of the software. Note that reviewers who give this book high marks seem to do so while making no comparison to anything that is, or potentially might be, better. In other words, `the book has been of some help' (as compared to having no help at all). Well, I'll grant it that much, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement.

I have found it to be clumsy, klutzy, pretty much annoying. But yes, I'm sure it's better than nothing. I definitely recommend taking a look at reviews for other Dreamweaver manuals.

This book most importantly than telling me how to do it, it gives me examples of what it will look like on my computer. I know when I finish reading it, I will understand how to build a web page.

The book does introduce a novice user to many features of Dreamweaver but often when following written instructions my example does not look like it does in the book. The instructions are often wrong or incomplete, causing frustration. They need an associated site and/or telephone number that a user can contact for help. Adobe should have checked these projects much more carefully before publishing this book.

As I am new to Web Design I find this book easy to use and quite informational. As stated in other reviews there are errors, which can cause quite a bit of confusion to the newby, but all in all I'd have to say it's a great resource.

Buy "Dreamweaver CS3 - The Missing Manual". The "Missing Manual" book is soooo much clearer and easier to read. The "Missing Manual" has NO missing steps, instructions, or blunders like the "Classroom" book. Save yourself the time and headaches that the "Classroom" book will cause you.

Wow, some of these reviewers are just plain cranky. I bought this book and am very satisfied with it. I'm no techie-geek, just a person trying to learn Dreamweaver. I used the "Classroom in a Book" series in college and they teach quite well, in my opinion. I am halfway through the book and find it to be just what I expected and am not having any problems learning it this way. There are some errors, but they tend to be minor, and you can download the corrections here (many thanks to reviewer D. Tower!!): http://www.peachpit.com/title/0321499816. I printed them up ahead of time and put each one into the book on the page needed so that I wouldn't run into mistakes while doing the lessons. I'm glad I didn't listen to those negative reviews.

This book is not for a Dreamweaver power user looking to jumpstart their knowledge of the new version, but is very good for someone who does not know html or css that wants to use the program to build websites. This book is for those who want to use Dreamweaver in design view, not code view. While the book doesn't go too deep into any one part of the program and has errors you will need to go to the companion site to repair, it does cover all parts of the program. Most people only use a small set of Dreamweaver's capabilities, and those people will be able to use parts of this book to quickly get going. Most of us are self-taught coders. It is nice to see how the Dreamweaver team expects us to use their product. Even in a basic chapter that covers a task we already know how to do, we can pick up a new technique that might make sense once we try it.

I've read the reviews and agree with some of the criticisms voiced, but am compelled to come to the defense of this fun and informative book. Are there errors in the first printing? Yes. Is it best suited for beginners? Very probably. Does it only scratch the surface? Certainly. However, for those that want to get a taste of what can be done in DWCS3, I think this book is friendly and useful; if you want to explore further, you can do that, too.

I will suggest that you use Firefox as your preview browser; IE7 does not work as well for some reason, especially when working with the spry widgets.

This is something I learned by contacting the publisher (who contacted the author on my behalf). I received an immediate response which was both cordial and very helpful. Adobe has compiled errata for this book and there is a PDF download available at the book's product page: http://www.peachpit.com/title/0321499816. If it is true that Adobe was too quick to publish, it is also true that they are working hard to address any errors.

To summarize, I really liked this book and learned quite a bit; I don't know all I would like to know about CS3DW, but now have the skills to explore further, either on my own or using a more advanced book.

This book only scratches the surface of Dreamweaver. It's the type of introductory book only a complete novice would find valuable.

If you already have some experience with Dreamweaver, there are much better books out there that cover more advanced concepts (that I think should have been included in this book!)

I know a thing or two about tutorials/manuals for I often test them as a beta-tester. The following comments are for all five of the CIBs. Yes, I have worked though each one.
As a bare start its ok but its just too much of a skimpy overview for the high price its requesting. This book should have been a PDF, unlocked, with the software. If you want a good intro at a reasonable price, don't buy this book. As for its content, I have found errors that should have been found long before it got to print. If you really want it, than wait a few more months for an updated edition. As for the pdf version, stay away from that too. Its DRM settings are overly restrictive, i.e., only 30 text selections over 30 days. There are much better books coming soon at the price with respect to its in-depth coverage. So buy them. :-)

If you've purchased previous CLIAB editions, and love them, you're in for a big surprise. This latest offering from Adobe Press is pure garbage. The supplied files are riddled with errors, and the CSS styles supplied often don't match the lessons they accompany. Working along with the lessons is frustrating, and you may find yourself wondering what's wrong with your Dreamweaver program. This book is a disservice to Adobe customers and the most insincere effort they've ever produced. Don't buy it. I'm personally waiting for the new book, Learning Dreamweaver Cs3 by Jennifer Smith, due out later in July 1007. Fingers crossed.

I regret that I cannot give less than a one star rating to this garbage.
There are numerous misprints and errors. It teaches nothing. You learn nothing. You just follow along by rote, like a robot, not understanding how or why. To add to the insult, many of the examples simply don't work.
And in Adobe's usual arms length from the public arrogance , you cannot contact anyone to ask about the contents of this waste of paper or about the program itself.

First part of the book is pretty good. The further into the book,the errors start showing up. The publishing deadline must have been approaching. Chapter 9 "Integrating Ajax with Spry" lesson did not even work (running Windows Vista).
It is a good basic book. Looking forward to other books that are soon to be released.

As another has said it has a number of errors. A number of the lessons examples either don't work at all or are riddled with errors. For all practical pruposes the sections on "intergrating Ajax with Spry" are worthless to teach how to incorporate the spry effects. That is perhaps the newest and nicest feature of CS3 but will remain a mystery if you depend on this book to learn it.

The book has very simple instructions, and clear pictures. It is very basic and light on information. It is good for beginners. For example, the book teaches you how to build a form into your page, but does not go into how to process the info gathered.

I purchased this book to help with my transisition from FrontPage to Dreamweaver. The book is a good reference in learning the features of Dreamweaver but it so full of errors that the Adobe Creative Team should be embarassed. If any of them would have actually proof-read the book these errors could of been easily corrected before printing.

This sounds like a rant but when you pay $50+ (I bought before there were savings) for a book you'd expect a $50+ book. Not one that is full of errors.

There aren't any other books to recommend but if you're wanting to learn Dreamweaver and you don't mind the price, and the errors within the book that cause you to re-read pages to find out what you missed (when you didn't, the steps just don't always flow correctly), then I recommend this book.