I am just learning to use Dreamweaver, so I find this book helpful in every way. You can easily skip the things you already know. It is detailed in all areas.

What a great book for someone who just learning how to use this program. It has been extremely helpful and it is easy to follow, very user friendly.

This book helped reaffirm my knowledge from the other book and gave me a few different looks at how to do things.

Love this book and it is so easy to use... If your new to dreamweaver 8 this is a nice tool to help you learn.. much easier to use than some of the other tools out there..

Having just started a new job in which I need to begin developing web-based training very soon, I reserved every book I could on Dreamweaver through our local libraries. This one is my favorite.
I think one reviewer complained about the 'cutsey' stuff, and let me say that this is not your typical "Dummies" book - I was almost to page 50 before I came across one comment about her spouse, and I think there was one more such comment later on. I will also say that as a trainer, instructional developer, technical writer, and journalist, I tend to judge computer books with a critical eye (and I read a LOT of them).
I found the pace of this one to be just right -- I am rather impatient and I didn't have a lot of time to waste, so I didn't want something that proceeded slowly, but I was also new to Dreamweaver, so I didn't want something that proceeded at a breakneck pace.
This book does what it claims to do. It doesn't claim to be a Dreamweaver book for those who are already power users. It does not propose to be an exhaustive reference, as perhaps does the other Dummies title that describes itself as being nine books in one. The all-in-one is a nice enough book, but I didn't have time to read 900 pages before beginning to develop my projects. Speaking of 900-page books, I chose this book over Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual, because the latter one, albeit much larger, did not present the information as concisely, and I found myself reading three paragraphs to get the amount of content that I could get from one paragraph of this author's book.
This book does, in its 400 or so pages, give a reasonably good foundation from which one can learn more about advanced topics, if desired. In that sense, it gave me a good road map of the territory ahead, such that I can converse intelligently with those in my office who are way beyond my level, and it positions me to be a good consumer of more advanced books/material. This author's book more fully fleshed out the topics that I needed to know about than did How To Do Everything with Dreamweaver 8. Again, that was not a bad book, and in fact the screen shots of the toolboxes and menus and such were more clearly done in How To Do Everything with Dreamweaver 8. I did learn some new things from it. But overall, I got more bang for my buck from Warner's book.
This book differs from the Dreamweaver Design and Construction book -- which gets good reviews -- in that it does not focus (nor propose to focus) on the principles of designing a website. This book's agenda is to teach the reader how to use Dreamweaver.
This book does not propose to be a tutorial, as does Dreamweaver 8 Hands on Training, so it is a matter of being aware of the way that you learn best, and picking a book that fits with your learning style.
Speaking of, I am a visual learner, so I used this book in tandem with "Teach Yourself Visually Dreamweaver 8" -- and some time later realized that both were written by the same author. "Teach Yourself Visually Dreamweaver 8" is a good companion because it gives an overview of the concepts, such that I already had a mental framework for what I would learn. I preferred it over the Dreamweaver 8 Visual Encyclopedia, which uses a typeface and layout that I found more difficult to follow.
I also own the Quickstart guide for Dreamweaver 8, which I keep beside me at work and consult when I need to see how to complete a specific task. The QuickStart guide is great for this purpose, but it is not, in my opinion, as good as Warner's book if a beginner wants to sit down and read a narrative about how to use the program. The QuickStart guide would move too quickly for that purpose.
Warner's book shows sensitivity to the learners in that it does not use terms that haven't yet been explained; it sequences the topics well; and I haven't found any errors in the book. It has not in any sense been a frustrating or incomplete read. The writing is clean and effective and doesn't draw attention to itself. It has a rather conversational tone without being inefficient.
I think she did a great job with it and I will be on the lookout for her name when I look for books on other computer topics.

I am not new to computers and I am a good student, who is able to grasp materials. However this book is hard to follow, the writer uses a lot of expressions that are NOT for dummies, without real explanations. There are certain parts of the book that are well organized but in overall the writer doesn't seem focused. She keeps touching several subjects in one chapter, without really making a point, therefore it's confusing. I have no doubt that the writer does know Dreamweaver well, however this book seems to miss the concept and the thematics to be able to understand even for dummies.

I am not new to computers and I am a good student, who is able to grasp materials. However this book is hard to follow, the writer uses a lot of expressions that are NOT for dummies, without real explanations. There are certain parts of the book that are well organized but in overall the writer doesn't seem focused. She keeps touching several subjects in one chapter, without really making a point, therefore it's confusing. I have no doubt that the writer does know Dreamweaver well, however this book seems to miss the concept and the thematics to be able to understand even for dummies.

All in all this was a helpful book. I went from knowing nothing to knowing about 3/4 of the things I needed to know. Which was great. I mean, I built a website for my company by reading a book, so job accomplished. Right?

"So what was wrong with it?" you may be asking.

Well....

There were several areas where I would have liked a little more detail than she went into in the book. Her covering of FLASH could have been a little more in depth. To this day (4 months later) I still can't seem to make FLASH buttons show up on my web page, and I have NO idea why.

The other reviews I read of this mentioned Ms. Warner's penchant for talking to you as though you were her best girlfriend. Well, it's true. There was a little bit much of the Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink type conversation in it for my taste. I get that she wanted us to feel comfortable, but I would rather have felt comfortable in a corporate way... that is to say not so aware of her relationship with her husband.

But I still will recommend this book to anyone who needs help. It got me started and I used it as a reference throughout my website construction. The website I created is light years beyond the one we had and I have Ms. Warner to thank for that.

So like I said, ALL IN ALL A HELPFUL BOOK.

All in all this was a helpful book. I went from knowing nothing to knowing about 3/4 of the things I needed to know. Which was great. I mean, I built a website for my company by reading a book, so job accomplished. Right?

"So what was wrong with it?" you may be asking.

Well....

There were several areas where I would have liked a little more detail than she went into in the book. Her covering of FLASH could have been a little more in depth. To this day (4 months later) I still can't seem to make FLASH buttons show up on my web page, and I have NO idea why.

The other reviews I read of this mentioned Ms. Warner's penchant for talking to you as though you were her best girlfriend. Well, it's true. There was a little bit much of the Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink type conversation in it for my taste. I get that she wanted us to feel comfortable, but I would rather have felt comfortable in a corporate way... that is to say not so aware of her relationship with her husband.

But I still will recommend this book to anyone who needs help. It got me started and I used it as a reference throughout my website construction. The website I created is light years beyond the one we had and I have Ms. Warner to thank for that.

So like I said, ALL IN ALL A HELPFUL BOOK.

What this book does in basic terms is walk you through the process of website conception to managing your website once it is on line and everything in between. It covers all of the information that you will need to get your site up and running. Some of the the subjects are covered very well like the use of CSS, adding graphics, flash animation, design elements, templates, HTML, Meta tags and the use of graphics. All subjects are covered in ample detail.

She has included helpful hints along that way with the use of side bar items that like "Tip" used to discuss a feature with in Dreamweaver that pertains to the subject that is being covered, "Technical stuff" used to describe technical aspect of the operation that you are preforming and "warning" that warn you of the consequences of you action or inaction to a Dreamweaver prompt.

Janine Warner writes in a nice easy writing style. The formatting of the book is excellent with the use of different font types and styles to help the reader. This helps greatly when skimming through a pages looking for a website reference or HTML coding examples. As Ms. Weaver explains this is not a cover to cover read but more reference material. It is also very well organized.

This book is a great starting point for Dreamweaver but I would recommend that while this book does a great job covering CSS you should go get a book dedicated to CSS because of the complexity of CSS.

The only prerequisite here is that you have to really want to learn Dreamweaver. When working with Dreamweaver it is important to know what you want your site to do before you start to use Deamweaver for the first time other wise you can get caught up in the many features that may or may not be helpful to you. There are so many things in Dreamweaver that do almost the same thing but not quite. This book provides some good insight into doing just that. Dreamweaver which is a great program but can be a daunting task at times. Thankfully this book takes the daunt out of daunting.

For the true beginner to Dreamweaver this is a five star book. For those with experience this is probably a 3 star book. The intended target audience is the beginner to intermediate user which is how I came up with my rating of 4 stars.

I am new to web design but am pretty good with computers. I have been producing and editing music for fun for years. This book is dicey at best. There are good points, but overall it is hard to follow and gives a poor explaination of Dreamweaver's features. Hopefully, the author is better in the classroom than she is in this text or I feel sorry for her students.

I love this book!!! Very easy to use and follow, explanations are in english not tech words. I started to create my first website using dreamweaver 8, I read the book it came with, and didn't understand what I was doing. After reading the first two chapters of dreamweaver 8 for dummies, I was starting to create a website like a pro.

This easy to use book in the "Dummy's" format walks you thru the steps in web design from start up to up and running.

When I decided to take the plunge and put together my web site, I selected Dreamweaver for the software. I than ordered Dreamweaver for Dummies, because I wanted an introduction to web development that was structured to presented the material in a straight forward, clear and concise manor and did not assume that I had prior experience.

The book met all of my expectations and made learning Dreamweaver a Dream and not a chore. For the "newbe" beginner to the intermediate student, this book will do it all.

When I had a question about structuring a photo gallery, I e-mailed a question to Janine and was astonished to receive a reply the following day. She provided a clear solution to my problem and added several additional hints to improve upon my design.

I can definitely recommend this book to all those that want a great introduction to the marvels of Dreamweaver.

There are certain software packages that have simply become the standards by which others are compared. Dreamweaver is one of those packages. When you go talk to professional web workers, most of them use Dreamweaver. When you want to put 'web designer' on your resume, you want to put down or be able to tell them 'Dreamweaver' at the interview.

This book is an excellent introduction to the Dreamweaver software package. It's written in an interesting combination of tutorial and reference format. It says that it's intended for the complete beginner, but I think that might be just a bit much. Some idea about how the web works, even a little bit of HTML background will be a big help.

One point I consider weak. There's a chapter on using Flash. Obviously Flash, also put out by the same software publisher, has to be included. My suggestion. A lot of us hate Flash. It's slow, it requires a download, and it puts cartoons on your site. Most of the big sites used flash at one time, they don't any more. If you have to use flash, put a prominent 'Skip the Cartoons' button on the page.

Two points I consider strong. One, her treatment of CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. This is something you simply have to know. Two, her treatment of building database driven sites. She gives an excellent introduction - but lets you know that this is just the beginning and you have a lot of other things to learn. I'll add -- If you're going to do a dynamic web site of average size, don't even think of doing it without Dreamweaver.

Dreamweaver for Dummies is a great resource for begginners/intermediate even...Its great for people like me who had to start somewhere to learn the software, I was clueless. I had NO problems reading through this book, and applying the things I learned.. I credit the author, Janine Warner, for giving me a starting point to learning web design... I have not even used Dreamweaver for 1 year yet, and have ONLY read Janine's book...However it has taught me enough and opened up the door to learn so much more on my own thanks to the book...I've already designed a website for a company, and I have more requests for more work... You can't expect to read 3 chapters and become expert, or in "24 hrs" for that matter..If you read and study through the book, I don't understand why you wouldn't accomplish what your goals are prior to buying the book..The author also includes some great tips, and additional resources that were very helpful..I still use the book today to refresh on some area's.. I highly recommend this book to anybody SERIOUS about wanting to learn this software.

I started building a website without doing much reading about how to do it. You know the old button pusher point and click approach. I was getting very frustrated as what I thought was intuitive was not. While I had some success using the old hacking approach my site just didn't have the feel I wanted.

I found the help section in the Dreamweaver software helpful --but it can only be viewed one page at a time. I am the kind of person that likes to thumb through a book and look for key subjects.

A friend loaned me a copy of Dreamweaver 8 for Dummies and it made all of the difference in the world. Finally I found out why I was having so much trouble building a website. The key is to read the book and follow along with the various tutorials. It really made a difference and the project went much more quickly --once I took the time to read the information.

Like any help book the key is to read the book and go through the steps and exercises. Many of us want to skip to the end and lose sight of the building block approach necessary to get there. My biggest regret is wasting so much time trying to build the site without an understanding of the fundamentals. Dreamweaver 8 for Dummies was a good fit for my application.

No book is perfect but if you read the Warner's Book and follow along it will be a benefit to you. I know it helped me.

I have a terrible time with any how-to,whether a program manual or a "dummies" type book. However, when I got stumped on a web design issue, I went to Janine's website, sent her an e-mail and she answered my question within 24 hours. Her advice helped me fix the problem I was having and she followed up to be sure I'd been helped. She also took the time to go to my web site and look at what I'd done. If you have a hard time finding what you need, check out Ms. Warner's web site and e-mail her with your questions directly. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

Janine
Thank you so much for coming through for me again.
You have been a god send with this book. The book is so detailed, that it has allowed me to learn Dreamweaver in a very short time.

To be honest, your work is some of the best I have ever seen. Being an educator and looking for good content when most of it is created for the business market is hard, so finding your stuff was a god send.
I honestly dont know what I would do without your hard work and dedication towards your work in this book.

So for all you do, this one is truely for you. Thank you, thank you, thank you and a great big thank you.

By using this book, I have improved my skill level to such a degree that I have been asked to participate in various projects in my school, that has resulted in a nice promotion.

thanks

Renaldo

I had never used Dreamweaver before and I got through chapter 3 before I gave up on this book. I ordered "Sams Teach Yourself Dreamweaver 8 in 24 Hours" which is wonderful. Now that I know something about Dreamweaver I might be able to get some use out of the "Dummies" book but I would definitely not recommend it to beginners. It had me 'coordinating my design work' before I knew what the buttons on the menu bars were for! I am not a website novice; I have a site that I designed in much simpler WYSIWYG development software and, having grown to large, need to rewrite it. I also have lots of 'For Dummies' books. This one was a disappointment.

You will learn much more and much faster by using the Help section in Dreamweaver 8 than by using this "Dummies" book. I knew nothing about Dreamweaver when I bought the program two months ago. I began learning by using the Help section in Dreamweaver, and then I ordered Janine Warner's "Dummies" book to have a second teacher. I have spent dozens of hours in the past weeks with the book and have found it to be defective on many counts:

1) The Index often does not contain entries for ideas you are trying to understand. Example: When I was working on my web site I remembered that I had read in "Dummies"about some kind of "trick" dealing with something transparent for stabilizing images. I looked up "transparent", "clear", "invisible", etc. No entries. I gave up. When reading about something else later on I found the entry. It's title? "Using the Transparent GIF Trick". Very frustrating.

2) In a number of instances it appears that the book was rushed to market, for there are obvious errors that even I, a complete novice, found. Example: I was trying to learn about "nesting layers" inside each other. Again and again I followed all the steps about this subject on pages 245-246 and could not get the nesting to work. I gave up on the book and used the "Help" section in the Dreamweaver 8 program and used my own exploring of the program. The results? The author had forgotten to teach us that we cannot make the nesting feature work until we go into "Preferences" and check the box to turn on this feature! The default is "Nesting Off". Very frustrating.

3) The general tone of the book is that we are indeed "Dummies". Pages and pages could be cut out. There are numerous paragraphs and pages of filler telling us what the book is going to tell us. Why not just tell us? There are numerous cutesy, cutesy phrases that just get your head distracted from learning abut Dreamweaver: "Now for the fun part", "Okay, so I'm guilty of trying to win cheap points with my husband; but trust me, this is a great trick if you want your spouse, partner, or other significant person in your life to be interested when you show off your first Web page...."

4) I won't even go into the numerous grammatical errors.

I need to get back to the fantastic Dreamweaver 8 program. Save yourself money and grief; use the "Help" section in Dreamweaver and wait for better books to be written about Dreamweaver 8.