ot: book for dreamweaver cs5?

ushere wrote on 7/18/2010, 2:53 AM
have just got cs5 dreamweaver from a client (who's daughter has just given up webdesign), and though i'm pretty proficient with macromedia 8, cs5 looks like a whole new ball game....

can anyone recommend a good book (i like books rather than video / pdf's) on it for a 'average' designer.

'on demand' looks interesting, as does 'classroom in a book', but i'd like some guidance if poss....

tia

leslie

Comments

goshep wrote on 7/18/2010, 10:37 AM
The Classroom In A Book titles are geared to first-time users with little or no previous experience. They are thorough and logical in the way they progress through lessons but you may find them a bit elementary. If you feel like you need a complete refresher, I like the Visual Quick Start Guides from Peach Pit Press. I'm a very visual learner and their illustrations are much clearer to me than Classroom In A Book. They are also more affordable than Adobe's offerings. I'd get their Dreamweaver guide and put the savings toward another book that will guide you through some of the advanced features.
rmack350 wrote on 7/18/2010, 1:51 PM
I've been using DW since MX4 and I think if you're very familiar with previous versions then you won't have too much trouble...BUT...Dreamweaver has been on a steady march towards web standards compliance. A BIG part of that is the use of Cascading Style Sheets and I can't stress enough how important it is to make that one of the first things you read books about.

Although it's not DW specific, I highly recommend Dan Cederholm's Web Standards Solutions. It's probably the only tech book I've read straight through and enjoyed all the way. Probably because it addresses everything that's wrong with a legacy site that I was maintaining.

DW CS4 started to really enforce css standards, so much so that we couldn't work on legacy content with it without a site redesign (which wasn't going to happen). In the end I asked my team to downgrade to CS3.

Even if you don't particularly like video based learning I'd still recommend getting a yearly subscription to something like Lynda.com. for the price you get access to everything they've got and this can really help you when you need to get a basic idea of what CSS, or javascript or drupal is. Sometimes you just need an overview and the videos are pretty good for that.

Rob
Coursedesign wrote on 7/18/2010, 3:41 PM
I have the DW CS5 On Demand book and liked it a lot.

If you have used earlier versions, this allows you dive into using just the parts you need.

Cederholm's book rocks also, great reco.

ushere wrote on 7/18/2010, 5:17 PM
thanks to you all...

well, i loaded cs5 on a spare pc and.... wtf - it's all (as was pointed out) css, and i felt very lost indeed. i mean a simple thing like 'center' is now a whole big deal.... (i'm coming from macro 8, which i've got a fair grasp of....)

i think i'm going to give up on it and stick with 8, no matter how out of date it is ;-) (my sites are really pretty simple affairs in general)

she's also offered me expression studio (not sure which version), for next to nothing, would i be any better off with it?

i gather cs3 is my best option if i want to move on?

thanks gents, it's so good getting real feedback on something like this....

Woodenmike wrote on 7/19/2010, 10:32 AM
lynda.com is a subscription based training site that has CS5 training...her costs are very reasonable and tutorials good for "example learners" such as myself. Realize it's not a book, but though i would throw it out there.
rmack350 wrote on 7/19/2010, 6:59 PM
Yeah, I was also recommending the Lynda.com subscription for the same reason. You get a very broad catalog of training that is helpful with things you had no idea you needed to know.

As far as CSS with DWCS3 vs DWCS5, CS3 also tends to herd you towards css styling but you can turn it off. This is much less true in CS5.

It's very true that web pages can work just fine without CSS but it's also true that you can do a LOT more with good CSS. For example, with good css you can make a thousand pages change their look and layout just by editing the style sheet. You could also make the same page format differently depending on whether it's being viewed on a computer screen, small phone screen, or being printed. Same content, different formats based on the output device. Very cool coming from a place where we were doing separate printable pages (for very stupid reasons).

This is not to say that you have to do CSS but get the Cederholm book anyway because he makes the case very well.

<edit>Oh, and BTW, there's nothing stopping you from implementing CSS in DW8. HTML4.1 hasn't changed and I think DW8 understood it just fine.

Rob