A must have for anyone who uses Dreamweaver and wants to really understand CSS

books:


	• Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 (Voices That Matter) Stephanie Sullivan, Greg Rewis New Riders Press, 2008 - 360 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent Book for Learning CSS Layouts

This is by far the best CSS & Dreamweaver book that I have ever read. I am an advanced user, very comfortable with CSS code and the Dreamweaver interface, but I still learned so many great tips and techniques.

Where this book shines is in teaching someone how to build standards compliant, accessible, search engine optimized, visually appealing, and cleanly coded websites using the Dreamweaver interface. I am not aware of any other book on the market that does that. Other Dreamweaver books seem to focus solely on the features of Dreamweaver without regards to standards, work flow, or the kind of code that the Dreamweaver will create if left to its own devices. It does not make sense, in my mind, to learn the product in a way that can't be used in the real world. Any reputable web designer uses the techniques discussed in this book, not all the built in options that make learning web design easy.

In regards to work flow, this book takes a case study approach. Each chapter is a project with a comp and an end goal. The reader gets to walk through all the pitfalls and browser issues that they would normally see when coding up their own sites. I think this makes the techniques easier to learn and makes the book an enjoyable read.

This book is not for beginners, if you aren't fairly comfortable with HTML and CSS, I would recommend Head First HTML, XHTML, and CSS. For advanced users, this book is really a fantastic teaching tool and reference.

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But Not For Me

Dreamweaver is the software that eases the construction of websites by providing for "what you see is what you get (almost)" construction. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a web building tool for separating content and format in web site design, making the updating of sites easier and taking up less memory space on the host computer.

This book attempts to teach the reader how to use Dreamweaver to create sites that use CSS. After a chapter laying out the fundamental rules for CSS, the authors provide a number of tutorials including building a new style sheet (the repository of the CSS rules), migrating a table-based layout to CSS, using liquid and then elastic CSS layouts, and finishing using a combination of Dreamweaver and Spry, another web design tool, to create a site.

The book says it's aimed at the Intermediate/Advanced level and based on my experience, I guess that I'm at the Beginner level. I've constructed table-based websites with Dreamweaver that work well and look good. I understand the fundamentals of CSS. But this book left me in the dust. In the first tutorial, the authors took me step by step through the process of using Dreamweaver, telling me exactly which menus to use and which submenus to fill in, and though I had to refresh my memory from time to time by looking at (X)HTML and CSS texts, I was able to complete the tutorial. But as the authors moved to later chapters, the instructions on using Dreamweaver became less and less specific, so that by the half-way mark, the reader was being told what code was desired without any handholding through the menus. For an occasional user like myself, it was just too much and I soon found myself flipping back and forth, and using menus even though I had no idea why I was making the selection. My problems were compounded by the fact that these are long tutorials, and I sometimes had to look back hundreds of steps to find a place where I had made an error that had an effect on the present step.

I don't want to suggest that I got nothing from the book. I got enough from the first tutorial and the early sections of subsequent tutorials to edit my main site to incorporate some CSS rules. I'm not certain it was worth the effort for me. I've spent months working my way through this book.

If you are experienced with coding and understand CSS and all of Dreamweaver's menus, and you want to use Dreamweaver to speed up the construction of CSS, this book may be just for you. For the less experienced user like me, a beginner's guide to CSS and Dreamweaver is needed.

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Packed with color charts, screens and examples throughout.

Dreamweaver is the leading web authoring tool and CSS is the recommended method for creating accessible web pages, yet it's a common idea that the two cannot operate smoothly together. That's why Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 is an essential acquisition for any serious programmer's library: it covers the latest tools for building CSS-based sites and covers all the basics of how to use CSS styling under Dreamweaver's tools. Highly recommended, it's packed with color charts, screens and examples throughout.

A must have for anyone who uses Dreamweaver and wants to really understand CSS

I couldn't wait to get this book and it exceeded all my expectations. The authors take you through the basics of CSS and then it's on to the fun part of what you can really do with the knowledge you've just learned.

Since I use Dreamweaver CS3, this book really helped me integrate the intricacies of that program with the power of CSS.

I've had a peek at Dreamweaver CS4 beta and this is the way that the web is going, so by getting the understanding of CSS from this book, all of these skills will be transferable to the new program and to building beautiful web pages.

Thank you Stephanie and Greg!

Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 (Voices That Matter)

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Great production techniques for Dreamweaver cs3 and fun!

I found Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 refreshing, informative and fun. Having built dozens of websites using Dreamweaver, studying this book strengthened my production techniques. IE hacks (for all versions) were scattered throughout the book. Excellent explanations were given. A variety of layouts were used throughout the chapters, with again excellent explanations. Core concepts of CSS were presented and how to use them were demonstrated. On top of this, it was fun completing the exercises. Note: 1. not for beginners 2. I would suggest going through the book. Then take each chapter, study it and then build a page or two using the principles and techniques demonstrated. I hope a second book is in the works.

best,

zinlover, Sacramento

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reviews: page 1, 2

In Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3, authors Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis demonstrate how to use Dreamweaver CS3 and CSS together to create highly individualized, standards-based layouts. Through hands-on projects with visuals, the book gives readers an in-depth understanding of Dreamweaver's 32 CSS-based layouts (new in Dreamweaver CS3) and their application, enabling every user of Dreamweaver to learn CSS effectively and easily.

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