 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Dreamweaver In a Nutshell For The Bookshelf Major Keary |
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Books in the Nutshell series from O'Reilly are highly regarded as `desktop quick references'; they are physically compact, well presented, and don't have a mind of their own about staying open at the page selected by the reader. Information is especially well organised, and the content is both comprehensive and concise.
Dreamweaver in a Nutshell, a new release, is a good example of the series. It is not a tutorial for beginners (who should start with Dreamweaver: The Missing Manual), but a reference for users already working with Dreamweaver. The authors describe it as a book that "helps you leverage your existing skills within the Dreamweaver environment. Instead of explaining how to make your site popular, it explains how to efficiently create and maintain a site using Dreamweaver".
Dreamweaver is the most-used application - at least, of the WYSIWYG kind - for professional Web development. Its dominant position is attributable to features that enable users to "build and manage complex Web sites that work with . [multiple] browsers." Those features include: tables; frames; layers; CSS; assets and history (locate and re-use elements, and automate processes); site management; site checking; JavaScript behaviours; Dreamweaver extensions; and integration (with Fireworks and server-side languages). In addition to those features Version 4 has significant new enhancements, all of which are covered in the Nutshell title.
The book is in parts: Content Objects; Managing DreamWeaver; Behaviours and Interactive Elements; and Configuring and Extending Dreamweaver. A group of appendices cover keyboard shortcuts, HTML entities, and a site construction checklist. Information is easy to find with a 28-page index, a detailed table of contents, and a thumb index. Entries are concise, but well documented with example code, screen shots, and tabulated data.
An essential reference for those users who know what they want to do and need a reference that delivers specific details about how the task is executed. There are many books about Dreamweaver; this ranks as one of the most import resources. Even the most experienced Web developer will find new insights into the workings of Dreamweaver.
| Williamson and Epstein: Dreamweaver in a Nutshell ISBN 0-596-00239-4 Published by O'Reilly, 442 pp., RRP $79.95 incl. GST |
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Reprinted from the March 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
