Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 HOW Tos

Excellent book learnt a lot.

I purchased this book after having completed the Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Classroom in a Book. I purchased it with the expectation that it would be full of 100 techniques that were not already mentioned in the Adobe CIB for Dreamweaver CS4. I was completely wrong. I guess the word "Essential" should have been taken as a veiled clue that this was just a rehash of a basic manual. However, since this book was coming from Adobe, I operated with the false assumption that Adobe would not put out two beginner level books that have the exact same material. I was wrong.Save yourself the frustration and order the Classroom in a Book series for Dreamweaver. If you already have CIB Dreamweaver, don't waste your time or money on this book. The CIB does a far beter job of explaining the techniques anyways.-Cheers!

I completely agree with J. Conroy's review (but I wouldn't even give it a star - it's a BIG waste of money!). I purchased this book and The Missing Manual. This book is not worth purchasing even for a novice. The book is set up as a list of 100 techniques you should know about Dreamweaver. Each topic is cover in 1 to 3 pages BUT the print is large and there's about an 1 1/2 inch margin on the top and bottom of the page then add the images and you're not left with much. (Also the side of each page has 2 inches of space. Sometimes there are short notes put in this space but not often). The book is thin and it appears they were struggling to make it thicker. You sure can't learn how to use Dreamweaver with this book. I guess it you wanted to understand a conversation about Dreamweaver it would be good, like the old Cliff Note books, but to actually use it to build a website - No way! Everything in the book you can search online and locate video tutorials for but if you really want to learn about Dreamweaver I'd recommend The Missing Manual. It's a very well written book that comes with the CD. The beginning of each chapter is an in depth explanations about a subject then at the end of the chapter you do an exercise to make sure you really understand how to do it. The CD contains the exercises so you can practice it on your own computer. As far as the How-to essentials - trust me it's not essential, it's not even useful.

"Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques" was a required textbook for a class. I was disappointed to discover there is no CD with accompanying exercises, like the "Classroom in a Book" series has. This is more of a reference book to look up something specific. Because of its length, it is less overwhelming than the corresponding book in the "Missing Manual" series. I would recommend Elizabeth Castro's "HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition" [Paperback] over this book.

The organization and page setup of this book make it almost impossible to use. I am fairlycomputer savvy, but I am confounded by it. You can't read the examples -- reproduction is toomuddy.