Dreamweaver Cs4 Digital Classroom, (Book and Video Training) [With CDROM]

Originally a happy GoLive user, I am now by necessity forced to migrate to Dreamweaver. I was not fully looking forward to this prospect. I was about to travel and figured I'd buy a couple of books to take with me and make my time useful. Sadly, I left this one at home and took another book instead. I returned home completely frustrated and very discouraged from the harrowing experience the other book put me through. It is true what they say: you may know your subject inside and out, but you may not necessarily be a good teacher. Many authors or on-line instructors assume way too much about their students' way of learning or past knowledge. They simply forget that not all of us are coding experts (or even desire to be). Like me, some artists need to resort to Dreamweaver out of necessity. Artists, as a rule, are not left brain ruled and most of us hated math with a passion in school (I flunked a few times). The other book I was using felt like Algebra 201 all over again! Enter Mr. Osborn's book! After I closed the other book half way through, I opened this one. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! This instructor clearly knows how to teach. He assumes nothing, takes you by the hand, has diagrams for everything he is explaining, tools and all, and makes this otherwise Pythagorean enterprise more bearable for 'the rest of us.' Completely user friendly. Unlike with the other book (and some on-line tutorials), I have not yet had to Google myself crazy to make up for what was lacking. This book is quite complete in its instruction. While it may, as some other reviewer stated, not teach you everything you could possibly learn about Dreamweaver (I doubt any book out there does), it seems thus far to be doing quite a close call for me. If you are new to CSS, or migrating from another web design program, don't miss this book!

I am a novice (Beginner) to Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. I bought this book (Dreamweaver CS4 Digital Classroom) along with another book on learning Dreamweaver CS4 called, 'Dreamweaver CS4 For Dummies' which I was totally lost on. After getting frustrated within the very first chapter with the first book I chose to read (Dreamweaver CS4 For Dummies), I put that one down and decided to read this book - Dreamweaver CS4 Digital Classroom. I immediately knew that this was the book to read to learn how to use Dreamweaver CS4. Don't waste your money like I did on other books that don't make any sense. This book is AWESOME!! If you really want to get the most out of Dreamweaver CS4, do yourself a favor and try to learn a little about CSS - Cascading Style Sheets. It will definitely put you in the drivers seat of learning Dreamweaver CS4 with much more sense.

As a professional web designer I often have clients who use Dreamweaver as their go-to internal dev tool for basic level site updating and mark-up creation. I will recommend this book to them in the future because it is really a CSS/web standards introduction in disguise (shhh). The heart of the book, chapters 4,5,6 offer one of the best walkthroughs of CSS and HTML fundamentals I've seen, and chapter 6 in particular helps me demonstrate the proper use of tables for data and not layout. Maybe, just maybe......

Dreamweaver CS4 Digital Classroom really gets to the heart of the matter in explaining Dreamweaver to users of many levels, as well as explaining the added benefits of CS4. Because the author is also an instructor, he understands and explains the more challenging material. Author's pace, enclosed DVD, and Self study exercises and Review Questions allowed me to reinforce the lessons, and, in my case, revisit the exercises where I still needed a little work. This book has helped me understand Dreamweaver!

After the first chapter (called lessons in this book) I understood what I needed to know to actually use the software. After five lesson, I'm creating web sites and using cascading style sheets. The book has you follow steps and you use the lesson files on the disc that comes with it, but it's more than simply clicking. There is lots of explanation, so you know why you're doing what is instructed, and you can watch videos for each chapter to see someone walk through parts of the lesson. With videos clips, tutorial files, and the book for around $30, it's a good buy, as I felt like a teacher was right there with me. Every time I had a question, it was addressed at just the right time. Good book.