Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Bible [With CDROM]

He is exactly right. This is a reference and a very good one. It isn't for walking you through the steps when putting a website together, it is for help when you can get some of the way but not all the way through it. Think of it like this. You have to move out of your house, all the boxes are fairly easy to move except one. You move all the boxes by hand except you need a dolly to move that really heavy one. This book is the dolly of Studio MX. Buy one book for step by step instructions, and buy this one when you need help with a specific task.

I'm confused: when you see a book that's 3" thick, how could you *NOT* be aware that it might be overwhelming?! These Bibles are (repeat after me, everyone!) *DESK REFERENCES!* They're meant to sit there next to your workstation & bail your butt out when your boss needs something you've never done before. Yes, experience is required. So, as a desk reference, these Bibles rule!! Don't believe the negativity visible in other reviews.

Macromedia offers a bundle of tools that span visual web site development. I say visual because the emphasis of the tools is on building complex HTML web pages and groups of these pages, where the groups might typically constitute a website. The tools basically construct static web pages with intricate graphical content. For example, Flash is wonderful for making animated graphics. While Fireworks claims to be better than Photoshop for editing still images. I am not sure whether this is indeed so. But the book's narrative on Fireworks shows impressive functionality. I should qualify my earlier statement. You can certainly add sound effects in Flash. And there is some ability to have dynamic webpages, using DHTML. But the book really doesn't emphasise it. Just gets a passing mention. Overall, the Studio should handle many needs for web developers. Though note that the construction of dynamic pages is most often done via JSPs or Active Server Pages, which is outside the scope of Studio.