The essential guide to Dreamweaver CS3 [EN]

The essential guide to Dreamweaver CS3

An authentic Bible and guidebook about a program that many of us use on a daily basis which focuses on the main technologies mentioned on its front cover; CSS, AJAX and PHP.

The guide begins with an introduction by the famous Tom Muck covering the process of development starting with the configuration of the Web development environment with PHP and finishing with the implementation of the SPRY library.

In its various chapters we take a look at the creation of styles, building site navigation with the Spry menu bar, sprucing up content with Spry widgets, building online forms and validating input, using PHP to process a form, working with PHP includes and templates, setting up mysql and phpmyadmin, storing records in a database, controlling access to your site, searching records and handling dates, using XSLT to display live news feeds and XML and the use of SPRY to display XML.
It contains important information for Mac users on how to set up the ideal development environment, using Mac OSX.

I liked the approach and treatment that is given within the section ‘using PHP to process a form’. I would have liked to see more about normal online forms in the chapter that deals with ’storing records in a database’ which only makes reference to the main points and data types. Obviously, in the examples shown in the book they are working on a single table and I understand that it is easier to explain but it would have been good to mention the normal forms.

It’s nice to see that the reader is introduced to Server Behaviours which are quite important in saving time.

The process in this section reminds us of what was seen during the webinar of October 2007.

In summary, it is noteworthy to say that the use of SPRY and XML can actually help you understand this way of working.
Without doubt this is a ‘Bible’ for whoever is just starting to develop web applications and a guidebook for those already involved in developing.

Friends of Ed

*Also available for  CS4