Authors: Tom Green, Jordan Chilcott, Chris Flick.
Publisher: New Riders
ISBN: 0735713766
Format: chm
Nr. of Pages: 576
Info: peachpit.com

Book Description

Each of the applications in Macromedia's just-released Studio MX 2004 product suite--Dreamweaver MX 2004, Flash MX 2004, Fireworks MX 2004, and FreeHand MX--is, in its own right, a powerhouse in some aspect of Web development. Put them together, and you'll be conquering the world with your dynamic, data-driven sites! All you need is this guide to pull it all together. Written by a trio of Web experts, this volume uses the creation of a fictitious community center to give you a solid overview of how you can use the integrated workflow of Macromedia's Studio MX product suite to create your own dazzling sites. You'll start by learning about the principles that govern the creation of database-driven sites and the planning that ensures their successful deployment. Then the fun begins! The remainder of the book shows you how to use the tools at your fingertips--along with Contribute, Flash Remoting, and Flash Communications Server--to build real-world applications.

As a serious Web designer or developer, you'll want to do one thing and one thing only when you lay your hands on the latest version of Dreamweaver: Start tinkering with all its new features. Problem is that's hard to do on someone else's dime. With Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic, you don't have to! In these pages, Dreamweaver wizards Mossimo Foti, Angela C. Buraglia, and Daniel Short and several other experts draw on their own professional experience to offer 12 real-world projects that let you explore Dreamweaver MX 2004 at your leisure. With a focus on areas that can be troublesome for professional users-whether because they present thorny issues or because they draw on completely new features-each lesson provides need-to-know tips, proven techniques, and best practices. By working through the step-by-step tutorials (whose project files and code you'll find on the accompanying CD), you soon will be finding your way around all of Dreamweaver MX 2004's new features: dynamic cross-browser validation, improved CSS support, built-in graphics editing, and more. In addition to the code listings and exercise files on the CD-ROM, you'll find videos that clearly demonstrate step by step all the procedures you need to complete in order to create the projects.

While the Web was still in its infancy, the technologies used to deliver it were always changing. I remember a time when I had to hand-code every page in a Web site. At that time, a Web site was just a couple of static pages. Still, dealing with raw HTML tags was not very pleasant. A few WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tools began to appear, but nothing really impressed me. Most tools did not produce clean HTML that looked identical in popular Web browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Static content seemed to rule. But the size of the Web sites that I was developing grew beyond the point where I could hand-code every page.
I dreamed of a tool that could answer all my prayers, a tool that would allow me to create Web sites visually and still allow me to tweak the code. In 1997, Macromedia made my dream come true when they released Dreamweaver. It certainly answered the prayers of Web developers all over the world. Dreamweaver is currently one of the most popular Web site design tools.
Today, static pages no longer rule the Web, though technologies are still always changing. The trend has once again shifted, and database-driven Web sites are now the norm. Once again, you have to acquire new skills—this time in database design and server-side scripting.
All this required knowledge can be overwhelming unless you have a sound programming background or the time to leverage your existing skills to create dynamic database-driven applications. Until recently, you had a steep learning curve ahead.