Authoring Books

We have used other Microsoft product books in the past (Excel, Access, FrontPage) and they have been pretty good. In comparison, this is a big letdown. Why? It doesn't include *what I need to know*. I needed to know stuff - that's why I bought it in the first place - and for my purposes, it is almost useless.

It's totally targeted at FrontPage users switching to EW. I fall into that category. But so much content is focused on the basics, there's almost no help for intermediate to advanced issues that you NEED a manual for.

CD is a nice feature - lets you search the book. Unfortunately, it took me to the same places where the info I needed was NOT THERE.

If you need some hand-holding to switch from FrontPage, this product might be a good fit for you. Otherwise, save your cash.

Microsoft Expression Web Step by Step (Microsoft)

I just received this book. I started doing the exercises immediately and so far im very pleased with what it has to offer.

This Step-by-step book is not step-by-step. There are no clearly defined terms, no attendant images, way too many assumptions and the author in general couldn't teach a sack to hold air. If you want to waste your money, buy this book. Otherwise, look elsewhere. It got one star just because I couldn't post this with no star.

Basically this is a book which would like to help previous MS Frontpage user sto migrate to Expression web. This book would guide you through some basics of the software. However some of the illustrations are not clear enough. Not exactly a "Step by Step" book.

This is the 3rd Step-By-Step book I've purchased. The book has several mistakes where it instructs you to do something that doesn't work, i.e., 'click' when it should have said 'double-click'. Descriptions on where to position the cursor to perform certain tasks in a lesson are often vague causing confusion and wasted time. It's almost as if the book had not been edited or had someone walk through the lessons. My experience with other Microsoft SBS books have been very good; so, this is very disappointing.

If you're looking for a book to get you started with Dreamweaver MX then buy this book.

I found the book worth the money. It's a quick, easy, enjoyable, and productive book. It's broken into small segments that can be easily read during the typical TV commercial breaks.

I found it quicker and easier to use than trying to go through the built-in Dreamweaver MX tutorial. Even though our Coldfusion MX server isn't ready, there is code and lessons learned that can even be used for Coldfusion 5 projects.

After successfully finishing this book, then venture out and tackle the more complex, harder to comprehend, technical offerings.

If you have never used Dreamwaever before or had minimal exposure, this book will frustrate the heck out of you. I found myself constantly thinking that I had 'missed a page' somewhere because the book was not making sense. I'm only on Day 4 and am already looking for a new book. This book is not written well and is hard to follow. So for a newbie such as myself I do not need the frustration of trying to figure out the program and the book that's suppose to make the program easier.

I have found using this book to be a frustrating experience. The author's approach, while friendly, is frequently unclear. I can't help but feel that this book was edited by already-proficient computer users, not by those who are new to computers. Illustrations scattered throughout the book often serve to further obscure, rather than clarify, the author's meaning. I had little trouble with another book in the Sams series - Teach Yourself CorelDraw 8 - so I am surprised that this one seems so hard to use.
I know that the author has also written the book for DreamweaverMX 2004. One hopes that she has gotten some of the "bugs" worked out of her most recent tutorial!

As a new Dreamweaver user, I was not pleased with this book at all. The authors approach was unclear and not laid out thoughtfully. I had just gotten through the "Flash in 24 hours" and I was expecting the Dreameaver book to be just as good. Unfortunately ive realized that its not the series, but the author which makes a book great. Im currently half way through and Im now on-line searching for another Dreamweaver book.

At the risk of echoing what others have said, this book is not a tutorial at all. It provides information on how to do basic things in Dreamweaver in a kind of haphazard way but provides none of the guided practices or exercises that would qualify it as a tutorial or "teach yourself" book. It is certainly not on par with Sams Teach Yourself Flash MX, a book that I would highly recommend. 90% of what's in this book, you could get from the Help that comes with Dreamweaver, and the Help is at least as intelligible as this book. For what this book offers, the reader would be better off with Que's Using Dreamweaver MX. If you want a "teach yourself" type book, look elsewhere.

I bought this book because it was the only one on the market at the time. While the writing is clear, the coverage is pretty thin. In the end I didn't feel that I could do all of the things that I wanted to get CourseBuilder to do. On the other hand, the book Using Dreamweaver to Create eLearning was extremely thorough and well written. It showed how to get the most out of the product and the examples were relevant to the interactions that I needed to build.

You can play with coursebuilder all you want but untill you read this book you will not know the full power and the customization of the free Dreamweaver extension known as Coursebuilder.Donna's book will help you build sites that hold student's attention and make learning useful. No coursebuilder option is untouched. If you would like to go even further by customizing the behaviors, she can get you started. If you want to track student scores per session or write student scores to a database using learning site command, then you must get this book because you will not find it many other places. Overall it is a must book if your building professional learning sites.

This is one of the most disappointing technical manuals I've ever read. For a start it's poorly edited. There is loads of redundant language, saying the same thing, in different ways, repeating and repeating (you get the point?) And, as other people have pointed out, some of the examples just don't work properly. However the real problem with the book (described as Intermediate to Advanced) is that it spends 260 pages on the 'easy' part, setting up the Interactions, and then tries to deal with the hard part of scoring, tracking, learning management systems and connecting to databases in 70 pages. That's just not enough, what's written is not clear and you'll learn far more from the on-line help.

I have been using Dreamweaver for about 6 months now, but found I needed more functionality for a tutorial project. I had heard of CourseBuilder but had never tried it before. I also found that I would need Dreamweaver UltraDev to create the learning site I wanted.

Reading "CourseBuilder for Dreamweaver f/x and Design" gave me everything I needed to complete this project and so many ideas for future projects.

Especially helpful were the practice exercises included and the lifesavingly detailed appendix on installation and system requirements for all the different possible combinations of Dreamweaver, UltraDev, application servers, and HTTP servers. I would have been dead in the water without that!

Ms. Baker's laid-back writing style makes it easy to understand what might have been difficult concepts. The book is thorough and well organized. This one won't leave my desk.

I have bought 40 to 50 books from Amazon over the years. This is the first review I have ever written.

This is a poor beginners book on Coursebuilder. It is too confusing and leave you hanging in the wind at crucial moments. I e-mailed the author and recommeded she read the H.O.T. book at ...before writing her next book. Lynda knows what users need and how to present the information.

A good book would be great to have. This is not it!

I have already designed websites with FrontPage, without using any book. I decided to buy this one to learn a thing or too. I have done just that. I am still at page 110 and it's not fair to rate the whole book yet, but I must say it's hard to keep my eyes open(how boring it is).

I purchase this book to aid in the building of a database site. I was disappointed that the CD did not contain the sample files discussed in the book and the author did not respond to my email. In addition his website is empty

If your goal is to be able to delete and modify records in a database then the six pages at the end of the chapter "Advanced Database Techniques" will most likely not be enough for you. This section of the chapter (p.870) begins by saying "Frontpage does not provide a large amount of flexibility for more advanced data maintenance, such as deleting information, or editing information."

This book is good for Front Page 2000. If you are familiar with FrontPage 2000 then and then only read this book. Some of the topics are discussed at great lenght and some of the topics are just covered in a few paragraphs. I suggest you to first try Front Page 2000 and then try to find solutions from this book. It works well then reading this book completely. Treat this book as referance only. If the book had beed with many examples, surtainly it whould have helped lot of people. This book also discuss things related Servers , Java , Active X , Java Scripts and Database. I have found this book helpful to find even lesser known features of FrontPage. Again I suggest this book only if you are familiar with Front Page 2000. hasitdave@yahoo.com

there is almost an introduction to every sub-section. clearing out all the redundancies, the book should be 600 pages. the 21 pages of table of contents killed a lot more trees than required. however, all tht length and boredom help u 2 pass by those typos and outdated image insertions. there were also some wrong "cut and paste" works, (in full sentance). on page 55, while talking about 'insert', there is a weird sentance about 'undo' which is from the 'undo' section. then the 'undo' sentance shows up again in the next paragraph. both the author and proof reader should be fired. i say there is an error of some sort in every 2.5 pages. i m currently at page 171. some FP components are not working as i read through the book, but it doesnt cover why, lots of useless bs. recommend me a good book and i'll give this one to u free. sneedu@usa.net

I have found QUE books to be excellent in the past (dBASE IV was a gem), but this one falls a bit short. I continually find myself reading three or four pages of garbage before I get to the content I am looking for. When I get there, the example is too basic and then the next section starts.

I didn't find the section on Scripting too informative and now I have to look into another book. I am not an advanced user of FP2000 so my low rating is not because of my need for an expert manual.

The basic material was covered fairly well other than the blah, blah, blah. This book should be about half its size based on the same content.

Why don't they give us a no fluff book (&CD) with a full example of an advanced site, explain it in the book and let the user figure out the rest. That's what I liked about the old dBASE IV book with its inventory system example.

If you have a limited budget or are a beginner to Fireworks/Dreamweaver, don't waste your money on this book.

This is one of those books written by commmittee - a group of authors each doing separate chapters. Unfortunately it reads as if none of the authors ever coordinated with each other. One glaring example, most of the illustrations are B&W and the text keeps referring the reader to the see color examples in a later chapter. Unfortunately most of the examples the reader is sent to see are not in that chapter at all! Whilte there is a copy editor and a technical editor listed as part of this book's production team they don't appear to have done anything constructive.

I have been making notes in my copy as I find typos, grammatical errors and errors in the tutorials (either mistaken directions or missing directions or material missing from the included CD). Virtually every chapter has several errors of each kind.

The beginner will quickly become confused, or worse, give up on trying to learn.

There is a Yahoo group run by the lead author of the book where some of the errors were beign collected. A week or so ago the author noted that the book had gone into a 2nd printing. It is possible that some of the many errors in the first edition were caught and fixed. I certainly hope so. This book does real damage to the image of Sybex as a publisher of quality material.

If you are new to FireWorks MX and DreamWeaver MX, DON'T waste your time with this book. There are too many errors, inaccuracies and incomplete process steps. Plus, the CD does not have all of the sample files mentioned in the Hands On portion of the lessons.
If you are experianced with FireWorks MX and Dreamweaver MX, nothing savvy here either. No new tricks, no great tips.
Needless to say I was very disappointed.

This book takes you on a journey from basic information to advanced concepts. Regardless of your experience with Dreamweaver and Fireworks, you're sure to learn something new.

The chronological organization covers both programs in a logical manner for beginners that are starting with an idea and working their way to a final website. For the more advanced readers there are numerous indexes so that the desired information is easily found. Something all readers will find especially useful is the seven-page appendix of Windows and Mac Keyboard Shortcuts.

This book is great for anyone interested in mastering Dreamweaver and seamlessly integrating Fireworks for more efficient web design.

1st few chapter chapters showed promise. Laid out easy to understand. Fireworks chapters are obviously written by someone else and leave alot to be disired. Not very intuitive examples, make you struggle though it, that and missing files from cd dont help. Typo's through out book, and chapter 30 has a bullet point on the first page of the chapter about the topics to be covered on Finding or Preparing a Host Server, but the topic isn't covered in the chapter. Copy Editors sure fell down on the job in this book.

When I purchased this book I had high hopes for it, as most of the customer reviews had given it a high rating. But, this is probably the most uninspiring web design book I've ever come across.

Yes, all the technical details are in there, so if you're looking for a reference manual, perhaps this book would be a good one to have on your shelf ... but Macromedia's own help files, website, and user's guide provide the same information. So, why spend the extra [$$] for a volume that's not nearly as succinctly written?!

If you're the type who likes to learn by doing, then you'll be disappointed with "DW/FW" Savvy. The tutorials are lackluster and the included photos/layouts on CD-ROM are unbelievably amateurish. The Fireworks section is just "OK," which is surprising since Joyce J. Evans is a highly regarded expert. Once again, everything you need to know is included, but you're definitely not going to say "Wow, I want to do that!"

My advice is to sprint on over to Project Seven's website and purchase their "Dreamweaver MX, Building on Solid Foundations" ebook. You'll learn *so* much and have a truly enjoyable time while you do. PVII's team has a design aesthetic that provides for clean, functional, well thought out pages coupled with cutting edge CSS techniques that will have you just marvelling at how much you can do with styles.

Bottom line, your money could be better spent elsewhere.

As a non User Interface or Design expert, this book was very helpful for me. I was looking for a book which give me a introduction to design aspects related to Microsoft Expression Blend, and this book have a lot of useful information. However, I expect more content/stuff in specific subjects, but 700 pages are very limited for a complex subject as WPF and a new tool as Microsoft Expression Blend.
If you are a developer, you have WPF skills, and you want to take a very first approach to Microsoft Expression Blend, this book will help you.

This book is way to wordy and does not get to the nuts and bolts about Blend. I had to struggle to read through each chapter. I would wait for a another Blend book...hopefully people start writing them soon.

I saw some of the mediocre reviews on this book and nearly didn't buy it. But I'm most glad I did.

The writing is clear, the examples are well chosen, and I appreciated the authors' including material on what makes a good UI and how to use Blend to produce one. Some reviewers called that padding, and I suppose if one is a UI expert, they could be. But to me, they were interesting and suggested ways that I can employ the Blend techniques that the book is teaching me.

I agree with one of the other reviewers that the book is lite (actually quite lite) on coding. Because I come from a coding and not UI background that was OK with me.

The only real problem I see with this book is its title. A true Blend Bible would be 10,000 pages long. I'd say this book is more like a mid-depth, practical, well-written introduction to the major graphical features of a product with a huge feature set.

It's a book I'll keep, too. Lots to come back for reference.

I'm disappointed in this book. I was looking for a good introductory text with tutorials on how to use Blend. I couldn't follow the tutorials in the first few chapters of the book--not because they were too technical, but because they were poorly written. I'm guessing the tutorials weren't tested with real users before publication. The reference material is only so-so, and it duplicates a lot of what can be found in other sources on the web. I'm afraid I couldn't recommend this book as a learning or reference resource for Blend.

I had very high hopes for this book, considering its title. I think a more appropriate title would have been something like "Designing Next Generation User Interfaces". The book only breifly discusses Microsoft Blend. Instead, it speaks more about designing rich user interfaces in general. I expected a feature-by-feature explanation and maybe some sample programs, but was sorely disappointed.

If you want to know how to use Blend, I would not recommend this book. If you want to know all about the theory behind designing rich UIs, then perhaps this book will be useful. It does talk you through a few things in Blend, but uses illustrations and screenshots very sparingly.

Look, I'm not going to say that these guys didn't try, or that this is a cynically written attempt to cash in on something, but this book is as close to worthless as I can imagine.

Now, again, this is not entirely the authors' fault. MythTV is highly dynamic. What's true today isn't true tomorrow. I'm a journeyman MythTV builder, and a lot of what I've learned in the painful progress I've made simply does not apply any more.

That said, a lot of stuff =hasn't= changed, and it's here where the book falls apart. They should have started with the basics of content flow, i.e., where is the media coming from? Because that's the first thing you need to know before you even decide if MythTV is right for you. (Over the air content, for example, is easily handled by Myth, while controlling a set-top box from a cable, satellite or fiber optic company is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.)

While support has been added since this book was written, the stuff they actually did mention that has been part of MythTV since its incpetion is not well covered. For example, to set up your MythTV backend, you have to select from various capture card types. There are V4L, MPEG2, DVB, etc.--how about explaining what these are? No explanations is the norm, and when there is an explanation it's often simply restating the on-screen text without actually clarifying.

Six months of having this book and I've never once found an answer to a question I had. Now, I don't go looking for product specific stuff, because (as I said) there's no way they could cover that, but just basic joints and cogs and so on.

See, the thing about MythTV is that if you have just the right hardware and a simple enough setup, it might take you fifteen minutes to set up. If you don't, it could take you weeks to set up, or you might never be able to do it.

To be useful, this book really should have explored =how= to troubleshoot. They couldn't do the actual troubleshooting for you--there are too many things that can go wrong--but they could tell you about the utlities and hardware settings that allow you see where your problems lie.

Maybe they just didn't have the space. But, as I say above, it makes the book almost completely worthless.

If you are interested in getting a Mythbox up and running, this is a great book to start with. True, all of the information you need is available on-line, but here it is organized and at your finger tips. The book is clear, well written, well organized, and reasonably complete and accurate. Things change very rapidly in an area such as this, but this book provides a great foundation. If you are willing to use the Ubuntu distribution and MythTV version that is used in the book, things should go well.

One thing to look out for, if you are new to Linux their recommended procedure for compiling from source will be a bit of a challenge. They do NOT tell you what you have to do to be able to compile something from source. There are many packages that need to be installed above and beyond the standard Ubuntu install. However, I just used Synaptic to install the version of MythTV that is available as a Ubuntu supported package and things went fine.

Well worth the money and highly recommended.

I have been using Windows for as long as it has been around. I have done web development. I have even been exposed to Unix a number of years ago, so I thought I would be able to follow directions in this book and be successful. Ubuntu was easy to install and looked like a good product. However, the directions in MythTV did not work. I finally gave up after installing Ubuntu five times and starting all over again. I even purchased a Ubuntu manual thinking that would resolve the problems I had. Unfortunately, it did not and I finally gave up and re-installed Windows XP on my computer and BeyondTV. That did work. I was reminded that Windows does make some things simple that the Unix platform still makes somewhat difficult. I would not recommend the book. I plan to give it away... The Open Source "Open Office" worked great on Ubuntu as it also does on Windows, so I judge MythTV or this books directions to be the problem.
Cecil Denney, Maple Grove, Minneapolis

I fall within the vast range of Linux users who know just enough to be dangerous, but at least realize that this is where they happen to be.

I purchased this book brimming with enthusiasm and confident that with its assistance, I'd have no problem getting MythTV up and running.

In fact, my experience with this book was very ungratifying and downright frustrating.

To start with, I found that many of the command lines cited in the book just plain didn't work. In some cases, it was easy to discern where the commands strayed from reality, in other cases not so much. These discrepancies might arise from my using a later version of Ubuntu or MythTV than those to which this book was written. Frankly, I don't know.

I was also frustrated to find that while the publisher provided a web page for users to report errata, it was a purely one-way - You're free to leave your comments, but don't expect a compilation of earlier postings (or corrections)to be made available in exchange, and certainly don't look for any sort of response.

In the end, I set this book aside and installed Mythbuntu - Ubuntu and MythTV all rolled into one ISO package, and searched the web to resolve the myriad of issues and tweaks that had to be addressed. This was not the outcome I would have preferred, and what I was hoping to avoid when purchasing this book, but at least I've managed to get my crate up and running from scratch.

If you are already very strong in Linux, this book will easily give you the guidance you need, but otherwise, caveat emptor.

For what it's worth.

The book is outdated for the state that mythtv has advanced to. I used MythDora to set my system up and most of the hard work has been done. There are also areas that the book does not cover. I actually found the book to be not be worth the money.

For a book about design and advertising, the cover falls short. And being a book without color and good design doesn't convince me that it is worth buying. Yes, you can judge a book by it's cover.

Thanks for your review pauland! It helped me decide in not buying this book and get disappointed. It sure must be uninspiring to see no color and a sea of gray in a book about Flash advertising. Also, I'll wait until the next edition for CS3 pro + AS3. And even then, if there's no color - me no buy!

It is an informative, well written book on a subject that isn't covered with more than a cursory nod in most flash books, if mentioned much at all. However, beware that even though it has a publish date of August 2007 and the book itself has a 2008 copyright, it is a Flash 8, AS2 book. You can still obviously use the information without problem in Flash CS3, however all of the included code is done in AS2. If you need to program in AS3 this might not be the book for you then, although the author may be posting an AS3 update to his classes in Chapter 13 on his website soon. However, if you already know how to use the Flash IDE and are need of how to do a Flash ad or micro-site in the older AS2 that targets the older flash players though, then this book should get you up and running fairly easily. I would have given it higher than a '3' star if it had warned me about the version. The only warning available would be to download the classes before purchase from author's site and look at the code (but this is generally considered stealing if you haven't bought the book, so I didn't until after purchasing it).

I read it from cover to cover in one week, and got tons of great tips to enhance my productivity & quality. It covers a lot of material: ad placement, working with the creative team, quality control. It has a good quantity of samples & examples, even tough it could go deeper in details for some parts. It is a really good buy since it is not too expensive.

I must agree with a previous reviewer that I purchased this book expecting to be blown away by the examples of the flash ad work. It is obvious that the author knows his stuff and he provides a great deal of information. I do however believe that the book could have used some more project walk throughs and included some innovative work and expalation on how it was accomplished while still meeting the constraints of ad design specifications. Despite that I do feel it is a good book and a great resource for anyone interested in flash and rich media ad design.

GoLive 5 for Dummies is a good book for beginners but not very good for intermediate and advanced. It is not a book you can crawl into bed and read for pleasure. It gave me a good idea about web pages,etc.

While they start with A-B-C's... they leap to E-F-G without including D. While you're flipping back to see where you missed it (it wasn't there) they leap to L-M-N-O and you can't figure out how.
The book should be named "GOLIVE -- TO MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE DUMMIES."
Because that's how you end up feeling when you file the bookstore receipt.

The dummies books are good until this one. It is difficult to start with golive but this book did not draw the pieces together so to speak. It was cofusingly written. In some cases, you can actually do the same commands etc in different ways and this book listed them in many different places instead of bringing them together. Also try to look up some in the index and I could not find them. Too much text and not enough visuals. I was to own it but sent it back as I was pretty disgusted with the book and the haphazardly written approach. ...

After complaining to the publishers and sending a list of mistakes I found in the book, they agreed to refund my money and I also got a letter of apology from the author admiting that there were a lot of faults and that, indeed, it is a hurried rewrite of Golive 4 - great customer service, but sadly flawed book.

I have quite a few of the Dummies books and am now getting a bit tired of the wit for the sake of wit - the book could have been slimmer, and easier to get through, if they left out the puns. Titles like: "Ladies and gentlemen set your sites!", while amusing does not really help when you're flicking through the book trying to find sections to use with your web site "Creating a site" would have been more useful. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed the Photoshop books but this one seemed to hit a nerve. I also thought that it would have been better with a few more illustrations as there was far too much text to illustration ratio (the Peachpit Press books seem to have a good balance). I also found quite a few mistakes and wrote to Dummies about it. Definately not as clear as the usual Dummie books. Lastly, they show how to add a Quick Time file but not FLASH (which uses far less space on your site).

I read this book yesterday in about 1/2 hour while sitting at the cafe in B0rd3rs. It could be a useful intro to Joomla for a novice or non-technical business user. It scratches the surface of about every topic related to Joomla and building or running a web site, but it has very little detailed information. The chapter on Joomla's weaknesses was interesting, but other than that, most of the information is available on the Joomla, PHP, Apache and MySql sites.

this book is ver clear and well done, it explains all the covered topics with simple but effective examples. The topics are all about Joomla 1.5 so don't buy it if you're interested in Joomla 1.0

Well, I have to say that this is a good book. I has very good examples and gives you more than you could ever find surfing the web, for hours, trying to find relevant info by yourself.

Most of all, it covers security issues that you don't hear about very often. It takes you from the basics of installation, to advanced levels in terms of management and best practices, among other things. I can't expect to have the author reinvent the wheel.

This book is not called "The unknown practices" nor " The Secrets of Joomla". You wont find Joomla "top secret information here", but the author delivers what he promises and you can see the table of contents before you buy.

I bought it, I have been using Joomla for a year, I am a PHP coder and found it very useful. My sites are much better now because of this book.

Although I have been involved in many forms of application development (including 20 years of various Oracle products) over the years I haven't used PHP or MySQL before begining to develop a Joomla website. To me this book has been exactly what I've been looking for! I'm not looking to make a career of Joomla development but I want to add functionality to the JSN Epic Pro template I've been using and this is answering my questions nicely.

I haven't experienced a problem with the way things are described. To me it has seemed very clear and has guided me through one topic after another very well. I went through several resources on the Internet and I'm still glad I picked this up. I am experimenting with MySQL database modifications and creation of new Joomla extensions. So far it's been very smooth. I had picked up "Mastering Joomla 1.5" by James Kennard and found it inaccessable because it assumed more PHP background than I have. I can imagine that would be a good guide for someone who has used these technologies but I'm very content starting with this.

For someone in my category I would definitely recommend purchasing it.

A lot of "filler" material and poorly written on top of it, many typos as well that are distracting and get in the way of the material. Only useful with a lot of background in Joomla. Didn't help me at all. I found Joomla!:A User's Guide far better written with clearer examples of the underlying concepts. I understand this is a "professional" book - but it was really quite lightweight and it felt very padded. Doesn't Wrox use technical editors anymore? The language sounds very much like a non-native speaker - which is fine - but editing is always called for - for everyone.