DHTML Books

This is Dr. Mellors third book on programming in the "Learning by Example" series. The DHTML book lives up to the standard of the first two (ASP and XML). As usual the book comes complete with web support (download the codes). It is concise and clearly written, with all examples clearly explained and increasing in complexity throughout the book. Covers CSS, DOM and JavaScript, both alone and in combination (dynamic scripting). Well worth the price!

This book (and indeed all of the books in the "Learning by Example" series) are simply great for people in the education branch. They are ready-made courses with web support. The style is streamlined, the examples are simple but are logically build up, so that by the end quite a high level of complexity is achieved. Why waste time developing your own material when this is difficult to beat, and costs only pennies!

I don't know that I can add much to what the other reviewers have said, except that the book is very very well written and even the complicated techniques appear to be easy and logical. The book has a nice flow, building up stepwise in complexity. With the codes (downloaded from the web support) to help, then you can't really go wrong.

This book has been adopted by us (and other colleges) because it is an excellent introduction to DHTML at the beginner level, for 1-credit courses. The book is well built up, pedagogically correct and at a price that suits the students pocket. It covers HTML 3.2 and 4 tags, the DOM, CSS1 and 2, plus XML, XHTML and Active X. Client side scripting is illustrated using JavaScript and VBScript. Finally the book ends with Dynamic Scripting (CSS, DOM and JavaScript in combination). It covers RegExp (which is unusual and very refreshing for a beginner book) and even touches ASP, Java and UNIX. Recommended for all teachers (and students).

This book has been adopted by us (and other colleges) because it is an excellent introduction to DHTML at the beginner level, for 1-credit courses. The book is well built up, pedagogically correct and at a price that suits the students pocket. It covers HTML 3.2 and 4 tags, the DOM, CSS1 and 2, plus XML, XHTML and Active X. Client side scripting is illustrated using JavaScript and VBScript. Finally the book ends with Dynamic Scripting (CSS, DOM and JavaScript in combination). It covers RegExp (which is unusual and very refreshing for a beginner book) and even touches ASP, Java and UNIX. Recommended for all teachers (and students).

This was the textbook for an online course I just finished a week ago. I like the book and recommend it for beginner webmasters. You will learn the basics and then work up through Tables, Forms, and Frames.

You are given beginning files which you can download from the web. The book then guides you to modify these files by entering actual html code. You save and view the result on your computer. The book includes lots of screen shots so that you can compare your results to what it should look like.

Since you are working on your computer to edit and view the pages, feedback is immediate. If it doesn't quite match the screenshot, you check your typing and try it again.

All the example exercises are completed with Notepad and your regular browser.

Style Sheets, JavaScript and Dynamic HTML all get a chapter each of about 30 pages. The majority of the book is about html.

There is a quick reference appendix on lots of html elements. If you are looking for a book that you can read and "teach yourself", this is a good one. Remember my course was online and all the instruction I got was the book, itself.

I spent six to eight hours completing the exercises in each of the ten chapters that my course covered to give you an idea of the time you might spend.

This book was a mammoth effort. IE 5 is a very robust web development platform, and to present all the features and particulars of this product is a tall order.

This book offers lots of information to the casual developer as well as a good object model, behavior and XML reference to the hardcore web application developer using IE5.

The examples provided (there is an accompanying CD also) are very portable and may be modified to provide a base code for your web apps.

This is a "must have" as a reference for any developer using IE5.

I use this book in one of the college-level English classes I teach. Since students are only in my class for a few hours a week, they need a book that explains ideas in detail. This book allows me to spend time on other things in class.

Covered in this book are the entire writing process, from idea generation to revision; various kinds of essays; and research. This also has a section on decisions for collaborative writing, which I find very useful.

Some of the best examples in the book show how to make sentences more concise. Avoiding "there" and "it" sentence openers, weak verbs, excessive prepositions, and nominalizations are some of them. For each one, the author shows you examples of what is wordy and what is concise. Students find this very helpful.

I would recommend using this book for an English class or if you just need something to improve your writing skills.

Both an excellent tutorial and an excellent reference. I've read this bulky volume almost from cover to cover - even the reference chapters - and enjoyed every word.

It covers both the JavaScript language and DOM scripting via JavaScript. It clarifies the differences between the various DOM APIs implemented by the major browsers.

The author is somewhat judgmental (and with good reason, in this reviewer's opinion) to Internet Explorer's non-standards-compliant implementation, but nontheless, he does an excellent and thorough job describing this very popular API, as well as the W3C standard (implemented by FireFox and Opera, for instance).

The book also covers interoperability between JavaScript and Java, and between JavaScript and Flash (i've only skimmed through these chapters, though, so i won't vouch to their quality...).

I recommend complementing this book with Crawford's slim and exquisite "JavaScript: The Good Parts" (read Flanagan first).

Prerequisites for reading Flanagan: an aquaintance (really, a mere aquaintance is good enough) with HTML, CSS, Structured Programming and the Object Oriented paradigm. A knowledge of Java is assumed in a couple specialized chapters.

I bought this book a while ago. It's comprehensive. It goes into a lot of details. I think it's good as a reference book, not for page to page reading.

This is I believe the best book about basic Javascript on the market right now.

Pros: Technically complete, solid writing style, understandable examples, no better intro books on the market.

Cons: Authors repeatedly show that they prefer class-based object systems, which Javascript is not. Authors do not effectively teach advanced Javascript prototype-based object usage and in fact seem to view it as a nuisance to be avoided. Authors don't regularly use closures except in section on closures.

I would recommend following this book up with "Javascript: The Good Parts" and making sure you fully grok how to use closures to avoid namespace pollution.

I've learned a lot of tech in my time, and this book does the best job explaining the fundamentals of a language that I've ever come across. Flanagan basically builds the whole language piece by piece, explaining the fundamentals of every aspect.

There are some more esoteric techniques he doesn't cover, but I hardly consider that a shortcoming; aside from those, he basically covers the entire breadth of JavaScript, both in its core design and in practical browser-based applications. This really is the definitive book on JavaScript, even if it is two years old (which is ages in Internet time).

This book is downright comprehensive and thoroughly deserves its "definitive guide" title.

But, the example scripts the author gives are long and deadly boring, which is why I won't give it five stars.

To "get" JavaScript, you need shorter scripts which are easier to learn from.

My recommendation is to use this book in conjunction with the w3schools website.

A generally good reference book, but lacks a thorough index, and the page headings lack detail. Plan on spending lots of time flipping through the "input" and "document" pages looking for the page you want.

The book notes browser compatibility for each item, but its hard to not feel drowned in the clutter of useless "IE n/a NN n/a Moz n/a Saf n/a Op 9 DOM n/a" entries.

What I really wish I had was a "DHTML Best Practices" book where the primary useful, portable, and recommended tags/classes/events/whatever were highlighted and the deprecated/incompatible stuff was just summarized in a secondary section.

The ONLY DHTML reference you need. This book has everything covered from Javascript, HTML, CSS, DOM, Ajax, Web 2.0. This is the only book that I always have by my side while developing.

I bought this book , and i wait it about 1 month for arrive to me , but i am not lucky , the book contains more than 1300 pages , but i didn't find any thing benefit for me .
I advise any one in beginner Level to keep away from this book .you must save your money .

I used to have the previous edition. I could quickly find objects and properties in the books index and just go to what I wanted. This new edition doesn't even have the event handling properties such as onmouseover and such. Its also missing some minor properties for css or html. I know the big ones, its the minor ones that i need help on. Its great that it takes into account safari, mozilla and opera compatibility, but they really did a crappy job on the index. Apparently they wanted to safe paper and removed some things from it. so, now I use the old edition and new edition. A big inconvenience.

The finest review of this book I can give is simply this: I bought the first edition in 1999, the second edition in 2003, the third edition in 2007, and as long as Danny Goodman and O'Reilly keep up the good work, I'll buy the fourth edition in 2011. There is no more indispensible book available for the Web GUI professional.

One caveat: This book is not for beginners. If you don't already know how to build a modern DHTML/CSS/JS/Ajax interface, this book will likely be a waste of money. Moreover, if you're looking for how-tos and recipes, look elsewhere. This is a comprehensive encyclopedia of the DHTML universe, nothing more and nothing less.

..."the book that should have been in the box" ... This is a fantatstic, up to date reference I've returned to again and again while navigating my way through a program that on the surface seems unruly. Dreamweaver is like a 'pet' in that it's only as good as its owner, and every owner of this dog should have a copy of "the missing manual". Though this book is big, such depth allows it to be fluid and complete in both its information and conversational tone, which I like, for it is like being in a class with a well-versed teacher that can hold such conversation on all things techy, while never losing his audience of students, attending his class(es) for their useful content and great interaction. I would recommend this book for anyone either just learning Dreamweaver, and coming into the series at the new(er) versions of CS3, or for those astute to the Dreamweaver format.

looked in several book stores for a good ref book on Dreamweaver. have several o'reilly ref books already and was glad to find this one at a reasonable price... and received it in 3 days with standard shipping! nice...

This is a great book and helpful in quickly finding information that you need to assist you with building your website/pages using the Dreamweaver CS3 software program. Was able to find the information I needed in a minimum of time. Felt that the price was reasonable for the manual and know that I will be using this for quite sometime.

I can't believe how much I have learned in the past few days just by reading this book. I am already doing some websites and as continue reading I discover more each day. It is a fantastic book. By the way, i went to NYU and the professor was using in class all the excercises from this book. I couldn't belive I paid 500 dollars to school when I could have done it on my own. So, get this book now!

Yes, this is a huge volume - as are most software "how-to" and other reference books - but this is one you'll definitely want to tackle if you're interested in building your skills with Dreamweaver CS3. To say there's a ton of good information goes without saying. Any good manual of this type can dish out the factoids, charts and examples in mass quantities, and "The Missing Manual" for Dreamweaver is no exception. To their credit, the authors still manage to present all that information with a good amount of humor and enough real-world examples to make it easy to digest and understand.

Especially useful are the "hands-on" projects and lessons contained in each chapter. You get a taste of topics such as text formatting, page layout, creating / modifying CSS rules and lots, lots more. Each lesson is simple and direct - click here, type this, etc. Step by step. Many of the lessons build on each other, so you can see a complete web page come together with more and more features and complexity. All of the lesson and example files are downloadable from the book's online companion site, so there's no need to find (and store and protect) a CD that might have been included in the book. The site also gives updated information and provides links to more help... very useful.

You probably won't read this book all at once - not unless you're an absolute newcomer to web design and Dreamweaver. If that's the case, you can work through all of the lessons, and come away with a very good understanding of the program's main functions and features. The discussion (and lessons) on CSS alone are well worth the read. Even though the authors say this book is not intended to provide a complete reference for CSS, the material presented greatly increased my knowledge and confidence in using this particularly useful bit of web-design magic.

In short: a very useful, very reader-friendly book that can help any new- to moderately-skilled Dreamweaver user. Advanced users probably know all this stuff already, but for the rest of us, "The Missing Manual" is a great addition to a personal software reference library. Highly recommended.

Bill Sklodowski
Author of the forthcoming book: "PC Smarts for Small Business"
Personal & Small Business Coaching
Digital Marketing / Creative Services
www.PcTechandTraining.com

CSS is difficult to master, and most who have have done so over a period of years, through trial and error, and from picking up tips one by one from the community of practitioners. Rachel Andrew's CSS Anthology doesn't offer much for the CSS veterans (I found only 1 tip I didn't know), but it's is absolutely full of all the good stuff that we CSS authors treasure and, of course, USE on a daily basis. The best part? Most instances in this book follow Web standards--you won't find that to be true with many other CSS books.

For those of us who are beginners or intermediate programmers of CSS, I would recommend this book. From beginning use to advanced hints and tips, this book has something for everyone. Any book that helps me to learn even one item more than I already knew is a benefit to my library, and you can't beat Amazon.com for price!

I am a web designer by career. And when our company began moving into CSS, I thought I'd better find some good books. This one was fantastic. It's filled with a lot of examples and tricks that not only taught me about CSS at a level I could quickly grasp, but it also provided examples that I could actually pull and use in my projects.

I own other sitepoint books such as "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" and "CSS the Ultimate Reference" and they are all fantastic. I'm beginning to think that sitepoint is a great source for knowledge. I recommnend this book highly.

After reading two great Sitepoint books* cover to cover and returning to them again and again, I thought "The CSS Anthology" would be another good purchase.

Unfortunately, this book makes learning web design as frustrating as the other two books made it easy. I'm on the verge of returning it.

The writing is not as simple, clever or memorable (important in a How-to) as the other books. Instead, the author tends to complicate rather simple concepts and blur the lines between topics.

I'm at about an intermediate level with CSS. The few solutions here that aren't too basic are hopelessly complicated by bad writing. It is easy to waste a day trying to get something from this book to work, simply because the subject was not well presented.

Because "The CSS Anthology" is not designed to be read straight through- I find myself using internet tutorials to find the same information. Not only do the Internet solutions tend to work better, they're easier to find and easier to understand.

I'll probably try to get my money back. Skip this one from the Sitepoint library.

*"Build Your Own Websites the Right Way Using HTML & CSS" and "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design"- Both excellent for beginners

This book has some good examples, and the way that the author describes the code is very well done. I question the overall value of this book, though, because this book is designed with neither the beginner, nor the advanced user in mind.

Ms. Andrews begins her book by making an incredibly quick overview of how CSS works and what it's for, but by no means explains it in enough detail for a beginner to really catch on. As she progresses through the question and answer format, she will quickly lose whatever intended audience she thought she had: the first half of the book is painfully simple, the second half is too advanced for the beginners, and probably too basic for advanced users.

It is difficult to use the guide as a direct reference because of it's format...an unfortunate problem that comes of the way she chose to write this book.

While I do feel that this guide increased my knowledge of CSS, I can't say that the few little tricks I learned were necessarily worth the money I spent on the guide, and that serious users should consider another option.

I like to just jump in. Hate reading instruction manuals, find most of them little better than the cause of a good nights sleep. This book is my first exception!
Sure I have still jumped in but have also worked my way through this book from the beginning and am finding the answers to my problems as I create them. Also finding that the book is interesting enough in itself, that I am avoiding creating problems. A first!
Will buy another of McFarlands books now, on CSS. His style is very readable and easy to follow.

I bought this book hoping it would be all that I would need to build my sites with cleanly and yet some complexity. I've found that I'm often at the library borrowing many other Dreamweaver 8 titles and finding them much more helpful. I've found finding specific help in this book a bit difficult, and the chapter progression doesn't really make sense. My main background is design and the arts - but I don't think this book is too technical for me... just counter-intuitive in its structure. I much prefer the Sitepoint books so far... even the Dreamweaver for Dummies are at least just as good, and much less expensive. Would not recommend to buy - maybe try it at your library first.

The title says it all. This is an must-have resource when learning Dreamweaver and the authors give you tips, shortcuts, as well as explanations for many of these tips and shortcuts which help you seriously cut through the clutter and get to the point, which is how to get your site up and running! I bought it along with Dreamweaver Hands On Training and I think it a great compliment.

For those who find it hard to follow on line help or tutorials, this is the book for you. The Missing Manual series is very instructive and helpful to those who are just beginning and to those who are well on their way to using Dreamweaver. Commands that you may have forgotten are easy to find in this book. I would recommend it.

I'll keep this short. Starting as a total novice in Dreamweaver this book has taught me pretty much everything I need to know. When ever I get stuck now I can get the answers that I need. Certainly blows the online help from Adobe out of the water. This is a must have book.

I received this book in three days, which was a fast delivery. I am still working on this book, but I must say I like this book.

This was a great book! I highly recommend it! Have fun!
[..]
Merry Christmas!!!

This book has many good sections, including some that actually touch
on the title of "scaling" web sites. However, most of the book
is oriented to a whole set of disjointed topics such as Unicode, MIME
email, and RSS, etc. Well written, but having nothing to do with
scalability.

The chapters that are on topic are generally good, but lacking in depth.
What it's missing is an overview of different techniques for scaling,
as well as different architectural models.

The entire book is fairly PHP centric. I would really have liked to have
seen more about tradeoffs and architectural details of what you should
do if you have Java, Javascript, AJAX, or Perl, or how to deal with
spreading your site over datacenters around the world.

"The Flickr Way" pretty much describes the book, since most of the
material seems to relate to doing things one way.

This book would be excellent if you have a single webserver that has
taken off and you're lost. If you already have a shelf of O'Reilly
books and a background in sysadmin or web development, much of the
material is redundant to other, more in depth manuals.

This is a practitioner's book. Very knowledgeable, very hands-on, systematic in an expert's way, through clearly hard-won experience. Fun and irreverent too. I recommend it highly.

So, what's my beef? It's not with the book. Hercules, Atlas, or Odysseus?

When I first started reading this book I had certain expectations about the technical level of the content. I was expecting to have a lot of information about webservers, and load balancers, an d database clusters, and maybe software architecture.


I was pleasantly surprised as it covers all those things and more.

First as I've done in several of my reviews let me list the chapter titles.

1. Introduction
2. Web Application Architecture
3. Development Environments
4. i18n, l10n, and Unicode
5. Data Integrity and Security
6. Email
7. Remote Services
8. Bottlenecks
9. Scaling Web Applications
10. Statistics, Monitoring, and Alerting
11. APIs

I would recommend this book to any Web 1.0,2.0,3.0 startup trying to get ready to write their first line of code, well before that even.

Chapter three will be a review to many who read it, assuming they have good software engineering practices. Use revision control, use bug tracking, have a simple and repeatable build. This is really a good chapter which really applies to any kind of software you might write.

A general statement about this book, in numerous places where there are multiple options for tools to use, some free, some which cost real money, the author makes a list of the popular alternatives, gives pros and cons and a ball park for cost.

Chapter four, well if you don't know anything about internationalization (i18n), localization(l10n) and/or unicode, this chapter will resolve that problem. These efforts can introduce complexity into your system, and this chapter and frankly many place later in the book continue to point out the issues which can come up when dealing with not ascii characters.

Well I could write a chapter about each chapter, but then you wouldn't buy the book, which you should if you want to know about the topic.

I may even read it a second time.