Best Dreamweaver Book To Learn From

[deaf_girl]

I'm interested in learning how to make web pages but I know very little about it. A friend put Dreamweaver CS3 on my computer along with Flash and Fireworks and other stuff.

My question is, What is a good book that will take me step by step. I know I can find tutorials on the net but I want a book. I looked at a couple that were really big and expensive.

So if you can think of a good book that helped you out when you started, I would appreciate it.

Also, can I use the older books like the ones for Dreamweaver MX, 8?

[Phil]

You'd be better investing your time in learning how to make sites without such wysiwyg tools. They all have their limitations and you can produce better sites without them.

Phil

[deaf_girl]

I'm not sure what all you said but can you recommend a good program to start with.

Right now I just want to learn how to make a basic site.

[isteve]

I haven't used Dreamweaver in a long time but I remember it being static pages (web 1.0) sorry for using that term.

The future is Database driven sites using style sheets. Like wordpress, blogger etc. The smart thing to do is to learn how to work with these style sheets (themes) and let the content management software do the rest.

If you just want a webpage then Wordpress or the many other blog engines are the way to go. Easy to use and edit and very portable.

[deaf_girl]

I'm looking to take over a web page for a friends club. It's a basic page. They are going to show me what they've done and I'm supposed to take over. It has a newsletter, announcements, pictures and junk like that.

Someone installed Dreamweaver on my computer but I don't know where to start. Is there an easier program?

[isteve]

Actually Dreamweaver is easy to use but a nightmare to learn, well it was anyway. Maybe look at Amazon for a Dreamweaver for Dummies book.

But for what your doing there was a program from the Dreamweaver people called Contribute that just does the content management of website. I tried it "again a long time ago" and it was fairly straight forward.

You could use NVU for managing the site its free but very basic but easy. I personally gave up on these type of pages because Steve Jobs made it way to simple and fast just to use iWeb.

You know it's not to late to start using Wordpress great for online newsletters and getting comments from the club. Plus you can let anyone edit or add content. You could incorporate it into the excising site. It would be worth giving Wordpress a try, your very tech savvy I'm sure you could do some cool things with it.

[deaf_girl]

Thanks for all the ideas.

I have that Contribute as part of the Adobe package my friend gave me. I'm going to look into that NVU. As far as books, I mentioned it at work and a couple of customers brought me a some (lots and lots of reading).

The person who is running the site now said they would show me what they are doing but I haven't heard from them.

I wish there was a place where I could practice without having to get a Domain and Hosting, first

[isteve]

Check your ISP almost all of them include 20 or 30Mb of space. Even if you don't have space just save the file locally and open it in a few browsers to check your work.