Hello,
What is the best book for learning dreamweaver?
FYI: I am very good Php, MySQL, HTML coder and I want to learn
dreamweaver to quickly design high quality web sites as far as the
look & feel goes.
Regards,
open dreamweaver and press f1
goodluck
SitePoint has a book “Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8”, It’s a pretty good read but considering you know HTML and CSS I would probably go with Adobe Press’s own guides (as they seem to be more directed to learning the GUI rather than how to code with it) 
How does Dreamweaver aid in creating the look & feel of a website? 
If you’re looking to create graphic components for your website, then something like Fireworks might be better suited. You can also use a free graphics program such as Gimp.
The rest in pepping up your visual design can be done via good typography, spacing, and colors. For colors, you might want to check out something like Colorschemer (commercial app) or [URL=“http://kuler.adobe.com/”]Kuler (web app).
Hi,
I checked out “Adobe Press’s own guides” and found these 2 books that seem
good, if you have the time to read one of them for quickest start on DW
which one would you recommend:
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Classroom in a Book
Regards,
Well I am very good in software engineering, that is Php, MySQL, CSS, etc. etc. but I am not good in getting started with the look of a web site, that is beautiful lay out, stylish buttons and I am looking for a tool such as DW and other software products to allow me to quickly bang out the look of the web site so I can focus on the coding, on the back end.
Lets put it another way, what would you recommend as the best tool for creating cool looking buttons, icons, grafix?
If you want to learn the UI: Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Classroom in a Book, the classroom in a book series are a general guide to learning how to make use of the interface of Adobe programs (sort of a getting to grips with a subject guide)
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Bible
by Joseph Lowery
there are so many dreamweaver books, mostly specialized for dreamweaver versions that consistently update.
I would read a dreamweaver basics book, and then when you want to learn about specific updates that occur when new versions of dreamweaver come out,
surf the web or youtube or whatever for dreamweaver tutorial videos. i like tutorial videos because i learn better by watching someone else work and explain.
Have you considered video training? To start out learning something new by book would be tough and would take a very long time. At least for me anyways. It all depends on your learning style though. I tend to take the top-down (my learning style) approach. My personal preference is to watch the video and get a basic overview while trying to follow along as best I can. This can be done in a day or two, then I either get a book if its a programming language, or I look things up on site like YouTube, or communitymx, etc as needed in order to get a more in-depth look. If I needed to databind in Dreamweaver , I can look that up. If I need to make my own extensions I can look that up as well. Also, playing around with Dreamweaver and figuring things out as you go can be one of the best ways to learn it.
If you cut out the word “dreamweaver” from the quote above (as I did) it’s clear that you ought to be learning CSS (and maybe an image editor like Photoshop) rather than Dreamweaver. CSS is where it’s at for “look and feel”–truly.
Get a good CSS book from SitePoint, or try a book like Stylin’ with CSS, then look under the hood at how beautiful websites are built.
If you know HTML, the Dreamweaver GUI is a seriously backward step.
As long as you don’t forget that all of these programs are just “tools”, then you can use pretty much anything to design graphical interface elements. You can even use something like Photoshop Elements. The standard is probably Photoshop or Fireworks, with the free alternative being the Gimp.
Dreamweaver is just a matter of convenience. I have been using Dreamweaver for the past 2 years now and I really like the look and feel of it, especially the file managment capabilities and built-in FTP. I can make my own extensions and/or save/organize any piece of code I would like to reuse very easily. Also, the built in behaviors are really quite nice. But really, any editor could be used. You don’t need built in FTP and other editors can save snippets/code which is basically what a lot of the extensions are. For me, I like the fact that everything is in one place. Also, if I have 2000+ lines of code, I can find my place easily by switching to design view and highlighting the spot, then switching back to code view. I can drag and drop my images, but always go into code view to make sure everything turned out okay. Never ever would I put a website together in “design view”. If your just dragging and dropping some elements, then that’s fine, otherwise the code that Dreamweaver generates is horrible in my opinion and not exactly what I want. In my opinion, for front-end coding, Dreamweaver can’t be beat. If your coding back-end, then there are better options such as Eclipse (which I’ve been getting to know) or VWD (asp.net). Whether your coding in ASP.NET, or PHP, Dreamweaver is still a good option. Not the best option, but a good one.
Bottom Line: Coding your website by hand is the best way to go, anything else should be used sparingly.