Review by Peter Stamer for The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax & PHP
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Ajax, Spry widgets, Spry effects? - having upgraded to CS3, I had no idea what these were and was very tempted to stick with what works fine for me: frames!

However, I discovered this book and it is proving to be very useful. It calls itself `The Essential Guide’ and this is what I am finding it to be. Not too heavy, not jokey, just well-written, with clear explanations, loads of screenshots and insights into what to do, what to avoid and what can be ignored.

Unfortunately it is over 700 pages long and I’m only 10% through (although it doesn’t need to be read in page order) but I felt it valuable to draw your attention to the book sooner rather than possibly never.

Is it for you?

As the author, David Powers, writes:

`If you’re at home with the basics of (X)HTML and CSS, then this book is for you. If you have never built a website before and don’t know the difference between an tag and your Aunt Jemima, you’ll probably find it a bit of a struggle. …. the idea is to adapt the code generated by Dreamweaver to create websites that really work. I explain everything as I go along and steer clear of impenetrable jargon.

Although you do some hand-coding with Spry, most features are accessed through intuitive dialog boxes.’

`I don’t assume any prior knowledge (of Ajax and PHP) … Dreamweaver takes care of a lot of the PHP coding, but it can’t do everything, so I show you how to customize the code it generates. Chapter 10 serves as a crash course in PHP, and chapter 11 puts that knowledge to immediate use …. This book doesn’t attempt to teach you to become a PHP programmer .. but (should give you) sufficient confidence to look a script in the eye without flinching.’

Besides comfort food for the not-well-informed (like me) e.g. why Ajax is so called (p.34), and what’s the connection between Ajax and Spry (p.38), you’re also given warnings why search engine spiders won’t index your Ajax-reliant content (p.38), why you should avoid heavy use of Spry on your site’s opening page (p.39), that Spry-changed content cannot be bookmarked, and why the back-button may not work as expected (p39). As you can see, even on just these three sample pages there’s some valuable stuff.

I look forward to delving deeper, and, from what I’ve read so far, I feel confident that this is an excellent guide and commend it. If I find otherwise as I progress, I’ll update this review.

Review by Mr. Mark J. Taylor for The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax & PHP
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I had already purchased David’s “PHP for dreamweaver 8″ book which I had found extremely good and useful. David’s new book EGDWCS3 is absolutely brilliant. David carefully guides you through simple practical examples using PHP, MYSQL and Dreamweaver CS3 which eventually culminates in fully working solutions to the most common requirements when developing dynamic websites. As if the book isn’t good enough - David is a daily visitor to the Friendofed forum and will happily answer any queries you have on the book in a very friendly way.

This book is superb - buy it now - you won’t be disappointed!