Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 528 pages
• Published by: Macromedia Press November 21, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0321336259
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0321336255
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.9 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.9 pounds

Product Description
Learn by doing! Follow along, step-by-step, as you upgrade a static HTML site that uses obsolete code to an XML standard-compliant, CSS-formatted dynamic site using Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), Macromedia ColdFusion, or the open source PHP. Create several integrated applications for a fictional travel tour operator, including a searchable listing for tour descriptions, country profiles, and a tour price calendar. In this official Macromedia guide, you’ll learn how to:

• Use a relational database—Microsoft Access or MySQL—as the driving force behind a site
• Use Dreamweaver’s built-in server behaviors and application objects to assist in the rapid development of dynamic Web applications
• Read and hand-code ASP VBScript, ColdFusion Markup Language, and PHP scripts well enough to understand how dynamic Web pages work, troubleshoot errors, and customize scripts
• Collect and  manipulate user-entered data, performing calculations on the fly
• Use SQL to pass information between your pages and the database
• Validate forms using client-side and server-side scripts
  

About The Author
Jeffrey Bardzell is an IT Trainer and multimedia instructional developer at Indiana University. He has developed many courses and authored numerous books on Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, and ColdFusion, including the previous edition, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source from Macromedia Press. He co-founded Allecto Media, an eLearning development and consulting company, with his wife.

Reader Reviews
The book was good up until the 10th Chapter in my opinion. I went through the excercises developing on a remote server running PHP/ MySQL. Up until the 10th chapter the author made several minor mistakes in the hand code to insert for both PHP and also in how to modify the existing SQL file to upload it to a remote database server via PHP My Admin. I must admit that researching and solving these mistakes on my own was a valuable learning experience. The real problem occurred starting with chapter 11. After uploading and testing my pages after each step as coached to by the author I began getting MySQL syntax error messages prompting me to consult the manual for my version of MySQL. I verified that my hosting company was running the same version of MySQL that the author demonstrated to those developing locally to install so I loaded the completed pages for the lesson from the CD and they would not open at all. At least the pages I was developing would load and had some functionality so that tells me that there was not even continuity between the completed pages on the CD and the text in the book. I think that is pretty inexcusable that nobody bothered to make sure that the completed projects worked in all development environments both locally and remote. I would have to say that the book is a complete waste of time for the PHP/ MySQL developer. To be fair I plan to upgrade my hosting account to include Cold Fusion so I can go through the book again following the Cold Fusion steps. Maybe they will work fine, one can only hope. Right now I can't recommend the book as it was extremely frustrating to put in all the time I did in the earlier chapters only to run into an insurmountable roadblock. One other thing of note is that the author invited readers to visit his website for updates and errata but when you go there you find that it has not been updated since 2004 and doesn't even mention Dreamweaver 8. It also says that the author's company is out of business so I must assume that Adobe/ Macromedia just copied the MX 2004 book (errors that it had and all) and just put a new jacket on it and changed the label on the CD and put it to market. I would have expected more from a $45.00 book that supports a $500.00 program. There is a book called "Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8" written by David Powers that has received high reviews that I am going to try next.