What is this book about?
With this book you''ll quickly be creating powerful, dynamic web
sites with Dreamweaver MX - the latest version of Macromedia''s
powerful, integrated web development and editing tool.
You''ll learn how to use the tools and features of Dreamweaver
to construct three complete sites using HTML, JavaScript, Active
Server Pages (ASP), and databases.
We start by creating a hobbyist site - The Cooking Place - that
you can use to list your favorite recipes, ingredients, and
dishes.
What does this book cover?
As you build this site you''ll learn how to use Dreamweaver MX
to
- Plan, create, and set up a web site
- Add web pages to the site and edit their content
- Use Stylesheets and templates to create a consistent style
across the site
- Use tables, frames, and layers to lay out web pages
- Add dynamic effects - like drop down menus - to web pages using
JavaScript and DHTML
- Interact with users via forms on web pages
- Create dynamic ASP web pages to respond to user actions and
input
As you progress through the book, the sites you create become
ever more ambitious. The second site you build is a fan site for
soccer that provides information on upcoming events for fans around
the world.
As you build the second site you''ll learn how to use
Dreamweaver MX to:
- Add logic to your ASP pages, so that you can display different
information to different users, based on their location, or even
the time of day
- Keep track of users as they move around the site, so that you
can learn what parts of your site are the most popular
- Secure parts of the web site so that only authorized users are
allowed to see sensitive information
- Personalize the web site for individual users - so that the
site appears in the colors of the user''s favorite team or so that
the user only sees events in their home country
- Store and extract information about users and upcoming events
in a database - and use this information to dynamically create web
pages
The final site in the book shows off many of the advanced
features of Dreamweaver MX, as you walk through how to design a
modular, extensible, and scalable site, and create a set of dynamic
building blocks that can be quickly modified and reused in
different sites.
As you build this site - which is used to display a set of
images that users can view and purchase - you''ll learn how to use
Dreamweaver MX to:
- Create a set of building blocks whose look and content is
determined dynamically by the settings in a database
- Create a content management page that you can use to mange the
database that stores information about the images on the site,
including their title, price, and how they should be laid out
- Put the building blocks you created earlier to a variety of
uses, including a news blogger, a media display, and a product
display
- Use Dreamweaver Extensions to make our building blocks easy to
reuse and to add e-commerce functionality to the site
At the end of some of the chapters you''ll find a series of
suggested exercises from the author that are designed to test your
understanding of what''s been covered in the chapter as well as to
encourage you to experiment with the features of Dreamweaver MX and
to modify and extend the example applications.
Who is this book for?
This book is primarily for complete beginners to web site
programming who have access to Dreamweaver MX and want to learn how
to create dynamic web sites with it.
But the book doubles as a comprehensive reference to the
features of Dreamweaver MX, so it will also be a useful resource to
more experienced web developers who want to learn how to use the
latest version of Dreamweaver.
As you work through the book, you''ll learn how to program using
Active Server Pages (ASP), but this will prove useful even if you
eventually want to use Dreamweaver MX to create web sites with
JavaServer Pages (JSP), ASP.NET, PHP, or ColdFusion MX. Programming
in any of these languages is very similar in Dreamweaver MX, and
the core concepts you learn in building web sites with ASP are
applicable and easily transferred to other languages. To help, the
book includes four appendices that provide fast paced guides on how
to get started using JSP, ASP.NET, PHP, and ColdFusion MX with
Dreamweaver MX.
What do you need to use this book?
To run the examples in this book on your computer you''ll
need:
- Dreamweaver MX
- Microsoft Windows 98, 98SE, 2000 or XP Professional
If you don''t have a copy of Dreamweaver MX you can download a
30-day evaluation edition from Macromedia at http://www.macromedia.com/software/trial_download/.
The evaluation edition is fully-featured, and you''ll be able to
use it to work through all the examples in the book.
If you have Microsoft Windows Me, Windows XP Home Edition, or a
Macintosh you''ll still be able to create all the examples in the
book but to see them in action you''ll need to use a remote server,
as your operating system doesn''t, by default, include a web server
that can process ASP pages. Fortunately, getting access to an ASP
web host is easy -- there are dozens available. And to make things
even easier, the book includes detailed information on how to set
up a web application to use a remote server or web host.