This book is really two books in one. It is a concise, blunt cookbook of instructions for using Macromedia’s Dreamweaver MX 2004. The first book-within-a-book describes the creation of Web pages based on cascading style sheets (CSS). The second describes the creation of dynamic Web pages. These instructions are presented in the context of an authentic case study, namely, creating a photo album of photographs of Iceland. The photographs might give a reader the impression that this book covers media other than text, but it does not. It devotes only minimal time to images, and none to the other media. The book is backed up by a Web site, http://www.friendsofed.com, which contains errata, and also code used in the chapters.

The standard topics that you would expect in a description of the popular and widely used Macromedia Dreamweaver are covered. It presents an introduction to Dreamweaver MX’s interface, and to working with its code view and design view. The authors, as professionals in the Web creation and design field, also offer many practical tips, and pay special attention to areas not usually covered. These areas include how to organize your working environment, how to appropriately use even notepads and pencils to help prepare the layout design, and how to set preferences.

The first book-within-a-book is nine chapters, which describe developing static Web pages, and present a resultant static photo gallery of Iceland. The last six chapters describe, in cookbook detail, downloading public domain software tools, PHP, and MySQL; setting up a working environment to use these tools on your own development computer; and then designing and populating a database application, or content management system, using these tools along with Macromedia Dreamweaver. The last chapter is a reprise of the case study, and covers converting this application to use a database, forms access, and dynamic Web pages. This chapter forms an excellent summary of the book.

Two additional parts are worth noting. One is a chapter on secure login and registration. This chapter applies to PHP applications, such as the one that this book discusses building as its case study. The other is an appendix describing Dreamweaver extensions. This is yet another area that the authors know about from practical experience, and one that can be overlooked, or provide difficulty. The appendix helps open the world of these valuable extensions to developers.

This book is an instructional, how-to book, based on the very specific release of Dreamweaver MX 2004. It is not designed as a textbook. Although the second book-within-a-book does a better job of presenting “whys” and overviews, even it falls short in this regard as a primary textbook for computer science students. For example, it briefly mentions accessibility features, but gives no indication of why these features might be important. It does not include student exercises at the ends of chapters; rather, it is really one huge exercise, the case study. It does not present a textbook-type introductory overview of the structure of dynamic Web pages, with its associated alphabet soup vocabulary.

Nevertheless, academics who are willing to devote considerable class time to providing background, theories, and overviews could do worse than using this as an auxiliary book, or even a primary textbook. Students would appreciate its conciseness and brevity, particularly if the students are already somewhat familiar with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and its associated vocabulary. For example, chapter 6 is a 20-page tutorial on CSS, perhaps the best I have read.

The authors use a vocabulary that is suitable for talking to intelligent professional developers, who are strongly motivated to learn a new application tool by following along with hands-on use of the software. Professionals and computer science researchers working in other areas, but desiring to find out what is going on in the important field of Web services, would do well to read and follow the book’s hands-on steps. Actually, using this modern type of programming is the best way to experience its significantly different feel from classical application programming.