Murach's Dreamweaver CC 2014

I'm take an online Dreamweaver class. It just so happened that the author is the instructor. The book is a step-by-step of the lesson plans, and I refer to the book many times, and use some of the techniques, get answers, and even use the coding with my own little website. Get this book. It's easy, clear, and yours to keep.

This is the best software training/manual book I have ever had. Each chapter presents material linearly then visually. It introduces each topic, then drills down to details, then reviews the chapter. The exercises are useful and easy to follow. So far I have found nothing that is unclear. A great way to learn Dreamweaver

I feel the book is very straightforward and informative. I think for a beginner at programming and web design it is very easy to understand. The only thing I would have liked to see is more step-by-step images, particularly for exercises.

Quick delivery, in excellent condition. As for the book itself, it was one of the best books for learning tech material I have ever come across.

Straightforward instruction

I had some experience with web design and Dreamweaver some 10-12 years ago, and needed to refresh my knowledge and bring it up to date when it comes to HTML5 and use of CSS. There are two major books on the current version of Dreamweaver, "The Missing Manual" and this one. I read both. I found some advantages and disadvantages in both, but overall I found that "The Missing Manual" is superior and is a better value for time and money.The Murach's book has a great idea behind it: it is written concisely, but not excessively so. It is half way between a tutorial and a reference book. There is always a page-long explanation of the subject on the left-hand side and screenshots with a brief summary on the right-hand side, sometimes with extra details. So you end up reading about the subject and then reading the summary one more time. I found it is a great way to memorize the material. There is an effort to provide details which are important and useful in practice (one example is a brief but clear explanation how to make a drop-down menu with CSS). At the end of each chapter, there is a list of keywords which were introduced and a relatively short exercise. Exercise files can be downloaded from the internet.The book does not go as deeply into details as "The Unofficial Manual", and it is not quite as targeted at readers at lower level. There are some things which are covered in "The Unofficial Manual" and not covered in the Murach's. There are subjects which Murach's explains better, largely because Murach's always has to explain each subject on one page or less. The Murach's book requires a higher level of knowledge of HTML and CSS than "The Unofficial Manual", maybe on low intermediate level. The Missing Manual is accessible to anyone, including beginners.It is easier to use the Murach's book as a reference than The Missing Manual because it has a more transparent structure, which everything broken into small sections, 2 pages each, and table of contents is very detailed and specific.Unfortunately, the execution did not quite follow the idea. The editing job of the book is positively not up to the mark. To begin with, this book was written about the earlier version of CC,and then updated to CC2014. This versions have differences in user interface, e.g., different buttons, etc. However, many screenshots were not updated, and text oftentimes refers to the older version of Dreamweaver. The result - you look at your screen, do not see what you are supposed to see, and have to figure it out, somehow. The editor clearly started "running out of steam" (or out of time) by the time he or she reached the second half of the book because instructions in tutorials become increasingly unclear and when you follow them, nothing works. Depending your your mindset, you can either consider this a challenge and figure it out yourself, or just get frustrated and call it a poor editing work.Likewise, references to resources outside of Dreamweaver are oftentimes outdated. For example, reference to Adobe's Business Catalyst should not be there because Adobe discontinued that service quite a while ago. Several references to third party applications are also dated and probably migrated into this version of the book from versions prior to CC.The bottom line, both of these books are good and in many aspects complement each other. It is good to read both. However, I would rate The Missing Manual 5 starts, and Murach's 4 stars. If I had to chose which book to buy and could buy only one, I would buy The Missing Manual.The last comment: at the time of this writing (June 2015), Dreamweaver CC 2015 has been announced. It is not a major update, but there are quite a few changes and improvements, including changes to user interface and fluid grid design. We should expect that both of these books will be updated by the end of summer to cover CC 2015. Hopefully, Murach's will be better edited in the new revision.

A handy reference. Clear explanations and good examples.

good book to get all 2014 updates explained, ideal if you need a bit of a brush up on dreamweaver and progress forwards to more expert procedures