A Note from Lynda

In my opinion, most people buy computer books to learn, yet it is amazing how few books are actually written by teachers. Garo Green and I take pride in the fact that this book was written by experienced teachers who are familiar with training students in this subject matter. In this book, you will find carefully developed lessons and exercises to help you learn Dreamweaver 4 - one of the most well-respected HTML editors on the planet.

This book is targeted towards beginning to intermediate level Web developers who are looking for a great tool to speed up production, offer workflow flexibility, and create great code and results. The premise of the hands-on exercise approach is to get you up to speed quickly in Dreamweaver, while actively working through the book's lessons. It's one thing to read about a product, and another experience entirely to try the product and get measurable results. Our motto is, " read the book, follow the exercises, and you will know the product." We have received countless testimonials to this fact, and it is our goal to make sure it remains true for all of our hand-on-training books.

Many exercise-based books take a paint-by-numbers approach to teaching. While this approach sometimes works, it's often difficult to figure out how to apply those lessons to a real world situation, or understand why or when you would use the technique again. What sets this book apart in that the lesson contain lots of background information for each given subject, which are designed to help you understand the process as well as the particular exercise.

At times, pictures are worth a lot more than words. When necessary, I have also included short QuickTime movies to show any process that's difficult to explain in writing. These files are located on the H•O•T CD-ROM inside a folder called movies. I approach teaching from many different angles because I know that some people are visual learners, while others like to read, and still others like to get out there and try things. This book combines a lot of teaching approaches so you can learn Dreamweaver 4 as thoroughly as you want to.

It's Garo's my hope that this book will raise your skills in Web design, HTML. JavaScript and publishing. If it does, then I have accomplished the job I set out to do!

—Lynda Weinman