A Note from Lynda Weinman

In my opinion, most people buy computer books in order to learn, yet it is amazing how few of these 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 MX—one of the most well-respected HTML editors on the planet.

This book is targeted toward 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 hands-on training books.

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

At times, pictures are worth a lot more than words. When necessary, we have also included short QuickTime movies to show any process that's difficult to explain with words. These files are located on the H•O•T CD-ROM inside a folder called movies. It's our style to approach teaching from many different angles, since we know that some people are visual learners, 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 MX as thoroughly as you want to.

This book didn't set out to cover every single aspect of Dreamweaver MX nor does it attempt to teach you the entire process of Web production. The manual, and many other reference books are great for that! What we saw missing from the bookshelves was a process-oriented tutorial that taught readers core principles, techniques, and tips in a hands-on training format.

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

—Lynda Weinman