Reading saves your world.
Reviewed by Michael Pastore
by Rachel Andrew
Published by Sitepoint Pty. Ltd.
ISBN: 0-9752402-3-4
Paperback, 355 pages, $ 39.95
Years ago I abandoned my Dreamweaver (version 4) because it lacked the ability to work with XHTML. In Macromedia's latest release, Dreamweaver 8, everything has changed. Dreamweaver's default format is XHTML, and the software's new features for working with Cascading Style sheets are impressive. Admirably, DW 8 has been built to create websites that are "standards compliant", according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) developed by the WAI group of the W3C.
It's always good news when developers — of software and web browsers — improve their products to comply with standards. The only downside is for individuals who make and manage websites: the two online manuals about the latest edition of Dreamweaver weigh in at more than 1,300 PDF pages long.
And that's where Rachel Andrew's new book -- one of the first published works about DW 8 -- can come to the rescue. Copiously illustrated with screen shots and snippets of CSS code, the book takes a hands-on, practical approach that shows and explains how to use Dreamweaver to make state-of-the-art sites.
See for yourself. Generously, the book's website lets you download, absolutely free, the first four chapters (100 pages) of the book. These chapters explain Web Standards and why they matter; how to plan your site; the benefits of XHTML; and how to use Dreamweaver to make XHTML pages. I do believe that parts of Chapter 2 distract the reader with an unnecessary detour. Here we are advised to build the sample site by downloading the Apache web server, and then using SSI (Server Side Includes) to break our pages into a number of easily-updatable parts. Instead of living on as a leitmotif throughout the book, this technique should have been included as an appendix for those readers interested in that approach. Fortunately, this bypath can be ignored, and you can focus instead on the book's excellent content and presentation.
The 355-page book is filled with useful tips and sound advice. There is excellent material about Browser testing, adding accessible forms, enhancing your site with search capabilities, making a site map, and creating alternative style sheets. In the rare cases where Dreamweaver lacks a feature, the author provides outside links to resources that get the job done. For example, you can test your site on different browswers via Browswershots. Useful tidbits abound, yet three outstanding features of the book make it a keeper.
First, you'll learn about Dreamweaver's extraordinary new tools for creating and managing style sheets. You can hand-code your CSS with help from "code hints", a feature that saves you the trouble of remembering every CSS tag and attribute in the universe. You can add CSS with the enhanced Properties Inspector. Or, best of all, use the CSS Panel, a full-featured CSS-editor integrated into Dreamweaver, that manages your style rules with elegance and ease.
The second superb feature of the book is its focus on Accessibility. Dreamweaver's tools are carefully explained, and so are Dreamweaver's limitations. Chapter 7 contains a detailed introduction to the 14 WAI guidelines, and the 16 requirements of the USA "Section 508". Here you'll see how you can coolly comply with Section 508, by first conforming to the Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints of the WCAG.
Finally, the book shines as a step-by-step guide to building a website that works. The author provides a glimpse into the mind of a professional webmaster as she explains her method. In a nutshell: first create a semantically-logical structure with XHTML tags; then style it with CSS, then add any dynamic content; and finally tweak the site for cross-browser compatibility and standards compliance. Watching the site grow in this logical manner is a valuable lesson for beginners as well as experienced web developer.
Andrew tackles one of the hottest questions in the Accessibility debate: Do we have to sacrifice the beauty of a site to get accessibility? ... Her answer is a resounding "No"; and by the end of the book — and long before the end — we're convinced she's right. In a straightforward style the book delivers an excellent introduction to the new Dreamweaver, to the next big thing — Web Standards — and to intelligent web design.
—Michael Pastore
About the Author
Michael Pastore is the Editorial Director of BookLovers Review and Zorba Press. Currently he is writing his fourth novel, and working to establish the Youthtopia Institute and Youthtopia website, devoted to children, creativity and the arts, humanized technology, and a sustainable world.
BookLovers Review is Copyright © 2005 by Michael Pastore. Copyrights to the reviews are owned by the individual reviewers.
