Rating: 
Summary: Very Helpful Book and Author
Review: As a novice Coldfusion developer, I found this book to be very helpful. I have also found that the authors web site and the author himself to be of great help. I would recommend the book to any developers that are interested in developing Coldfusion or ASP sites with Dreamweaver MX.
Rating: 
Summary: The best book to get a quick start in data-driven web sites
Review: As I developed a whole website with the receipes of this book, I cannot understand the negativ comments on this book. Either these people did not do what was written or they did not understand the concept. With me all examples worked and I got all needed extensions for free. It deals with ColdFusion and ASP, not with PHP or JSP. For this you need another book.
As I do webdesign for several years and wanted to start with data-driven websites, I needed a book with many good, practical examples. I found it with this book. All examples are explained that everybody can understand it, though I would say it is not for beginners in webdesign. Though the example website from a designers standpoint is not very inspiring, it has many good features which are essential for dynamic websites. It shows the whole concept of databases and the needed environment for development. It shows in a quick way the relational concept of the databases and then starts with the first examples for a very practical contact form and goes on with other easy examples, all with the functionality of ColdFusion or ASP. Then it shows extensively the use of a database for dynamic data on a website: Reading, writing, deleting records, creating overview and detail pages and so on.
In short, this book did teh job I bought it for: It helped me to get familiar with data-driven websites. Now I don't hesitate anymore to use the functionality ASP (I did not use ColdFusion) provides. On the contrary, now I always use these features to improve the usability of my websites.
Rating: 
Summary: frustrating
Review: Avoid this book. Very poorly organized. Flipping back and forth all the time gets frustrating. AAAAGGGGHHHHH! I recommend books from the Friends of Ed dreamweaver series.
Rating:
Summary: Should be 2 books - For ASP and For Cold Fusion
Review: I actually changed my rating.This is an excellent book and I am learning alot. I still do not like the Cold Fusion/ASP overlap and would have preferred two books, but now I think that is a minor flaw.
Rating:
Summary: I'm impressed!
Review: I bought this book and I'm really impressed. The book is great. I'm learning things that I always want to do, but don't known how...
Rating:
Summary: GREAT GREAT GREAT
Review: I bought this book because I needed a book to take my dreamweaver skills to a new level. This book did just that!! I find myself creating much better application now because of this book. Well Done!!
Rating:
Summary: I'm impressed!
Review: I bought your book and I'm really impressed. The book is great. I'm learning things that I always want to do, but don't known how... Buy it, and you will see that is true.
Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to like it but...
Review: I found this book confusing and in general not particularly helpful. If you are not planning to use Cold Fusion then I would say definitely avoid this book, since some of the chapters required Cold Fusion to work through the examples. It is poorly organized and I quickly got tired of working with the Newmanzone sites that are used as examples ("all profits for me" is cute, but gets old fast, especially when the step-by-step instructions don't work). Overall it felt like there was a lack of flow to the book.
Rating:
Summary: You get more than just a book when you make this purchase.
Review: I found this book to be exactly what I needed (and had been looking for for quite a while): information that capitalized on my UD4 experience and helped make the transition to DWMX, concrete examples that led to building two great sites, a side-by-side comparison of Cold Fusion MX to help me figure out what all the CF hullabaloo was about, and a sense of humor in the writing.
As mentioned by an earlier reviewer, there is one time where the book calls for an extension that must be purchased ... and a couple of times where extensions must be utilized which reportedly do not work with MX (they do work-the author's book support site tells you how to make very minor code tweaks). This should not be enough to make anyone decide not to purchase the book. The author's book support site ... is truly supportive and helped me with above issues very quickly.
Buy the book. It's absolutely essential.
Rating:
Summary: not for Mac users
Review: I was really disappointed when I got this book. I opened it up and it was written exclusively for Windows users. :-( I wouldn't have ordered it had I known. Additionally, the projects are not anything I will likely ever do and some of the step-by-step instructions are somewhat on the basic side and a real waste of space. (I already know how to fill a rectangular selection with colour.) Plus, the necessity of other third party softwares (which are also Windows exclusive) left me with nothing to gain from this book.
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