Others say...

"Too many errors"
There are tons of errors in the book. From the simple -- giving the wrong information to input -- to the inexcusable -- providing a CD with tutorials that don't have the same information as the tutorials in the book. How are we supposed to learn a program if we can't depend on the information from either source provided?

Do these books have editors and fact checkers? Assuming they do, shouldn't the priority be on getting the information in the book perfect?

Having said that, I have run into this problem before with books of this type. They try to rush them into the bookstores to get the first-mover advantage with not much regard for the accuracy of the information contained in them. In all honesty, I've seen worse examples of this than the Studio 8 book.

If you're a true beginner, I can't recommend this book because you'll never know if you're doing something wrong or if the information in the book or on the CD is wrong.

"Macromedia Studio 8: Training from the Source "
Very good book for starters. Good description and very easy to follow. I total recommend it also for someone who already had some experience with any of the Dreamweaver products. If you need to go into more details of any of the application I would recommend the specified book for it.

"I Don't Know"
This books trumpets the fact that it will teach you the entire macromedia suite in one shot.

personally i couldn't get past the second chapter because i was so bored. i don't know if this book deserves even one star but i didn't finish reading it so i can't rate it.

and amazon doesn't let me review without a rating so theres 4 stores not to ruin the rating given by loosers who actually read the whole book

"Suite Integration"
The tutorials covers the basic tools and techniques available in Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Flash. Great book to get a jump-start on Studio 8.

The book was easy to follow and provides sufficient graphics to understand tedious procedures. This book is good for someone that is completely new Macromedia software.




"Starts off strong, but finishes weak"
First off, let me say that I don't normally do these reviews, but for this book I had to say something.

Within the first few pages, you will find two issues. The first is this book still talks about Freehand, which no longer ships in the studio package, BTW. The second is a incorrect instruction, which if not found, will mess up the first lesson. In general, you can usually figure out the problems, but not aways.

And that is the second major issue with this book. There are no updates to this book. If its broke, and you can't figure it out, tough luck.

In conclusion, the book does do a good job of explaining workflow within the suite, but sometimes it is just way too off (particularity in the second half of the book) for anyone who is a true beginner.