Introduction

The transition from static Web page designer to data-driven Web application developer is a daunting one. Designers in this position might consider themselves strangers in a strange land. Not only are the natives speaking a different language (or worse, languages), but they also appear to have come from an entirely separate culture. Where in this world, designers ask, do I start?

We created Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Recipes, in part, to answer just that question. Inside this book, you'll find seven full-featured, professional-grade Web applications explained step-by-step. Best of all, we make it possible for you to build the applications as you learn. This feature serves two goals. First, in our experience, people learn best by doing, and they retain the gained knowledge even longer when they're doing something meaningful.

This brings us to our second goal: providing solutions. Beginning developers often find themselves in a sink-or-swim situation where they need to produce workable Web applications in a relatively short time. The Web applications included in this book are rooted in the real world and are suitable for small- to medium-size organizations. They're working applications that you can use today; they're not just make-work tutorials. And when we say today, we mean todaythe completed applications, in all four application server models, are included on the CD-ROM bundled with this book.

Another overarching purpose of this book is to help you get the most out of Macromedia Dreamweaver. The latest version is a powerful professional Web authoring tool that can create a full range of static and dynamic Web sites. Right out of the box, Dreamweaver gives you the tools to fashion a wide variety of Web applications without ever looking at, much less enhancing, the code. However, the point-and-click approach will only take you so far, and, sooner rather than later, you'll need to work at the code level to get the desired results. Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Recipes, like Web applications themselves, is a blend of design and code, with every step along the way explained so that you understand not just what to do, but why you're doing it.