Understanding how to design an intelligent web page is extremely necessary if you want to get your film noticed and recognized. I can’t tell you how many potential viewers and distributors will completely pass on your film if its web site isn’t designed well. A lot of folks assume that good design requires flash and lots of whiz-bang effects, but, in reality, some of the most effective designs are the simplest. This doesn’t mean that adding some flash elements or video clips to your site can’t help it, as well, but if you don’t understand the web design basics first, those extra elements are sort of like putting some cool hydraulics and a nitro booster into a badly built car—it’s going to look like crap, it’s not going to work right, and whoever tries to use it will probably get flattened or burned to a crisp!
Total Training for Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 will teach you the basics of web design so that you can make professional looking sites. It touches on everything from graphic layout and rollover buttons to complex behaviors and dynamic site design, so you’ll get a lot more than just the basics of site design by the time you get done. As a ten year veteran web designer myself, I can honestly say that I wish that between 60% and 70% of the folks who have websites on the Internet would take this course and learn from it. I learned some additional tricks myself and was re-reminded of some techniques that I had put on the shelf when they first came out due to the limited browser support of the time.
While anyone can use this series and get something out of it, it is most designed for a range of users that starts with those who are completely unfamiliar with web design and Dreamweaver and goes through to those who are at an Intermediate experience level with both web design and Dreamweaver. If you’re already very experienced with web design and Dreamweaver, then you might want to get the Masters Collection: Total Training for Advanced Dreamweaver® 8, which is also hosted by Janine Warner, and is about half the price of this set.
For the most part, the Quicktime-based interface is well-honed from Total Training. The main playback software is installed on the computer, giving the program added abilities to bookmark favorite lessons and pull up an easy to navigate chapter list. The actual playback of the lessons is then accomplished directly from the DVDs, which allows you to not have to download the entire video contents of the DVDs onto your hard drive. Additionally, the discs included downloaded files that you will use to create your websites, which can be downloaded at the same time as the main installation of the series, for extreme ease of use.
As I may have mentioned in some of my other Total Training reviews, there are some key features missing from the Total Training interface. For example, you can’t resize your screen to any size you want. You must instead size it to full screen, 100%, or 50%. While these options may seem like a lot, they were insufficient in many monitor sizes if you want to run the training and work on the program at the same time. This is even more of an issue because the program has no option for keeping the training screen on top.
With that said, let’s break down the specifics of Total Training for Macromedia Dreamweaver 8.
