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Adobe Classroom in a Book - Adobe GoLive
CD-ROM included
$40 (USA)
Adobe Press
Buy It @ Borders
Review by Gary Coyne
Although some people do take formal lessons to learn various programs, most users tend to learn a program by either hacking their way through and/or working with the manual for any given detail. Then, once the specific problem is solved, the manual goes down and the user continues to hack their way till the job gets done. This is because people typically are trying to "get the job done" and are not concerned with learning the nooks and crannies of a program.
The Adobe Classroom in a Book - Adobe GoLive is intended to lead the reader through a series of lessons showing the major nooks and crannies of Adobe GoLive. Thus, relieved of the need to have a job that must get done (to learn the program), the reader can at their own pace learn the program through the lessons provided.
The "Adobe Classroom in a Book" series are designated as "The official training workbook developed by the staff of Adobe." The concept is rather unique considering it’s a third-party book approach written by the first-party (software) creators. All lessons in the "Classroom in a Book" series are accompanied with lesson materials contained on the CD. Thus, the student has no concerns about materials for each lesson, graphics, files, text, and other required data for any lesson plan--they are there. This is a classroom and there are questions at the end of each chapter (and the answers). Be advised that these should not be considered manuals for the software. There are no specific explanations for the menus, windows, or other attributes related to a given program. The book is written for both Mac & PC users, and all instructions are broken up by guidelines of "In Windows, the path is ..." and "In Mac, the path is ..."
The CD’s contain all lesson materials, some QuickTime movies on other Adobe software (sort of like the trailers of upcoming movies included on VCR tapes), and provide any necessary accompanying software (for the lessons). For example, if QuickTime is required for a lesson, QuickTime is provided. Interestingly enough, a demo version of the software is not provided; Adobe assumes that you have the application’s software and otherwise wouldn’t need the book.
Adobe GoLive Classroom in a Book begins with a quick tour of the program. In a twenty-nine page "tour," the student is led through the creation of a web site that has a home page and two linking pages, all incorporating formatted text, images, rollovers, JavaScript, and even animating the page with DHTML.
So, what’s the rest of the book for? The book, like a good teacher, leads people through the motions of a project--then shows you how to do the process in detail (and do it better). The book does not teach you everything about AGL. What it does do is present a broad basic of the program so that the student has touched most of the capabilities that AGL has to offer.
AGL can be a difficult program to teach gracefully because there are so many ways to accomplish the same task. In addition, AGL can also be confusing because some features do not stay the same as you work. For example, the window that is the "image inspector" becomes the "text inspector" becomes the "table inspector" becomes the "page inspector" and more, all depending on what you have clicked on on the screen. This window is always the "inspector," but what kind of inspector changes due to what you are working on. By going through each lesson plan in a methodical format, you will have (hopefully) clicked on the right thing at the right time so that when you look at the inspector window, you are looking at the right inspector.
The "lessons" provided on the CD are only some 7.4 megabits of material, so it is convenient to just drag the entire Lesson folder to your hard disk and work with it from there. The user can go through each lesson one after another, or simply select a chapter at will. Inside each lesson folder is a folder showing the final result of what you will be creating in that lesson, and a second folder providing the materials for the reader to make their own site. The chapters are separate unto themselves and if there are any web sites that you are creating in one lesson that is built upon further in another lesson, the new lesson’s folder has all you need with all the material provided up-to-date for that lesson.
For my testing, I selected two chapters--one chapter of material I was familiar with (site creation) and a second chapter of materials I was weak on (forms).
Rather than being bored with the tedious process of going through material I was familiar with, I learned a pleasant variety of new tricks. This is very much the result of the way the book is designed--it leads the reader through more techniques than they would have done simply by learning by hacking. As mentioned, there can be a variety of ways to accomplish the same task in AGL. For example, the simple task of placing a graphic on a page: in AGL one can place a picture onto a web page by either dragging a picture placeholder to the page and dragging a graphic into the placeholder, placing the mouse in the placeholder and pointing and shooting to the graphic, make the placeholder active and pointing and shooting from the inspector, or simply dragging the graphic from the site window to the page. The reader is led though all of these techniques in this lesson, and throughout the book as needed. There are advantages to all of these techniques, and perhaps one area where the book falters is not suggesting where (or why) one may elect to choose one technique over the other.
One of the pleasant features of this book series is how the authors toss in little tricks and/or techniques throughout any given chapter. So, in the chapter on site creation, the student is led through how to create your site’s color palate. Thus, "student emptor," it may be wise to take the lessons of the chapters you thought you knew because there may be surprises within.
The book isn’t perfect as I caught the book in an error where it described shift-clicking through non-continuous selections which regrettably is not possible, and occasionally the descriptions are not all that easy to follow. In the section on Forms, the book does not guide you through placing the necessary Form tags that if misapplied will prevent a form from working. The form page was already prepared and the reader is only filling in one small part of the form.
I have some reservations with this book as it does show many insights to web page design via Adobe GoLive, but it presents them in a rather cookie-cutter manner. That is, it presents a wide range of the program's capabilities but does so in a somewhat shallow manner. That by itself is not necessarily bad, but can be misleading when trying to make a web site on your own and not fully appreciating the intricacies and frustrations of designing for the web with all its contradictions. Using CSS is wonderful and fraught with limitations if the web browser can't see them. With that in mind, this book combined with Real World Adobe GoLive (by Jeff Carlson & Glenn Fleishman) would be a dynamite combination.
With the book's limitations in mind, the book is easy to recommend for the beginner and some intermediate users of GoLive. It can easily get the beginner up to an intermediate level in a relatively short time and round out the intermediate user who has hacked their way through the manual and may have missed a few tips and extra techniques. Regrettably, this book probably has little for the advanced user, and the user must be aware that they are learning a wide range of the basics of the program.
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