Macromedia's Web tools are well known and widely used. The idea of a certification method to ensure that Web developers are confident and competent with these tools is a logical move, especially because many people now style themselves as Web design experts. Macromedia's Dreamweaver 8 is one of the most widely used tools for creating Web pages and sites and is a good candidate for a certification test.
With the development of the Dreamweaver 8 certification exam, a similar study guide was inevitable. Even Dreamweaver experts do not use every feature of the product or tackle every Web site development problem every day; thus they will want to spend some time reviewing before the exam. The content of this study guide includes what you need to know about Dreamweaver 8, not only to assure yourself that you are well versed in the product and technologies for Web site development, but also to ensure that you are ready to move on to the certification process.
The subject of a Dreamweaver 8 study guide was tackled first by looking at the overall Dreamweaver product, examining the tasks developers carry out with it, and then delving into the details. In this book you do not find an exhaustive study of every Dreamweaver feature or every client-side Web technology. You also do not find lots of tutorials and lengthy code examples. What you find is a concise summary of the salient features of Dreamweaver, arranged in order of increasing complexity, with short code samples to provide examples of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that a professional Dreamweaver developer should understand. You can learn how to use Dreamweaver from this book, but the idea is to reinforce and complement your experience with a summary of the features and capabilities.
We wrote this book to map exactly to the questions in the examno question remains unanswered. As you read through the book, it may be tempting to skip certain chapters. Although you may feel confident that you know all about a particular subject, you will find many tips and notes, as well as helpful information on limitations, of which you may not be aware. These could crop up in the certification test, so starting from the beginning of this book and taking time to go through the pages in order is recommended. Of course, you can jump about all you want, but you should skim each chapter for important points (tips, cautions, and notes) prior to taking the test.
We hope you find this book useful, encapsulating a wide variety of information in a succinct format. Good luck on the certification test!