Dreamweaver MX 2004 Design Projects takes you through the process of creating four real-world case studies, enabling you to take your Dreamweaver skills to a new level. Each case study is written by a different web design professional, and features a common web site archetype taken from inception to completion. All are brimming with essential techniques to inspire and teach you.

The four different sites are as follows:

Christopher Schmitt's entertainment/fan site project, dedicated to the band U2, covers: setting site goals; producing user profiles to define the audience, site maps, and design mockups; refining the design and producing it in Photoshop; and finally working with Dreamweaver MX 2004 to easily construct an accessible, easy-to-maintain web site.

Allan Kent's news portal project takes you through the process of designing and building a dynamic, database-driven site with Dreamweaver MX 2004 and PHP. He looks at information architecture, building the back-end database, creating the necessary administrative tools, and finally, building a front-end that is both standards-compliant and easy to use.

Craig Grannell's corporate site project begins with groundwork and methodology, then shows how to harness the power of CSS and Dreamweaver MX 2004 templates to rapidly get a site up and running and ensure that updates and maintenance are painless and cost-effective.

Rachel Andrew's company intranet project walks you through the entire process of creating a company intranet using the ASP server model in Dreamweaver MX 2004. It begins with a detailed planning stage, then continues by looking at database development, providing user logins, and managing files on the server. This project utilizes built-in Server Behaviors in Dreamweaver, third-party extensions, and hand-coding.

Allan Kent lives, works, and plays in Cape Town, South Africa. In the last four years, he's been implicated in at least 10 books dealing with PHP and web-related topics. When not being harassed by persistent editors about deadlines, he works doing new media design at Lodestone, which he co-owns. When not writing or programming, he enjoys relaxing at home with Wendy and their cats.