Depth of Information
The depth of information in this series is pretty wide, with nearly half of the training being devoted to folks who are seriously new to web design and Dreamweaver. While this is a bit excessive if you’re already familiar with the program, she gets into deeper and more complex lessons like Behaviors and Cascading Style Sheets and to really complex concepts like the basics of building database-driven Dynamic Websites in the second disc.
There was lots of mention of different types of scripting in the training, but no mention of how to use Dreamweaver 8’s fairly large arsenal of scripting options. Even though this series is based for the beginner to intermediate user, I would have liked to have seen a little bit of exploration into the scripting interface of Dreamweaver 8. A couple of basic scripts would have been very nice indeed.
Attention Captivation
Janine Warner has probably one of the most soothing voices in all of training to date, which is usually a bad thing. Usually soothing means “likely to put you to sleep”, yet somehow her voice does not. Most similar in timber and cadence to the voice of national radio host Delilah, Janine’s voice manages to be compelling underneath its smoothly soothing nature—not unlike the audio equivalent of a double-shot latté. As such, it’s not very difficult to stay alert with her teaching, even when she’s covering things you’re already familiar with.
Reusability
The amount of web design basics and more complex elements of web design that are packed into this series will definitely get some re-use as you strive to become better at representing yourself and your films over the web. Some things that are covered may be of no earthly use to you when you first start out, but might be something that you grow into as time goes on or as a new film needs a different style of website.
Value vs. Cost
While $199 may seem like it’s bit on the steep side considering that you’re only getting a little over 10 hours of training, the amount that’s covered that’s going to be very alien to most filmmakers is worth it. A very wise investment if you're not already very familiar with the basics of web design or Dreamweaver 8.
Overall Comment
This is a really great introduction to web design and Dreamweaver for Beginning to Intermediate users. And you really couldn’t find a more soothing trainer to teach you the ropes than Janine Warner. Any filmmaker who wants to represent his film well on the web and be taken seriously by potential distributors would do well to pick up this training.
