Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Regardless of the type of multimedia you need to incorporate into your site, Walker does an excellent job of introducing both Joomla's native tools for working with files as well as a wide range of components, plug-ins and modules.
One of the pleasant surprises in this book is that Walker (appropriately) includes text as media. Not only does he do an effective job of providing an overview of typography and how to make appropriate choices, but includes more addvanced methods for using Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) to allow for the use of custom fonts on one's site.
On more advanced multimedia topics, like audio and video, Walker begins with basic overviews of issues like file types, compression and file quality. Useful for beginners, or as a refresher if one needs it, Walker still provides enough depth that these chapters should still be useful for more experienced developers.
I also like the fact that Walker includes a fair amount of information on working with Twitter and other social media sites. Because I think it's crucial to think about how one is going to promote a site and attract visitors, I would include at least a little information on how to establish an effective social networking strategy. Social networking isn't difficult, but doing it well requires a plan, patience and diligence. Still, once you have a strategy, Chapter 7 does an excellent job describing the options that are available.
Even the best titles have areas where there's room for improvement. In a future edition, I would like to see Walker:
* Discuss Flash. While there's a Joomla! with Flash book available, I think it's enough of a mis-perception that Joomla and Flash don't work together, that some coverage would be nice. If nothing else I would more explicitly focus on image galleries that are Flash-based.
* Expand discussion of accessibility and SEO-related issues associated with multi-media files, and especially with image tags.
* Discourage changing the height and width of images within Joomla! Encourage using an image editor. This might be a place to promote GIMP, an excellent open source option comparable to Photoshop.
* Introduce the .mp4a and .mp4v file types: audio and video as part of the discussion around podcasting.
Even if you're relatively new to Joomla!, this books is a useful resource. If you haven't worked with Joomla in the past, I would recommend either using Joomla's documentation from their site or getting a copy of Hagen Graf's excellent book, Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 as additional must-have reading.
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This book is a Joomla! tutorial packed with features that you can apply to enhance your Joomla! web site. It contains step-by-step instructions for Joomla! users to build rich multimedia web sites using Joomla!. It shows you how to manually implement features into your site, as well as utilize Extensions and more automated methods. A tutorial approach means you can follow this book chapter by chapter or just dip into the topics you find of interest. This book is aimed at Joomla! administrators and site developers who want to add media-rich content elements and interactive features to their site. All you need is to have a basic knowledge of the Joomla! platform and want to develop your site with rich media content.This book is a must-read for Joomla! users wanting to collaborate with external resources such as YouTube, Twitter, Google, and Flickr (amongst others).
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