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Book Review: Joomla! with Flash

Jan 10, 2010 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.srikanth.techonaut.com/about
About: Srikanth is a web designer and a pro blogger. You can see his blog or contact him by email at adsrikanth[at]gmail[dot]com for more information.See Authors Posts (98) Content Management

Joomla! is an award winning Content Management System(CMS) with a wide range of features. It’s a prolific CMS which is suitable for designing and maintaining any type of websites. Joomla has a modular architecture, providing the users with lots of options for extensibility. Apart from the fabulous modules, it is also well known for strong security, templating system, extensive community support and the authorization framework.

There are many extensions available for Joomla! like plug-ins and modules to extend the functionality of Joomla!. These extensions provide – further options for customization, enhancing the functionality as well as ease of administration.

You might want to integrate technologies such as Flash into Joomla!, as it provides great features for creating stunning graphics, interactive games, animated objects and alike to add a new flavor to your site.

The book, Joomla! with Flash, is aimed at explaining how to use Flash objects with Joomla! content with minimal efforts and maximum output.

Book Details

Language English
Paperback 260 pages [191mm x 235mm]
Release date October 2009
ISBN 1847198244
ISBN 13 978-1-847198-24-2
Author(s) Suhreed Sarkar
Topics and Technologies Content Management, PHP/MySQL, Open Source, Joomla!

Highlights

This book enables you to build interactive and content-rich web sites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4.

• You can build stunning web site(s) and integrate Flash objects into Joomla!
• Joomla! with Flash gives you step-by-step guidelines on how to create stunning photo galleries with Flash transition and animation effects
• The books also includes explanation on, how to use interactive Flash-based maps, animations, videos, charts, MP3 players, logos, headers, and banners in Joomla!-based web sites
• Contains easy to follow guides with enriched screenshots for better understanding.
• After going through the book, you can renovate your Joomla! based web site into an interactive, feature-rich multimedia site

A Brief Walk Through

The book starts with introducing the reader to the different types of Flash objects and various tools that will be helpful for developing web sites based on Flash and Joomla!. Then, the author gives a detailed explanation on how to use Flash-based image slide shows in Joomla and display them at different positions on the site.

By using the ‘random image’ module, you can implement a slide show in no time. The explanation is easily understandable. As, each step is enriched by screenshots, comprehending the text becomes much easier.

Simialarly, you will learn to use the RokSlideShow, one of the popular slideshow modules for Joomla!

This extensions helps you in integrating a slide show with options for dynamic image resizing, captions, loading progressbar, titles and more. Apart from these, you will also be able to set transition and other eye catching effects to further customize your slide show. Chapter 2 also focuses on showing Flash based movies in Joomla! articles/content.

Chapter 3 gives you an introduction to the built-in menus and navigation in Joomla! and then illustrates the use of two extensions, Flash Floating Menu and Super Web Flash for using Flash based menus in Joomla!

The book also covers other related extensions for customizing the flash menus based on your need.

Other intriguing stuff like building photo galleries using Flash into Joomla! based sites, building interactive Flash based maps, and charts, tickers, logos, headers is clearly explained in the book to meet the needs of all kinds of audience. This book also focuses mainly on how to embed Joomla! content into a Flash sites and how to troubleshoot your applications to overcome the most common problems in Joomla!.

What you will learn from this book

Create Flash objects and choose some popular flash tools for working with them

Improve the overall design of your site by learning to use Flash templates and tickers in Joomla!

Build stunning photo galleries with Flash animation effects and display photos on your Joomla! web site from a Flickr account using third-party extensions for Joomla!

Embed and display flash movies inside Joomla! contents using a simple video flash player

Create attractive Flash-based menus for your Joomla! web site

Display interactive Flash maps on a Joomla! web site using YOS amMap extension

Transform your Joomla! site into a streaming media site using Jvideo! extension to embed videos in Joomla! contents

Create mind maps based on your Joomla! site’s structure with the help of Joom!FreeMind component

Customize your Joomla! template to display Flash logo, header, and banners

Display Joomla! contents in Flash objects using amfPHP and J-AMFPHP extension for Joomla!

Maintain and troubleshoot your Joomla! and Flash web site

Approach

This book is a fast-paced step-by step-guide. It is loaded with examples and lots of illustrations showing configurations and their results on the screen.

Who this book is written for

If you are a Joomla! web developer who wants to integrate Flash into your web sites, then this book is for you. Knowledge of Joomla! and basic knowledge of Flash is assumed.

Joomla with Flash, build stunning, content-rich, and interactive websites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4 is definitely a must have if, you are planning to build and enhance you Joomla! based web site with Flash.

Check out Joomla! with Flash at PACKT Publishing

Note: Keep track of this blog to get a chance to grab an exclusive copy of this book.

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Tags: cms, embed, extensons, flash, images, joomla, mysql, php

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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