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Netshine Review:
When developing a Joomla template, it can be tempting to cut corners at times, especially if the template is not for public use. The approach taken in the book however, is very thorough and professional - if followed, the advice given will lead to a robust, semantic, accessible, and generally well-written template that will also be highly portable and easy to maintain.
There is a good reference section, with an exhaustive list of Joomla CSS classes, hints on upgrading templates from Joomla 1.0, module chrome, and template parameters. It also discusses some more advanced aspects such as creating dynamic menus, incorporating PHP code, and Flash. There is a chapter dealing with AJAX, although that seemed rather out of place to me, as it had nothing to do with template design, and did not really deal with any technical aspects of AJAX itself anyway (just installing a few pre-packaged extensions) - perhaps a "chapter on AJAX" sells more books.
Aimed more at designers than technicians (which is fine, as the book's title emphasizes design, not development), even so, this book takes a logical approach to template development and includes some priceless tips that would otherwise only be learned through painful experience! There is an excellent tip on how to choose colour schemes. A number of useful software tools are introduced, and even if you are familiar with writing templates for Joomla 1.0, the author's thorough knowledge of templating in Joomla 1.5 will save you hours of work and tedious research, and may even alter your approach altogether.
It's not all good though...
Whilst in many places, a good knowledge of HTML and CSS is assumed, in others, things are explained which should really be obvious to an experienced web developer - it seems as though the author could not quite decide what level to pitch at. This makes it a bit tedious for an experienced web developer, and a bit confusing for a newbie. There are some typos (eg. suite instead of suit, worth while instead of worthwhile), and the wording seems a little awkward at times, making it more difficult to read than it could be (although that is not a serious problem, and the overall tone is friendly and relaxed).
The example used in the book is a fixed-width template. This makes the CSS really easy, which is ok - if you want a fixed-width template. If you want to build a fluid-width template though, you will come unstuck using the techniques described in the book. A fluid-width template is much more difficult to develop using clean table-less XHTML and CSS (though not impossible, it does impose some extra restrictions and usually requires a lot more work). I just thought taking the easy fixed-width route without even mentioning the extra challenges involved in a fluid width design was 'cheating' a bit.
The author recommends removing the <jdoc:include type="message"> tag when your template is complete. This is a bad idea! It is needed so that error messages are shown to the user. For example, if a user tries to login with the wrong password, unless you have that message tag in place, the user will not be informed that they made a mistake.
I found the index completely inadequate - many words I wanted to look up were not there (eg. 'width', 'font', 'heading', 'accessibility', 'background'), even though those subjects were featured in the book.
On the whole though, a very good volume for anyone serious about developing templates for Joomla 1.5. Despite a few let-downs, the good bits do outweigh the bad.
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