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Michael Ross writes As with any content management system, building a website using Drupal typically requires extensive use of its administrative interface, as one navigates through its menus, fills out its forms, and reads the admin pages and notifications — or barely skims them, as they have likely been seen by the site builder countless times before. With the aim of avoiding this tedium, speeding up the process, and making it more programmatic, members of the Drupal community created a "shell" program, Drush, which allows one to perform most of these tasks on the command line. At this time, there is only one current print book that covers this tool, Drush for Developers, Second Edition, which is ostensibly an update of its predecessor, Drush User's Guide. Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Drush For Developers, 2nd Edition author Juampy Novillo Requena pages 180 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael Ross ISBN 978-1784393786 summary Recommendations for improving Drupal development with Drush. Both editions were written by Juampy Novillo Requena, although in the transition from the first edition to the second, both the author's name and the book title were changed. The most recent edition's title seems redundant, because of course such a book is going to be "for developers"; after all, who but Drupal developers would have an interest in Drush? The edition under review was published on 29 January 2015 by Packt Publishing, under the ISBN 978-1784393786. (My thanks to the publisher for a review copy.) At 180 pages, this edition is longer than its predecessor, but still a manageable size. Its content is divided among half a dozen chapters. Anyone interested in learning more about the book may wish to visit the publisher's website, which provides a brief description of the book, the table of contents, free sample content (Chapter 3), and the source code files.

The first chapter begins by presenting a brief comparison of the steps needed to run database updates on a Drupal website, using the GUI versus using Drush. As expected, the latter requires fewer steps. The author then discusses the prerequisites for installing Drush in a Linux or OS X environment. For Windows, the given download URL, http://www.drush.org/drush_win..., is incorrect and should instead be http://drush.readthedocs.org/e.... The author states that "the installer installs an older version of Drush," but actually the installer has disappeared from its former locations. Fortunately, the current Windows archive file has the latest version as of this writing, 7.0.0-alpha7. This version is more recent than the alpha5 used in the book, but the commands and their options seem identical. On the other hand, it is a large archive file containing the Drush application files, Msys, PHP, and parts of PEAR and Symfony's YAML — but no helpful installer. The chapter continues with explication of Drush command invocation, arguments, options, aliases, and context. The only apparent blemish is that the variable name "site-name" (page 14) should instead read "site_name."

After this introductory material, one would expect the next chapter or so to explain and illustrate the details of Drush commands frequently used by site developers, such as those for installing, enabling, and updating modules and themes. Instead, the author jumps far ahead to much more advanced topics (more on this below). In the case of the second chapter, the goal is to learn how to synchronize code, database configuration, and content among different server environments, including capturing database configuration settings in files so they can be version controlled in Git. This is arguably worthwhile knowledge, but certainly not what the average reader would expect so early in the book.

Readers attempting to follow and replicate the demonstrations in the book, may become frustrated with the pitfalls in the second chapter — such as the instances where it does not provide all the needed instructions, or they don't match the example code. When readers starting from scratch encounter the Drush script (page 23), they may be tempted to try it right away on their own test sites, but this would be ill-advised because the first command will fail until the Registry Rebuild command is installed (later in the chapter), and the fourth command will fail if the chosen website does not have the Features module already installed and enabled. When learning about database updates, the reader is instructed to create a new Boolean field, but only later learns that the test website should have contained nodes of the "Basic Page" content type. When readers learn these things the hard way, they must circle back and redo steps or, even worse, try to revert the state of files or the database.

The mymodule custom module found in the downloadable archive does not match what the reader will need on page 30, so she will need to modify mymodule.install to match that listed in the book, and also presumably comment out the last two lines in mymodule.info related to the Features module — but not the first two, because that would result in worse problems later. This initial code should have been included in the downloadable archive. Before running the command drush --verbose updatedb, should she have enabled the mymodule custom module? Apparently so, since the expected output includes "Executing mymodule_update_7100," but when I tried it, the provided module's update hook was not recognized as a database update, using Drush or the admin interface (update.php). On page 32, the reader is told to download and enable the Features module, but that must have been done already because the mymodule module required it earlier. Lastly, the book's preface states that PHP version 5.2 (or higher) would be sufficient, but 5.5 is needed, otherwise a fatal PHP error is generated by the empty() call on line 29 of the "7101" example code.

The third chapter covers the use of Drush for running and monitoring a variety of tasks in a Drupal website, such as updating the database or reindexing the searchable content in Apache Solr. The author begins by briefly describing the uses for the cron utility, and some advantages of executing it from Drush. A technique shown for preventing Drupal from running cron automatically, is to set the cron_safe_threshold variable to 0, export it to code (as a Features module), and then deploy it to the target environments. The author also demonstrates how to use Jenkins in conjunction with Drush to periodically run and monitor cron jobs. As an example of running a task without using cron, a Feeds importer is set up to work with Drush, using a custom module and a Drush command to trigger the Feeds importer. It's not mentioned in the book, but for the importer, in the settings for the node processor, be sure to assign the bundle, otherwise there will be EntityMalformedException errors; also, map the essential feed and node elements, otherwise the nodes created will be empty.

The book then explores a number of topics that are somewhat related to one another: how to use Drush and the Drupal Batch API to run time-consuming tasks so as to avoid PHP and database limits of memory and time; how to run PHP code after Drupal has been bootstrapped; how to best log messages using the drush_log() function; how to capture Drush output in a file; how to implement your own logging mechanism by overriding the Drush default logging function; and how to run Drush commands in the background. Despite the complexity of the processing implemented in this chapter, readers should encounter few problems trying it out. For the drush php-eval commands, Windows command line users will need to replace the single quotes with double quotes. In the section titled "The php-script command," two of the three "php-eval" terms should instead read "php-script" (page 65).

Debugging and error handling are addressed in detail in the fourth chapter: how to validate user input values and Drush command line options prior to passing them to a command's callback; how to define custom validation within a command; how to discover all of the available hooks for any given Drush command; utilizing the Devel module, how to discover all of the Drupal modules that use a given hook, and how to find the location of a given function or class method. In the midst of all this, readers get a detailed tour of the steps that Drush executes when bootstrapping Drupal. Readers should note that, as with the second chapter, some of the code in the downloadable archive does not match the initial code presented in the text, but rather its final state. As readers may have been seen in earlier chapters, the "-- verbose" versions of the Drush commands can produce a lot more informational output than what is presented in the text, including the MySQL commands (that may be a consequence of, in this case, the Windows command line). In the case of drush --debug testhooks, the output is remarkably different, but at least all of the commands are executed.

The penultimate chapter explores techniques for leveraging Drush to better manage Drupal websites on local and remote servers, utilizing site aliases. Developers will undoubtedly be intrigued if not thrilled with the possibilities of being able to execute Drush, Linux, and MySQL commands within remote environments from the local command line. The only questionable aspect is that in the first chapter it is claimed that one "does not even have to open an SSH connection" to perform these feats of digital derring-do, and yet all of them presented in this chapter seem to depend upon an SSH connection — if not explicitly on the command line, then at least established and used in the background by Drush. Nonetheless, the potential power of using Drush in this manner is clearly significant for Drupal site builders and maintainers, and thus the author wisely shows how to avoid inadvertently corrupting the files or database of a target installation.

The final chapter blends and builds upon most if not all of the topics addressed in the earlier chapters, to show how Drush can be used to set up an effective development workflow for teams building Drupal websites. To this end, the author demonstrates how to move Drush commands out of a project's web document root, and how to use Drupal Boilerplate to achieve this and more. The instructions employ wget to download Boilerplate, but other readers as well may encounter an error of wget not being able to verify github.com's certificate. Readers learn how to use Jenkins to synchronize the Drupal files and databases in disparate environments, how to use Drush commands to improve database synchronization and sanitization, and how to prevent inadvertently emailing production addresses.

Like seemingly any Packt Publishing book, this one has plenty of errata relative to its length: "OSX" (page 9; should read "OS X"), "an input data" (page 14; should read "an input datum"), "inform [Drush] where" (page 19), "Dated" (page 21; should read "It is dated"), "sites/all/drush/command[s]" (page 28), "type Page" (page 29; should read "type Basic Page"), "PHP.ini" (page 34; should read "php.ini"), "cover [the] Queue API" (page 58), "context" (page 66; probably should read "content"), "run[ning]" (page 66), "straight brackets" (page 68; just "brackets"), "thanks to [']allow-additional-options'" (page 83), "require [the] minimum" (page 94), "a valid Drupal's root directory" (page 94; no "'s"), "point [to] our local Drupal project" (page 117), "logged as message" (page 120), "our the $HOME path" (page 139), "password;." (page 149), and "offers [a] hook" (ditto). Some of the phrasing is odd, e.g., "output can be logged in to" (page 34), "tasks running at cron" (page 52), and "equals to 1" (page 61). Some of the sentences are incomplete, e.g., "Importing configuration into the database." (page 34). Fortunately, none of the narrative is incomprehensible, and it is generally smoother in this edition than in the first.

The structure of this book is more logical than that of its predecessor. As Drupal expert Mike Anello correctly pointed out in his review of the first edition, "the book could have easily been improved by splitting out various sections of chapters into their own stand-alone chapters." The same criticism still holds true for this second edition, particularly the third chapter, though to a much lesser extent overall.

As with most if not all titles offered by Packt Publishing, this book's chapters are lengthened with summaries, none of which serve any useful purpose, since they repeat what was presented just pages earlier, but do not include enough detail to be of any value.

One major problem with the book is that it is billed as a second edition to the earlier user guide, which covered introductory and intermediate topics; yet this second edition does not, and instead is almost entirely devoted to advanced topics. In fact, much of the material is preparatory for the final chapter, on utilizing Drush to improve a team's project workflow. This is not made clear to the prospective buyer. This is truly a new book, and not an update of the first edition. Furthermore, it is more focused on specific uses of Drush.

Whether this book could be recommended to any potential reader, depends upon what that individual is hoping to learn. For anyone who wishes full coverage of the beginner and intermediate topics of Drush, this book would be completely inappropriate, and the individual would be best pointed to the Drush documentation. On the other hand, the book would be much better suited for a Drupal developer looking to improve his or her understanding of using Drush for managing database configuration settings and other topics related to project workflow, particularly in team settings — in which case it could be extremely valuable.

Michael Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Drush For Developers, 2nd Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. If you'd like to see what books we have available from our review library please let us know.

First time accepted submitter ericnishio (3641743) writes "Extending Bootstrap is a concise, step by step manual that introduces some of the best practices on how to customize Twitter Bootstrap for your projects. As the title suggests, you will be learning how to extract the good parts of Bootstrap to create a fully customized package. But be advised: the book is not for beginners." Read below for ericnishio's review. Extending Bootstrap author Christoffer Niska pages 110 publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer ericnishio ISBN 1782168419 summary For an intermediate front-end developer or designer who wants to learn the secrets of Bootstrap As a frontend developer who has been working closely with Bootstrap for nearly three years, I would like to point out that the book is certainly not an entry-level guide for novice frontend developers. The preface clearly states this fact by mentioning that the book is intended for intermediate and advanced developers. You are expected to be acquainted with Bootstrap and its applications before delving further into the customization work. To fully appreciate the book, you should already have a solid grasp of CSS, LESS, JavaScript, jQuery, and HTML.

Extending Bootstrap is a fresh addition to the Bootstrap library. Rather than reiterating what other guides and books have said about Bootstrap, Extending Bootstrap distinctly offers an alternative perspective from a contributor's point of view. That is, you will not be told extensively what Bootstrap can be used for, or what kinds of element styles, components and jQuery plugins are available to you. Instead, you will learn how to take those parts, develop your own custom variations of them, and build a fully branded package for your frontend application, ultimately in the form of a unique Bootswatch theme.

Some of the things you will be walked through deal with how to use Bootstrap themes, handpick suitable Bootstrap components, resize the grid, alter Bootstrap variables with LESS, automatically compile LESS files into CSS with Node.js and Grunt, extend Bootstrap's jQuery plugins, and create your own Bootswatch theme. Each section is explored individually and you are also provided with alternative techniques along the way.

All of the techniques are covered one step at a time, but some parts may cause confusion if you have no previous experience with the tools. If you are unfamiliar with Grunt configurations (and although the tutorial does supply an example configuration that works out of the box) the section that deals with automated LESS compilation can be puzzling at first glance. But in case you are interested to know the nuts and bolts of a Gruntfile inside out, you will have to do some independent research on the side.

Overall, Extending Bootstrap adopts a very conversational and informal tone, which is positively welcome. You do not feel as if you were analyzing an academic treatise. The author speaks and delivers assistance directly to you. Christoffer Niska is a seasoned developer whom I have had the privilege of learning from and collaborating with, whose meticulous attention to precision and simplicity can be clearly observed in this manual as well. The book remains faithful to this minimalist methodology and does not try to cover anything that would not be relevant or useful in the context.

Despite its brevity, the book provides many practical code examples throughout the tutorials, supported by screenshots for visual representations of what is produced by the code. Although the examples are helpful for understanding the concepts, the lengthier blocks of code can become cumbersome to follow due to lack of highlighting on the important parts. The quality of the printed grayscale screenshots could also use some refinement.

If you choose to follow the book interactively—that is, reading while doing the exercises—you will need to have a Mac, Windows or Linux development environment in your employ. No other software licenses are required since you will be strictly utilizing open source tools, such as Node.js, Grunt, and Bootstrap itself.

To support and augment the concepts established in the book, Niska also provides a number of links to technical articles for further perusal. I encourage you to check the annotations and study the supporting material that is available for free.

What I would have wanted to read more about is the advised usages of Bootstrap variables and mixins in your LESS files, as opposed to explicitly using Bootstrap's stock classes in HTML. Following this method makes your stylesheets more semantic as well as portable since you are decoupling Bootstrap's CSS classes from your HTML and building your custom classes with the mixins provided by Bootstrap. You might argue that this is beyond the scope of the book, but I regard it as an important detail when bearing extensibility in mind.

To get a thorough picture of the contents of the book, I suggest you head over to the publisher's website for a complete table of contents as well as information on availability and purchasing. Extending Bootstrap is currently available as a printed book as well as an electronic download.

Eric Nishio is a frontend developer who also likes to blog about self-education on his blog Self-Learner.

You can purchase Extending Bootstrap from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael Ross writes "An online store is one of the most common use cases for a website nowadays. For those web developers and business owners who choose the current version of Drupal as a basis for such an e-commerce project, the canonical solution is Drupal Commerce. There are numerous online resources for learning Commerce, and yet for the longest time no printed book. Now we have Getting Started with Drupal Commerce, written by Richard Jones." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Getting Started with Drupal Commerce author Richard Jones pages 152 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael Ross ISBN 978-1783280230 summary An introduction to the leading Drupal e-commerce solution This title was released by Packt Publishing on 24 September 2013, under the ISBN 978-1783280230. (This review is based upon a copy of the book kindly provided by the publisher.) On the book's website, visitors can read information about the book, including its table of contents, errata (none listed, as of this writing), and a sample chapter (the third one, on "Planning Your Store").

At first glance, 152 pages may seem wholly inadequate for explaining how to build an online store using Drupal Commerce. However, the table of contents suggests that, within the book's 10 chapters, the author addresses most of the critical topics: installation of the Commerce project, product catalog and classification, product data, shopping cart functionality, the checkout process, shipping services, taxes, order management, discounts, and coupons. A bonus chapter, "Extending Commerce," is not included in the book itself, but is available as a free download. (Readers should note that the URL provided in the book is incorrect, as it is missing the last underscore.)

Prospective readers do not need to know how to program in PHP or Drupal; however, a working knowledge of Drupal site building through the user interface, would be helpful. Anyone who wishes to follow the steps performed in the book for creating the example Commerce site, must have access to a Drupal 7 installation, with sufficient privileges to install and configure modules and set permissions, as needed.

The first chapter, "Introducing Key Concepts," as the title suggests, introduces the reader to the Drupal Commerce package, its overall capabilities, its submodules, and its dependencies. The module list (on page 6) is missing nine entries. Other than that, the material provides a good sense of what is to come. The first chapter, like all the others in the book, concludes with a brief and utterly useless summary. In this case, it states that the readers now "understand the motivation of the developers," even though that was not discussed in the chapter.

Installing Drupal Commerce is the subject of the next chapter. MySQL is listed as a requisite download, but actually MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and SQLite are equally usable. The author mentions Mac OS X and Windows as possible environments, but neglects Linux. Most of the chapter assumes that the reader has elected to use the Acquia Dev Desktop, and it consequently may prove frustrating to anyone who uses a different distribution to get started, or who installs the needed components individually.

As an e-commerce website is developed and (usually) later modified, the participants discover the value in all of the time and effort invested upfront in planning the information needed to track products, customers, payments, and other facets of the operation. Thus the third chapter is arguably one of the most valuable in the book, and should prompt site designers and developers to ask plenty of questions of their clients.

With Chapter 4, "Products," the author begins describing and illustrating the creation of the example website — in this case, a wholesale coffee and tea store based in the UK. At a critical juncture (page 35), the reader is instructed to enable "Commerce Backoffice (Commerce package)" and "Commerce Backoffice (Product package)," which is odd, since all four Commerce Backoffice submodules are in the "Commerce (contrib)" package, and none have those two exact names. Readers may presume that Commerce Backoffice and Commerce Backoffice Product were intended. It later turns out that "Commerce Backoffice content" was also needed. It is possible that the author was using an earlier version of Commerce that had different names, but that's difficult to ascertain because he apparently does not mention which version of Commerce is used in the book.

Chapters 5 and 6 demonstrate how to set up a shopping cart and configure the checkout process. The material should be comprehensible to the typical reader, and possibly a pleasant relief if his head is still spinning from the terminology soup encountered in the fourth chapter. The author explains how to use PayPal for accepting customer payments, and what permissions to set so that visitors to one's store can check out. Strangely enough, there is no discussion as to what permissions, if any, visitors will need for viewing products and adding them to the shopping cart. This might seem obvious to those experienced with Drupal Commerce, but likely will not be to neophytes.

The next two chapters show how to set up flat rate shipping as an option for one's customers, and how to apply a value added tax to each order, including the use of the Rules module for handling special cases flexibly, such as offering free or discounted shipping when the checkout balance exceeds a certain amount on any order not being shipped internationally. Lastly, readers learn how to set up order tracking.

The last three chapters demonstrate how to apply various tax rates to customer orders, how to manage orders on the back-end (such as setting status codes and viewing payment transactions), and how to define discounts and coupons that can be offered to prospective customers. The 11th chapter, on extending Drupal Commerce, should have been included in the published volume itself, as it certainly would not have pushed the page count beyond a reasonable level.

Throughout the book, almost all of the explanations are clear and straightforward, with the only exceptions being the puzzling reference to a "uid property" (page 10), which is not explained, and the use of several different phrases to describe product display nodes (in the fourth chapter). Unfortunately, all of the material apparently assumes that the reader will encounter no problems in trying to perform the same steps, because no troubleshooting resources are mentioned.

Aside from the aforementioned faulty URL on page 2, this book contains too many errata relative to its size: "out of the box" (page 5; missing three hyphens), "Apache based" (page 13; same problem), a space in the URL (page 15), "than [a] necessity" (16), "to [the] recently" (17), "Specifying [the] language" (25), "to [the] public" (27), "other than helper modules" (35), "Images/" (39; should be lowercase), "fairtrade" and "fair trade" (46 etc.; should read "fair-trade"), "doesn't" (47; should read "isn't"), "top-" (64), "blocks" (67; should read "block"), "rules" (73; should read "rule"), "as [a] page" (76), "as screen" (93), "field_tax_code" (106-107; should read "field_vat_code"), and "cine" (108; movies and Jamaican coffee have the same pricing?).

Like so many other books in the computer field, this one contains other flaws in the writing, such as semicolons used where commas are called for (e.g., page 5), and the mixing of singular and plural terms (e.g., page 28). However, its quality of writing is better than that of the majority of Packt Publishing's offerings.

Most of this book's screenshots are quite helpful, although a few might cause some confusion, mostly in that they do not reflect what the reader will see in her own installation. Consider only a handful of examples: An image field "Progress indicator" is mentioned (page 39), but not evident in any screenshot nor on the "Product image" edit page in my own installation. The screenshot on page 45 does not include the "Description" field that the reader is instructed to create, two pages earlier. A "Product: Tax code" field is shown (page 57), prior to any tax functionality being implemented in the narrative. The checkout web page is missing a field for an e-mail address (page 80). Alert readers will immediately wonder where in Drupal Commerce they would go to modify the billing fields, but that doesn't seem to be covered (but I could be mistaken).

One may level the charge that this book provides only the information needed to create a fairly simple e-commerce website. But that would be missing the point, because this book is not intended as an exhaustive exposition of the subject. Getting Started with Drupal Commerce is a valuable starting point for anyone interested in learning how to build online stores using Drupal 7.

Michael Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Getting Started with Drupal Commerce from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael Ross writes "An online store is one of the most common use cases for a website nowadays. For those web developers and business owners who choose the current version of Drupal as a basis for such an e-commerce project, the canonical solution is Drupal Commerce. There are numerous online resources for learning Commerce, and yet for the longest time no printed book. Now we have Getting Started with Drupal Commerce, written by Richard Jones." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Getting Started with Drupal Commerce author Richard Jones pages 152 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael Ross ISBN 978-1783280230 summary An introduction to the leading Drupal e-commerce solution This title was released by Packt Publishing on 24 September 2013, under the ISBN 978-1783280230. (This review is based upon a copy of the book kindly provided by the publisher.) On the book's website, visitors can read information about the book, including its table of contents, errata (none listed, as of this writing), and a sample chapter (the third one, on "Planning Your Store").

At first glance, 152 pages may seem wholly inadequate for explaining how to build an online store using Drupal Commerce. However, the table of contents suggests that, within the book's 10 chapters, the author addresses most of the critical topics: installation of the Commerce project, product catalog and classification, product data, shopping cart functionality, the checkout process, shipping services, taxes, order management, discounts, and coupons. A bonus chapter, "Extending Commerce," is not included in the book itself, but is available as a free download. (Readers should note that the URL provided in the book is incorrect, as it is missing the last underscore.)

Prospective readers do not need to know how to program in PHP or Drupal; however, a working knowledge of Drupal site building through the user interface, would be helpful. Anyone who wishes to follow the steps performed in the book for creating the example Commerce site, must have access to a Drupal 7 installation, with sufficient privileges to install and configure modules and set permissions, as needed.

The first chapter, "Introducing Key Concepts," as the title suggests, introduces the reader to the Drupal Commerce package, its overall capabilities, its submodules, and its dependencies. The module list (on page 6) is missing nine entries. Other than that, the material provides a good sense of what is to come. The first chapter, like all the others in the book, concludes with a brief and utterly useless summary. In this case, it states that the readers now "understand the motivation of the developers," even though that was not discussed in the chapter.

Installing Drupal Commerce is the subject of the next chapter. MySQL is listed as a requisite download, but actually MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and SQLite are equally usable. The author mentions Mac OS X and Windows as possible environments, but neglects Linux. Most of the chapter assumes that the reader has elected to use the Acquia Dev Desktop, and it consequently may prove frustrating to anyone who uses a different distribution to get started, or who installs the needed components individually.

As an e-commerce website is developed and (usually) later modified, the participants discover the value in all of the time and effort invested upfront in planning the information needed to track products, customers, payments, and other facets of the operation. Thus the third chapter is arguably one of the most valuable in the book, and should prompt site designers and developers to ask plenty of questions of their clients.

With Chapter 4, "Products," the author begins describing and illustrating the creation of the example website — in this case, a wholesale coffee and tea store based in the UK. At a critical juncture (page 35), the reader is instructed to enable "Commerce Backoffice (Commerce package)" and "Commerce Backoffice (Product package)," which is odd, since all four Commerce Backoffice submodules are in the "Commerce (contrib)" package, and none have those two exact names. Readers may presume that Commerce Backoffice and Commerce Backoffice Product were intended. It later turns out that "Commerce Backoffice content" was also needed. It is possible that the author was using an earlier version of Commerce that had different names, but that's difficult to ascertain because he apparently does not mention which version of Commerce is used in the book.

Chapters 5 and 6 demonstrate how to set up a shopping cart and configure the checkout process. The material should be comprehensible to the typical reader, and possibly a pleasant relief if his head is still spinning from the terminology soup encountered in the fourth chapter. The author explains how to use PayPal for accepting customer payments, and what permissions to set so that visitors to one's store can check out. Strangely enough, there is no discussion as to what permissions, if any, visitors will need for viewing products and adding them to the shopping cart. This might seem obvious to those experienced with Drupal Commerce, but likely will not be to neophytes.

The next two chapters show how to set up flat rate shipping as an option for one's customers, and how to apply a value added tax to each order, including the use of the Rules module for handling special cases flexibly, such as offering free or discounted shipping when the checkout balance exceeds a certain amount on any order not being shipped internationally. Lastly, readers learn how to set up order tracking.

The last three chapters demonstrate how to apply various tax rates to customer orders, how to manage orders on the back-end (such as setting status codes and viewing payment transactions), and how to define discounts and coupons that can be offered to prospective customers. The 11th chapter, on extending Drupal Commerce, should have been included in the published volume itself, as it certainly would not have pushed the page count beyond a reasonable level.

Throughout the book, almost all of the explanations are clear and straightforward, with the only exceptions being the puzzling reference to a "uid property" (page 10), which is not explained, and the use of several different phrases to describe product display nodes (in the fourth chapter). Unfortunately, all of the material apparently assumes that the reader will encounter no problems in trying to perform the same steps, because no troubleshooting resources are mentioned.

Aside from the aforementioned faulty URL on page 2, this book contains too many errata relative to its size: "out of the box" (page 5; missing three hyphens), "Apache based" (page 13; same problem), a space in the URL (page 15), "than [a] necessity" (16), "to [the] recently" (17), "Specifying [the] language" (25), "to [the] public" (27), "other than helper modules" (35), "Images/" (39; should be lowercase), "fairtrade" and "fair trade" (46 etc.; should read "fair-trade"), "doesn't" (47; should read "isn't"), "top-" (64), "blocks" (67; should read "block"), "rules" (73; should read "rule"), "as [a] page" (76), "as screen" (93), "field_tax_code" (106-107; should read "field_vat_code"), and "cine" (108; movies and Jamaican coffee have the same pricing?).

Like so many other books in the computer field, this one contains other flaws in the writing, such as semicolons used where commas are called for (e.g., page 5), and the mixing of singular and plural terms (e.g., page 28). However, its quality of writing is better than that of the majority of Packt Publishing's offerings.

Most of this book's screenshots are quite helpful, although a few might cause some confusion, mostly in that they do not reflect what the reader will see in her own installation. Consider only a handful of examples: An image field "Progress indicator" is mentioned (page 39), but not evident in any screenshot nor on the "Product image" edit page in my own installation. The screenshot on page 45 does not include the "Description" field that the reader is instructed to create, two pages earlier. A "Product: Tax code" field is shown (page 57), prior to any tax functionality being implemented in the narrative. The checkout web page is missing a field for an e-mail address (page 80). Alert readers will immediately wonder where in Drupal Commerce they would go to modify the billing fields, but that doesn't seem to be covered (but I could be mistaken).

One may level the charge that this book provides only the information needed to create a fairly simple e-commerce website. But that would be missing the point, because this book is not intended as an exhaustive exposition of the subject. Getting Started with Drupal Commerce is a valuable starting point for anyone interested in learning how to build online stores using Drupal 7.

Michael Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Getting Started with Drupal Commerce from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael Ross writes "With the advent of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) decades ago, most of the commercially-available software transitioned from command-line usage to point-and-click interfaces, with the majority of these applications completely phasing out all command-line capabilities, or never implementing them in the first place. But for programmers — most of whom are comfortable working on the command line — performing administrative actions within a GUI can become tedious and time-consuming, and there is a growing movement toward adding command-line support back to software development applications. An example of this is Drush, which is a command-line interface for the Drupal content management system. Drush, whose name is derived from "Drupal shell," was originally developed six years ago, and is seeing a resurgence within the Drupal community. However, what appears to be the primary information resource for Drush, the community documentation, currently has a status of "incomplete." Fortunately, there is now a book available that provides more extensive coverage, Drush User's Guide, authored by Requena Juan Pablo Novillo ("juampy"). The book was released by Packt Publishing on 10 April 2012, under the ISBN 978-1849517980. The publisher's page offers descriptions of the book, its table of contents, a brief author biography, the known errata, the example code used in the book, and a free sample chapter (the third one, "Customizing Drush"). This review is based upon a print copy kindly furnished by the publisher; an e-book version is also available." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Drush User's Guide author Requena Juan Pablo Novillo pages 125 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1849517980 summary A tutorial on Drupal's CLI. The book comprises 125 pages, mostly grouped into four chapters, which cover how to install, use, customize, and extend Drush. The preface briefly summarizes those chapters, the software needed to use Drush, the target audience of the book, the styling conventions used in the text, and various publisher information. The author states that "Apache 2.0 or higher" is required to use Drush (page 2), but the project's README.txt does not mention this, and Drupal 7 itself runs fine on Apache 1.3; so this requirement is unclear. He also states that "Drush 4 does not support Windows" (page 13); Windows users are instructed to use Drush 5. This seems questionable, since a quick test revealed that Drush 4.5 runs on a Windows XP machine. Admittedly, it always elicits a warning: "Drush 4.x has significant limitations on Windows; it is not advisable to use on that platform. Substantial progress has been made towards supporing [sic] Windows on the 5.x branch; please upgrade."

The first chapter of the Drush User's Guide naturally begins with instructions on how to install Drush on Linux, Mac, and Windows systems. The book's examples use Drush 4.5, even though 5.1 was available at the time of the book's publication, and 5.0 was available a month earlier. Version 4.5 was the last 4.x release, and was probably the latest stable release when the book was being finalized. Throughout the book, all Windows instructions are specific to Windows 7, so any XP straggler will need to modify them as needed. In the "Manual installation" section, the subheads are almost identical in font size to the higher-level subheads, forcing the reader to check the table of contents hierarchy just to see where the manual installation instructions end. But the main problem is that the reader is not given recommendations as to which optional features should or should not be chosen. For instance, if you already have PHP installed on your system, should you decline to have the Drush installer try to add the "Php [sic] Required Runtime," even though it is enabled by default?

The author then shows how to set up a Drush-specific PHP configuration file, in order to bypass potential problems, such as memory limitations in the default configuration file. In the rest of the chapter, he demonstrates how to perform Drush commands (in general), define arguments and options for those commands, create command aliases, and specify which Drupal website any Drush command is supposed to operate upon.

In the second chapter, "Executing Drush Commands," the author shows the reader how to perform a fresh installation of Drupal 7 — including creation of the database and its tables — with just two commands. He introduces the music festival website that will be used throughout the rest of the book for demonstration purposes. At this point, some readers may hit a stumbling block: The "--drupal-project-rename" option used in the text fails on Windows machines (this is a known issue). Presumably the author did not test his suggested commands in a Windows environment. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to introducing numerous Drush commands, including those used to get and set variables, install modules, administer users, back up the database, and many more.

The author notes that "Drush is highly configurable," and in the third chapter he shows the reader how to create custom commands, include their help information in the output of the command "drush help," extend existing commands, run custom PHP scripts, and define site aliases. Readers new to Drupal may find these topics fairly advanced, as they necessitate familiarity with command namespaces, as well as Drupal's hook system, callbacks, and database API. Defining remote site aliases involves SSH and public keys. However, given the flexibility and power of custom Drush functionality, it is arguably worthwhile to make the effort to learn how to do it properly. At the end of the chapter, the reader learns how to use and configure the Drush command-line interface.

The fourth and final chapter, "Extending Drush," discusses how to utilize some of the modules that are integrated with Drush — specifically, Backup and Migrate, Devel, Features, Views, and Module Builder. The chapter concludes with a section on Drush Make, which packages the module information of a Drupal website so it can be re-created using Drush easily.

As with all of the Packt Publishing titles that I have reviewed, this one has a high number of errata relative to the total page count, aside from the seven already reported online (as of this writing): "command line interface" (page 1; "command line" should be hyphenated when used as an adjective), "book title through the subject" (same page; should be "book title in the subject"), "Clear cache" (page 7; should be "Clear all caches"), "follow [the] instructions" (page 13), "close [it] and open [it] again" (page 18), "try and" (page 21; should be "try to"), "change version by something" ("by" should be "to"), "parenthesis" (page 23, twice; should be "parentheses"), "within [the] sites subdirectory" (page 25), "execute commands towards" (page 26; "towards" should be "on"), "MySql's" (page 28; should be "MySQL database's"), "provided with it" (should be "provided it with"), "that resolves" (page 29; should be "resolves"), "First, of all" (page 33), "anoying" (page 48), "Imagine, that" (page 52), "lists [the] latest messages" (page 55), and "altering existing" (page 57; should be "alter existing"). At this point, not yet halfway through the book, I stopped recording errata. The Packt Publishing copyeditors should have spotted and fixed these obvious errors.

Although the author's meaning is invariably clear enough, the writing style is awkward in many places. For instance, "replace by" (page 4) should instead be "replace with," "take the chance to review" (page 41) should be "take the opportunity to review," and "of the flow" (page 55) should be "in the flow." The term "at" is used to indicate "in" a file — e.g., "at the Drush README.txt" (page 9); the same is true for MySQL tables — e.g., "stored at the variable table" (page 30). In addition, countless passages in the text would have benefited from a comma. Conversely, there are some extraneous commas (e.g., on page 43).

Yet the main flaw of the book is the neglect for readers who are using the Windows operating system for building and administering Drupal websites. The aforesaid "--drupal-project-rename" bug likely would have been caught had the Drush pm-download command been tested on a Windows computer. Another example is on page 48, where it is assumed that the command "firefox" will work as a link to the browser's executable on the reader's computer. Also, the ".drush" folder is critical for creating site aliases and other configuration settings; but where will the Windows user find this folder? This Linux partiality could result in Windows readers encountering — and possibly being frustrated by — confusing technical problems.

Nonetheless, the author does a fine job of explaining how to utilize the many Drush commands presented, as well as many of their arguments and options — oftentimes pointing out differences in their usage for Drupal 6 versus Drupal 7. Any Drupal developer interested in learning how to harness the power of a command-line interface for building and administering websites, should find Drush User's Guide a worthwhile tutorial.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Drush User's Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael Ross writes "All the leading content management systems (CMSs), including Drupal, use a combination of source code, in files, and user/configuration data, in a database. There may be some mixing of the two types of components — such as configuration settings stored in small files, or JavaScript code stored in the database — but most CMS-based websites generally employ this separation. One significant benefit is that updates to the non-custom code (the CMS's "core") can be easily made without overwriting user data or custom configuration settings. However, each website has its own copy of the core code, even if the websites reside on the same server — which wastes disk space and wastes developer time when all of those instances of core need to be updated. Thus there is growing interest in running multiple websites on a single core instance, despite the dearth of documentation for how to do so. For those in the Drupal world, one resource is a new book by Matt Butcher, Drupal 7 Multi Sites Configuration." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal 7 Multi Sites Configuration author Matt Butcher pages 100 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1849518000 summary A tutorial on how to run multiple Drupal 7 web sites from a single installation. Released on 26 March 2012 by Packt Publishing under the ISBN 978-1849518000, the book spans 100 pages, organized into five chapters. For developers familiar with the subject — particularly those who have read the (few) articles that cover Drupal multisite — it may seem inconceivable that such a subject could fill an entire book. Yet for the countless Drupal developers and administrators who have encountered critical problems in implementing the advice proffered in the aforesaid articles, a definitive book could be invaluable. Even a brief perusal of the book's table of contents will show that there are more topics to be covered than one might have imagined. This review is based upon a print copy of the book kindly provided by the publisher. An electronic edition is available as well. More details can be found on the publisher's page, where visitors will find an overview, a table of contents, a brief author biography, and links for purchasing the print and electronic versions of the book.

In the first chapter, the author presents the fundamental ideas and many benefits of basing multiple Drupal websites on a single code base, known as "multi-site hosting." He discusses the most common configuration options, and then focuses on the one used throughout the book, namely, Drupal's built-in multi-site capability. One thinks of Drupal (and any other PHP applications) as running on top of the web server layer (typically Apache); so readers will likely be confused by the statement that virtual hosting "is a layer higher than Drupal's multi-site feature" (page 8). Aside from that, the discussion is straightforward.

The second half of the chapter provides detailed instructions on two methods for setting up a server for multi-site usage. The first method utilizes virtualization, specifically VirtualBox and Vagrant, which supposedly are ideal for spinning up disposable websites. However, the instructions for "Installing our tailored Vagrant project" quickly become problematic: The MultiSite Drupal Vagrant Profile directs the user to perform a git clone command, and then "cd multisite_drupal_vagrant_profile," which works fine, as that directory exists. But the next step, on page 15 of the book, calls for the reader to cd into "multisite_vagrant," which does not exist. Was the aforesaid directory intended? Apparently so, as otherwise the third command, "vagrant up," fails. Windows users, at the very least, may find these steps and those that follow to be quite perplexing. In my case, both VirtualBox and Vagrant initially appeared to fail installation; yet upon trying them again, they were apparently running. But certain operations discussed in the book, were never executed. I slogged my way through numerous cryptic error messages, and eventually gave up. Any other reader who experiences anything similar may also chuckle at the author's claim that "This made it easy to get an entire server environment configured and running without dealing with the nuances of configuration" (page 17). The second method presented for setting up a multi-site environment is to manually configure Apache and MySQL. Even though this approach is probably what most readers will settle upon, it is sadly given a backseat to Vagrant.

In the second chapter, "Installing Drupal for Multi-site," the author explains how to perform the standard Drupal 7 installation, but for three example instances. For those readers unable to get the Vagrant method working fully, or who for some other reason choose not to use it, the author's frequent references to Vagrant will likely be increasingly annoying. Fortunately, it tapers off about halfway through the chapter, as the author explicates the details of multi-site configuration, concluding with some tips on where the reader can find assistance if she encounters any difficulties during an install. The only flaw is, on page 41, where the author states that "the lines that typically need changing are highlighted," but none of them are.

The complexities of sharing configuration settings among multiple websites, compose the first topic addressed in the third chapter. All of the technical information appears to be sound, except for the advice on page 46 to add the line "global $conf;" in the shared settings PHP file, which is included in the site-specific settings files. A "global" keyword would only be needed if the line setting the array value $conf['site_slogan'] were inside a function, in which case the variable $conf would have only local scope without the keyword. The PHP documentation on variable scope notes that, for a (non-global) variable, its "scope spans included and required files as well." (I confirmed this with a quick test, in which a shared settings file changed the slogans of two different websites.) The author then explains how to share modules and themes among multiple websites, or keep them separate. The chapter concludes with information on how subthemes in separate Drupal 7 instances can use a single base theme.

The fourth chapter, "Updating Multi-site Drupal," focuses on the administration of multiple websites sharing Drupal code. Readers will learn of the numerous pitfalls that can catch the unwary (or at least the inexact). The fifth and final chapter, "Advanced Multi-sites," continues the discussion of other factors that can complicate and undermine working off a single Drupal code base: favicons in themes, robots.txt files, shared authentication, shared content, and other topics that one may never encounter if only working with simple websites — but could be critical otherwise. The only readily apparent flaw is his referring to the project at http://drupal.org/project/virtual_site as "the Virtual Site module" (page 80), when in fact it is the Virtual Sites module — not be confused with the actual Virtual Site module.

Unlike most Packt Publishing books, this one contains relatively few errata: "served [a] few" (on the first "About the Reviewers" page), "start its" (page 17; should read "start it"), "Drupal looks for, for site configuration" (page 30), "trouble shooting" (42), and a missing ")" in the first sentence on page 67. Scattered throughout the book are several instances of title case used inappropriately when referring to generic concepts that are not proper names, e.g., "Version Control System" (page 10). Fortunately, all of these flaws are quite minor, and should have been caught by the publisher's production team.

Some of the narrative is a bit redundant, such as a question being asked at the end of one section, only to be repeated at the beginning of the next section, sometimes more than once. The (unneeded) chapter summaries add to the repetition, as do the introductory paragraphs of each chapter, many of which merely tell the reader what she just read in the previous chapter. Yet the author's narrative style is generally clear and easy to understand.

The main problem with this book is the VirtualBox and Vagrant pair — specifically, the (unjustified) heavy emphasis upon them, and the spotty instructions for configuring them, which could easily confuse and discourage readers. The information is mostly confined to the first two chapters, yet all of it should have been left out, or consolidated and relegated to an appendix — especially as most readers would not use Vagrant for their development environments, and probably no one would use it for a live production environment.

But for anyone interested in setting up multiple Drupal-based websites that share a single code base, these blemishes are of little consequence. Although modest in size, Drupal 7 Multi Sites Configuration provides the most thorough coverage to date of this worthwhile yet oft-neglected subject.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Drupal 7 Multi Sites Configuration from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "If you need a theme for a web site based on Drupal 7, then you have a few options for obtaining one. You could go with an existing theme, but the current crop of prebuilt themes is even more limited for Drupal 7 than its predecessor. You could hire a dedicated Drupal themer to create one for you. Or, to avoid the expense, you could try to build your own. In that case, you will need to get up to speed on the changes in the Drupal presentation layer. Unfortunately, most of the Drupal 7 books devote only one or two chapters to the topic. Several Drupal training firms offer video instruction, but the bulk of their material is still geared to version 6, or even 5. The online documentation is of little help. Yet there is a book that is wholly dedicated to the topic: Drupal 7 Themes, authored by Ric Shreves." Read on for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal 7 Themes author Ric Shreves pages 320 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1849512763 summary A guide on how to work with and create themes in Drupal 7. This title was released by Packt Publishing on 24 May 2011, under the ISBN 978-1849512763. This review is based on a print version of the book, kindly provided by the publisher. An e-book version — in both the PDF and Mobipocket formats — is available from the publisher's page. Visitors will also find a book description, the table of contents, a sample chapter (the seventh one, "Dynamic Theming"), and, elsewhere on their site, the reported errata (only one at this time). None of the example code presented in the book appears to be downloadable — probably because there is little of it. Like so many Packt Publishing titles, this one is relatively slender compared to other publishers' Drupal books, at 320 pages. The material is organized into ten chapters, as well as an extensive appendix occupying a quarter of the book. The preface notes that the only requisite knowledge is "basic experience of working with Drupal," as well as HTML, CSS, and, optionally, some basic knowledge of PHP. This book is a revised and expanded edition of his previous book, Drupal 6 Themes.

The first chapter provides an overview of the basic concepts of Drupal theming, including its purpose, its customization capabilities, the intercept/override paradigm, sub-themes, some online resources, theme engines, theming output, front-end versus admin themes, the default Drupal 7 themes, and theme files. It is a decent introduction, but would likely be more helpful to theming newbies if the basic concepts — such as what themes are — were discussed prior to more advanced topics — such as intercepting and overriding. All of the material is clear, except for the reference on page 21 to "the Add Shortcut icon," which is not identified or apparently even present in the referenced screenshot. Chapter 2 covers the basics of the configuration settings for themes (global and specific), blocks, and regions, as well as how to install and uninstall themes. It can be safely skipped by anyone familiar with administering a Drupal site.

PHPTemplate has become the de facto templating engine in Drupal, and is introduced in the third chapter. The author focuses on the key files that compose a Drupal theme, and for illustrative purposes uses two themes built into Drupal 7: Seven and Bartik. The author of the latter, Jen Simmons, a female web designer, is oddly referenced in the masculine (page 80). The subsequent chapter gets off to a poor start with nine paragraphs that essentially state the same thing, over and over. But it eventually delves into the critical topics of default templates, themeable functions, individual styles, and whole stylesheets, as well as how they can be overridden using custom CSS and PHP code, including template preprocessing functions. The theory is later illustrated with a focused examination of Bartik. It is with this material that the author begins digging into the technical details of how custom Drupal theming is accomplished.

Chapter 5, "Customizing an Existing Theme," demonstrates how to create a sub-theme, in order to leverage the functionality of a base theme. Readers may be confused as to why the author chose to not present his list of recommended base themes, until the next chapter. After all, readers presumably would want to know the optimal candidates for starter themes while first learning how to select and use them. This confusion could have been avoided had the author explained that those are not just base themes, but starter themes. More importantly, the narrative contains a technical error: On page 115, readers are told that "This is a requirement for a valid sub-theme; you need at least one stylesheet." Testing shows that assertion to be untrue; only a .info file is required. Four pages later, readers are told to refresh Drupal's cached registry to see changes to the template files and theme functions, which contradicts the tip on page 94 that such refreshes are only needed when theme functions or templates are added or removed, but not if they are changed. Aside from these blemishes, the material presented is more than adequate to help get readers started with sub-theming.

Some readers will likely be disappointed that the first half of Chapter 6 discusses how to build a theme using a base theme — the previous chapter's topic — except instead of Bartik as the base theme, a more basic starter theme, Fusion, is used. Aside from that, it's the same process, and large chunks of the text are duplicated — even the erroneous claim of a stylesheet being required (page 130). Finally, the reader arrives at the second half of the chapter, which explains how to create a new theme from scratch. Other sections of the book are referenced heavily, which is possible because the first five chapters have set the stage for this topic.

With Chapter 7, the author takes the earlier introductions to theme templates, and explores them in much greater detail, showing how to separately theme specific groups of pages, including a site's homepage, as well as regions, blocks, and specific elements on a page. The author states (page 158) that all the theming baseline variables are documented inside of the page.tpl.php file, but that only seems to be true for the Bartik and Zen themes. Also, the concept of a block delta is not adequately explained or illustrated. Otherwise, this chapter provides more content and less repetition than most of the others. It concludes with a discussion of CSS classes dynamically generated by Drupal.

Traditionally, one of the most problematic areas of web design is the styling of forms — the focus of Chapter 8. The forms that are built into Drupal by default — user, search, poll, and administration — are presented from a functional standpoint. It is then shown how they can be modified using half a dozen techniques, with varying levels of control over the output and the amount of complexity in achieving that control. The next chapter looks more broadly at other difficult aspects of Drupal theming — including cross-browser compatibility, accessibility, validation, theming the output of various core modules, and many more topics. Some of the tips provided could be quite valuable if and when the reader is stymied by one such problem or another. The final chapter, "Useful Extensions for Themers," introduces a number of helpful tools, most of which are contributed modules. The book concludes with a lengthy and detailed appendix that lists the files, paths, and descriptions for all of the theming system-wide functions and mostly the core module-specific templates.

The author's writing style is conversational, with generally comprehensible explanations. But there are a few baffling phrases, such as "displayed in courtesy of a conditional statement" (page 70); and the common phrase "you likely need to" is twisted into "you are likely needed to" (page 119), which actually has a different meaning. All sorts of phrases are set in title case, without reason, such as "Dev Server" (page 111). Something else that may be difficult to fathom, is that the book's code does not reflect the fact that Drupal.org transitioned from CVS to Git for version control, in February 2011, three months before publication of Drupal 7 Themes.

There is a fair amount of redundant information, even on the same page — such as the theme settings instructions, in duplicate on page 36, and partly repeated again on the next page. Each chapter concludes with a summary, which in most cases is of no benefit to the reader, given how short most of the chapters are. Far too much of the text is presented in bracketed and indented warnings and tips. For instance, page 180 has no fewer than four such blocks of text, and they take up most of the page. In fact, there are several places where a paragraph of the main narrative is inexplicably turned into a warning, indented with large brackets (e.g., pages 71 and 95).

Punctuation is another area where this book could be improved. Most computer programmers use far too few commas in their writing, but this book demonstrates the opposite problem in several places, such as twice on page 71. On the other hand, there are places where a comma could have made the narrative more clear upon first reading. Fortunately, this problem is not nearly as prevalent as seen in the preface, which appears to have been written by someone whose first language is not English. As with most books written by techies, this one contains too many exclamation marks — invariably an indication that the author is trying to make a dull subject seem more exciting. Fortunately, most of this is limited to the early material, and dissipates as the author settles into the important topics. Lastly, there are many spots where the wrong punctuation symbol is used, e.g., a comma trying to perform the duties of a semicolon.

Seemingly every Packt title contains a long list of errata, and this one is no exception: "focuses is on" (page 2), "you Drupal 7 site" (2), "Identifying" (2), "access to [a] Drupal 7 installation" (3), "Addition[al] tools" (3), "function [of] Drupal themes" (11), "an as" (24; should read "as an"), "Supports [a] four-column area" (24), "all/ themes" (30), "those global setting[s]" (40), "<none>" (49; should read "- None -"), "jump[ ]start" (56), "a temporary CSS files" (87), "in [the] last style sheet" (89), "go ahead [and] make" (100), "Why it is" (113; should read "Why is it"), "functionbartik_menu_tree" and "functionjeanb_menu_tree" (123; similar mistakes are seen on pages 181, 189, and 195), "be name[d]" (124), "cssto" (130), "the advantages" (147), "is it" (151; should read "it is"), and "different appearance[s]" (153). At this point, roughly halfway through the book, I stopped recording errata. Packt Publishing's copyeditors should have spotted and fixed these problems, as well as those scattered throughout the rest of the manuscript.

Yet the major weakness of this book is the extensive repetition of material — ranging from the paragraph level (one paragraph repeating information from earlier, nearby ones) to the chapter level (e.g., Chapter 6's wholesale copy-and-paste of material from the previous chapter). Also, the book would have been more current if it addressed the critical web design topics of responsive design, media queries, and how they can be employed in Drupal theming. But it is possible that constraints of space and available time for this project, prevented the inclusion of these advanced topics.

Aside from these problems, and those mentioned earlier, this book does a fine job of explaining the key concepts, and demonstrating them in sample code. Drupal 7 Themes is possibly the best available resource for anyone who wants to learn how Drupal themes work, and how to build custom themes.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Drupal 7 Themes from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "In the evolution of the Web, one of the most significant improvements was the general transition from static websites based only upon HTML, to dynamic websites based upon scripting languages. But even then, each website was much like a silo, with no publication of content beyond the pages provided on the site itself. That all began to change with content syndication through RSS, and the development of web application APIs. Nowadays, a growing number of organizations are publishing online content through web services, as well as consuming content published by others. These sites can be built using Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS). Drupal Web Services, a book authored by Trevor James, aims to help web programmers do that sort of development." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal Web Services author Trevor James pages 320 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1849510981 summary A guide to connecting a Drupal website to external services. Released by Packt Publishing on 24 December 2010, under the ISBN 978-1849510981, this book is the only one currently on the market that focuses on how to "integrate social and multimedia web services and applications with your Drupal Web site" (to quote from the book's marketing copy). Its 320 pages are organized into a dozen chapters and one appendix. The publisher makes available a web page with a description of the book, its table of contents, and a sample chapter (Chapter 9, "Twitter and Drupal"). The page notes that readers do not have to have any programming expertise, but should be familiar with the use and administration of a Drupal site. The book covers Drupal 6, as version 7 had not been finalized and released until a couple weeks after the book's publication. Visitors can also read the reported errata (of which there are none, as of this writing), and download the example code used in nine of the chapters. (This review is based on a print copy the publisher kindly provided. An e-book version is also available.)

The first chapter serves as an introduction to web services at a high level, including remote procedure calls (RPC), as well as some of the most commonly used protocols, with some focus on Representational State Transfer (REST). The author then gives several examples of web services that can be consumed by a Drupal website, and others where the site provides the service. This material is a fine overview, although nonprogrammers may be scared away unnecessarily by the inclusion of coding details, such as the Mollom service requests. Also, the writing style is rather repetitious in some places, e.g., "it will cost you to sign up for it. It's not a free service" (page 16). More amusingly, on page 9, the author states, "The computer that contains the application [] can be anywhere in the world," and then adds, "It could be sitting on a server in the US, Europe, Asia, South America, or somewhere else" — as if any reader might be unfamiliar with the major regions of the world. On the other hand, some readers may appreciate a slower narrative pace. Yet most troubling of all is the claim (on page 12) that many of the popular web applications are based on PHP (as is Drupal), and thus we have the advantage of "a common programming language." That contradicts the whole point of web services, namely, sharing data and other resources among websites regardless of those sites' underlying technologies. A typical web service does not transmit source code, hence its language is irrelevant, as is the language of any other website with which it interacts. (This so-called advantage is never substantiated, or even explained, anywhere in the book.)

The next four chapters take a detailed look at how a Drupal website can consume third-party web services, beginning with the use of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) in general, and two contributed modules in particular (the SOAP Client module, and the FedEx Shipping Quotes module — which depends upon the Ubercart shopping cart module). The discussion of the topics is complete and straightforward, with screenshots as needed to show what administrative forms need to be filled out by anyone following the instructions. This approach is followed in the subsequent three chapters, which show how to use the web services of Flickr, Amazon, CDN2, and Kaltura. Chapter 5 discusses video, and thus its coverage of the Media:Flickr module for turning photos into slideshows should have been placed in the third chapter, which was devoted to Flickr.

Chapter 6, which focuses on the use of the Services module, essentially begins the second part of the book, because the reader starts learning how to make a site provide web services, i.e., no longer acting solely as a client — although there are some cases where web services are consumed at the same time as they are offered to outside clients. The Services module works in conjunction with other Drupal modules that implement web service methods (SOAP, REST, JSON, etc.). All of the examples are helpful, but the photo_service_all() function on page 136 is odd, because the author states that it returns an array of nodes, but the code suggests instead that it returns the nodes' content, concatenated together as a string. Similar to the first part of the book, the remaining chapters in the second part focus on specific web services: CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, TypePad, Mollom, Google Docs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Chapter 12 explores the authentication services OpenID and OAuth, but strangely ends by stating that it is time to test the OAuth connection, with no explanation as to how to do so. Incidentally, to Drupal administrators unfamiliar with the use of the Views module, the first sentence on page 205 will likely be quite confusing, because it conflates fields with filters. (The phrase "filters in" should be replaced by "includes" or "uses.") Also perplexing is that on pages 209-210, the author advises the use of "http://" instead of "www." in short URLs, but two pages later the results show the opposite. The phrase "FBML is now considered by Facebook" is baffling; considered what by Facebook? Lastly, the author states that OAuth will be tested with Digg (page 259), but that is not covered.

The book's sole appendix briefly presents each of the major contributed modules used, organized by chapter. For each module, there is a brief summary of its purpose, the current maintainers and version, and links to its project page and usage statistics. Two passages in Chapters 7 and 8 suggest that the book's appendix was not finished as intended: The author states (page 150), "I've attached the code for the recaptchalib.php file as an appendix in this book," but that does not appear to be the case — which is fortunate, because the book should not be made longer by including source code that is easily available to the reader. On page 177, we are told that the appendix explains how to install Acquia Drupal, but it does not.

The figures used in the book are, for the most part, quite handy, to see the results — especially for the reader following along who does not want to implement all of the instructions. However, the first screenshot on page 103 and the second screenshot on page 114, were incorrectly swapped for one another, and thus do not match the respective descriptions in the text.

Even though the writing quality of this title is a bit better than the typical programming book nowadays, there are some problems. Countless verbs are prefixed by the (useless) phrase "go ahead and" — to the extent that the reader will be sick of it by the time he reaches the end of the book. Occasionally the phrasing is rather puzzling. For instance, on page 131, the screenshot shows that a list of field names should be separated by commas, with no spaces. The author's explanation is "Make sure to not avoid spaces"

There are a couple instances in the book where critical configuration settings are not introduced or explained until after the reader is told that he will see results from following all of the earlier steps (which include most of the configuration settings). For example, in Chapter 4, the author instructs the reader to install the Amazon, CCK, and Features modules, and test everything using the Amazon Examples module. Pages later — possibly after the reader has been frustrated in trying to get the example scenario to work — he is told how to configure the Features module to enable the Amazon Examples features.

As with most Packt titles, the copyediting is quite poor, with inconsistent punctuation and plenty of errata that should have been caught in the production process: "and and" (on the "About the author" page), "at [the] time" (page 3), "try and access" (page 11; should read "try to access"), "a RPC" (page 15), "[a] server API" (18), "APress" (22), "is a not a" (25), "delivery Information" (43), "on how" (70), "to to" (89), "you [c]an" (94), "extention" (97), "the the" (106), "user Drupal user" (184), "se e" (198), "CMS(" (232), "both the methods" (252), "Try it both methods" (258), and "sign [in] to" (259). There are countless places where the term "the" is missing, e.g., twice on page 16. The menu path delimiter used is sometimes ">" (e.g., page 226), but usually "|," which makes each menu path look too much like page links in a footer.

However, the main problem with the narrative is that the author repeats information — in most cases not just once, but numerous times. For example, in the second chapter, we are told three times that the author will present the SOAP and FedEx shipping quotes modules. By the time the reader reaches page 33, he likely will already be tired of being told the same information. But on that page alone, the author goes over the same ground two more times. In fact, the beginning of the second paragraph sounds like a copy of the first. Compounding the problem, the author will frequently take some of the material from the main section where it is discussed, and add it to the tail end of the previous section — somewhat like a preview, but wholly unnecessary. Packt Publishing's content editors should have caught and weeded out this redundancy. Each chapter ends with a summary, which add no value and exacerbate the repetitiveness of the chapters' main content. One glaring example of redundancy, in the last chapter, is the second go-round of how to define a Twitter application, which had already been covered in Chapter 9.

Yet one advantage to repeating explanations, is that no reader will miss key instructions. This would be most advantageous to readers skimming the material at a fast pace, or anyone new to administering a Drupal website and consequently lacking in confidence. Anyone reading this book will likely be impressed by the way that the author patiently steps the reader through every process. Due to the detailed explanations, each chapter stands on its own, thereby making it possible for the reader to learn a particular topic without having to read any of the earlier chapters. This also makes the book valuable not just as the tutorial, but for reference purposes.

With clear and thorough explanations, Drupal Web Services would be an solid resource for anyone who wants to connect a Drupal-based site to any web service, including the major social media applications.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance website developer and writer.

You can purchase Drupal Web Services from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

KuanH writes "Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide is billed as a complete guide to using Amazon's SimpleDB database API. It's most detailed for PHP. It's helpful for Python. But the Java code and explanations aren't up to the standard of the others. It includes a primer on using Amazon S3 with SimpleDB: files stored on S3, file metadata stored in SimpleDB — again, less good for Java. It also covers tuning to reduce usage costs, caching using memcached, and ways to batch-update and make serial or parallel requests to SimpleDB. However, it's missing some information that beginners might need, and it's perhaps not quite advanced enough for the more experienced. Downloadable example code is available only for PHP." Keep reading for the rest of Kuan's review. Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide author Prabhakar Chaganti, Rich Helms pages 252 publisher Packt Publishing rating 6 reviewer Kuan Hon ISBN 1847197345 summary "Getting started" guide to using Amazon's SimpleDB cloud database Say "cloud" to get the attention of CIOs seeking to cut costs in these recessionary times. One well known "database in the cloud" option is Amazon Web Services' SimpleDB, which Amazon describes as "a highly available, flexible, and scalable non-relational data store that offloads the work of database administration."

Those who prefer traditional relational databases could try eg Amazon RDS. This book only covers SimpleDB, a NoSQL or non-relational database. As is well known, NoSQL databases grew in popularity with the growth of large distributed systems and cloud computing, and their proponents tout their scalability and speed.

For anyone wanting a quick primer on NoSQL databases, this book includes a chapter on NoSQL which isn't limited to SimpleDB. It outlines some key conceptual differences between NoSQL and relational database management systems, with pros and cons, using the analogy of "a spreadsheet with some XML characteristics", and illustrating with some concrete examples. That chapter's been made available as a free sample chapter (SimpleDB versus RDBMS), so you can get a flavour of the book.

The contents list for this book is online, I won't recite it here. As well as an overview of SimpleDB, its terminology and advantages, the book goes through signing up with AWS and SimpleDB, and the account access keys. That chapter is also online, as a tutorial.

You may ask, how does this book differ from Amazon's free SimpleDB documentation, which includes a developer guide and a "getting started" guide? Amazon's own "getting started" is certainly helpful, and it's worth downloading and trying their web app scratchpad. But Amazon's detailed developer guide concentrates on REST and SOAP requests, which most people wouldn't want to deal with direct at that low level.

This book's focus is on using the SimpleDB web services API through certain specific languages and libraries — namely Java (JDK6 — using the typical 1.6 library plus several dependencies), Python (2.5 — you need boto), and PHP (with curl). It recommends the SDBtool Firefox extension (SDBizo), which is excellent for checking the results of running the code.

I've tried the book's Java and Python examples, on Windows. Not PHP, as I've not got round to learning PHP yet, though I skimmed the PHP explanations. Similarly, I've not had time to try it all over again on Linux. Generally, the book's coverage seems fuller and better for PHP than for Java or Python. Perhaps it was originally written for PHP, and the rest was bolted on — the stuff for Java more hurriedly than for Python?

The downloadable code samples, as mentioned, are PHP only. They really should have provided downloadable code for all 3 languages, plus some fake MP3 files (see later). If you get the e-book (available in PDF and epub), you can copy and paste the Java or Python code. But that's a tad tedious, especially when the code runs onto a new page, and there are stray end of lines etc that you have to delete manually. Furthermore, the Python code provided is for the interpreter in interactive mode (not for .py files, except a couple towards the end). So, for the Python, you also have to copy/paste each line one at a time. But that still beats having to re-type pages of code in full.

In other words, if you want this book and you're only interested in PHP, you can get away with just buying the hard copy and downloading the code from the Packt site. But if you prefer Python or Java, to save your fingers and blood pressure you should buy just the e-version, or get both paper and e books together. I really hope Packt will in future provide downloadable code samples for all the languages covered.

I have more issues with the sample code given in this book. The typical imports should have been spelled out in the example Java code. Eclipse offers more than one possible import in some cases. It was "try everything till it works", at least until I found this tutorial. I've included the initial required typical imports (though not the standard java.util etc ones) in my own list of points, which I'll say more about at the end of this review. Surely it wouldn't have been difficult to include just those few lines of imports, which could have saved readers a lot of time trying to work out the correct imports. There are also errors in the Python code, and on one page the code that should have been included is missing altogether.

Now, more on the book proper. After the overview described above, this book walks you through the basic SimpleDB operations: how to create a SimpleDB "domain" (equivalent to a worksheet in a spreadsheet), list domains, create/retrieve items (like spreadsheet rows), and delete domains.

Items have attributes (spreadsheet column headings), as key:value pairs — the key is the attribute name, the value is its value, eg address:1 Acacia Avenue. An attribute can have more than one value, eg the same item can have both address:1 Acacia Avenue and address:2 Broadway. The book also lists the SimpleDB constraints on domains, items and attributes — maximum number or size, etc — but it's best to check the AWS site for the latest info.

Code examples are given for each of the 3 languages mentioned. The examples are similar, but don't always cover the same ground. If they'd done that, where possible, it would have been more helpful to those of us trying examples in more than one language. One advantage of a book with associated website is that electronic updates can be published, and it would have been great if that had been done for this book. For instance, the book gave conditional put/delete code examples only for PHP. At the date of this review, boto now supports those features, but sample supplemental Python code for that still hadn't been made available.

SimpleDB stores attribute values as UTF-8 strings. This means that comparisons for sorting or searching are done lexicographically (character by character, left to right, numbers take precedence over uppercase over lowercase), and to handle numbers or dates you have to encode and decode them yourself. So, the book has a chapter explaining lexicographical comparison, data types, and how to encode and decode data to enable proper sorting and comparison of numbers, dates, Boolean values and XML-restricted characters. In the case of numbers this means zero padding and offsets, and there's example code for decoding and encoding numbers. Unlike with PHP and Python, oddly the Java code given was for the body of the typical method that carries out the encoding etc. This could have been omitted, and they should have given example code illustrating the method's usage instead. Similarly for the date formats code.

The SimpleDB query syntax is generally covered well, in a chapter which takes readers through first creating a sample database of song metadata to run queries against. It's not too painful copy/pasting the Java code (3+ pages), but with Python in interactive mode I drew the line at creating every song item and attributes using individual statements, even with pasting, so I just tried adding a couple of random ones to test that the code worked. I say again, full downloadable code please...!

That chapter then gives helpful examples of queries against the sample database and their results, including for more complex combined queries ("and", "or" type queries, "not" etc), and querying for multiple-value attributes. It also provides code examples for sorting and counting query results. But the Java code for retrieving an item's attributes wouldn't run, and I couldn't find the method used (getItemsAttributes()) detailed in the typical documentation; perhaps the book is out of date here?

The book starts going beyond the basics from Chapter 7 onwards, with a chapter on Amazon's S3 storage service — another well known component of Amazon Web Services, where "objects" (files) may be stored in "buckets" (directories), with "keys" used to retrieve objects.

For S3, the book uses JetS3t for Java. However, the Java code given for uploading files to S3 didn't demonstrate any integration with SimpleDB at all — the files were just uploaded with their filenames as the S3 keys, and the code didn't seem to deal with the creation of your own custom S3 keys for uploaded objects. In contrast, the Python code generated the S3 keys for the files from hashes previously produced and stored in the SimpleDB database, as well as dealing with their uploading. In addition, for me the Java code for downloading files from S3 just wouldn't run, and also it wasn't clear where the files were supposed to be downloaded to locally, unlike with the Python example. Inexplicably, there was no info on how to delete objects from S3 buckets, or indeed how to delete buckets. So, while the S3 chapter is of help, it could definitely do with being expanded, especially the Java sections.

Next, money money money. AWS charges are based on usage, so the chapter on tuning and usage costs has some practical value in explaining how SimpleDB is charged for, the "BoxUsage" value returned by requests to SimpleDB, using BoxUsage to optimize queries and compute costs, and how to get BoxUsage values back with your queries using Java, Python etc. There are code examples that, when run, illustrate the different BoxUsage values you get when you use different operators or expressions in queries (eg, using LIKE costs more).

However, partitioning your data into multiple domains is covered in only a few paragraphs, with no code given. I'd have liked to see more info on that, and some sample code for the partitioning process.

To further save money, you can use a cache to store data locally, trying your local cache first; and, only if the data is not there, would your app go out to SimpleDB and incur costs for querying it. This book accordingly has a chapter on how to install and use the popular open source caching system memcached to cache your query results locally. (CacheLite for PHP is also covered.) Again, the Java sections caused me some frustration. The Java test code showed that the memcached server was running properly on my machine, but the Java code for using the cache just didn't work; it ran, but continued to query SimpleDB direct. The Python code, however, worked perfectly — except that, if you're using memcached in Windows, you'll need to use port 11211 instead of what's shown in the book. (I didn't try it in Linux.)

Finally, the book deals with running parallel operations against SimpleDB, using its BatchPutAttributes. The section on updating SimpleDB in Python by making serial consecutive calls to SimpleDB is completely missing the code for the script, but the book does then cover inserting multiple items concurrently into SimpleDB using a threadpool in Java. It also gives sample Python code for alternative ways of parallelising requests: using Python's built-in threading module, threading and queues combined, then threading using the open source workerpool module.

To conclude, in substance the book has a fair amount of useful information on the basics of getting started with SimpleDB, particularly for Python (and probably PHP). But not providing downloadable code samples in Java and Python, or "fake" MP3 files to try S3 uploading/downloading, is a minus.

Some errors, inconsistencies and missing information from the department of "I-wish-they'd-included-this-even-if-they-thought-it-was-basic-as-it's-too-easily-missed-if-it's-not-spelled-out", mean that the book is not really "complete", and not as suitable as it should be for relative beginners — especially for Java and (in whatever language) Windows. It wouldn't take much extra work to get it up to scratch on that front. Perhaps the next edition, or better still an online update/supplement?

For the more experienced, the book doesn't take readers to as advanced a stage as it could have, in my view. In particular, it would have been good to have more info and example code on partitioning data between different domains, and also how to migrate data from an existing database to SimpleDB — their code for "importing" the sample database literally just adds each item and attribute individually.

Fix the errors, add the missing info for beginners, provide downloads of code in all relevant languages and "fake files", and I'd have given it a 7. Provide working sample Java code with more explanation, plus proper integration with S3, an 8. Add fuller info on partitioning, migration, and perhaps even integration with yet more AWS services, a 9.

All opinions are personal to me: half geek, half lawyer, mostly harmless. I'm researching legal issues in cloud computing.

You can purchase Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

KuanH writes "Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide is billed as a complete guide to using Amazon's SimpleDB database API. It's most detailed for PHP. It's helpful for Python. But the Java code and explanations aren't up to the standard of the others. It includes a primer on using Amazon S3 with SimpleDB: files stored on S3, file metadata stored in SimpleDB — again, less good for Java. It also covers tuning to reduce usage costs, caching using memcached, and ways to batch-update and make serial or parallel requests to SimpleDB. However, it's missing some information that beginners might need, and it's perhaps not quite advanced enough for the more experienced. Downloadable example code is available only for PHP." Keep reading for the rest of Kuan's review. Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide author Prabhakar Chaganti, Rich Helms pages 252 publisher Packt Publishing rating 6 reviewer Kuan Hon ISBN 1847197345 summary "Getting started" guide to using Amazon's SimpleDB cloud database Say "cloud" to get the attention of CIOs seeking to cut costs in these recessionary times. One well known "database in the cloud" option is Amazon Web Services' SimpleDB, which Amazon describes as "a highly available, flexible, and scalable non-relational data store that offloads the work of database administration."

Those who prefer traditional relational databases could try eg Amazon RDS. This book only covers SimpleDB, a NoSQL or non-relational database. As is well known, NoSQL databases grew in popularity with the growth of large distributed systems and cloud computing, and their proponents tout their scalability and speed.

For anyone wanting a quick primer on NoSQL databases, this book includes a chapter on NoSQL which isn't limited to SimpleDB. It outlines some key conceptual differences between NoSQL and relational database management systems, with pros and cons, using the analogy of "a spreadsheet with some XML characteristics", and illustrating with some concrete examples. That chapter's been made available as a free sample chapter (SimpleDB versus RDBMS), so you can get a flavour of the book.

The contents list for this book is online, I won't recite it here. As well as an overview of SimpleDB, its terminology and advantages, the book goes through signing up with AWS and SimpleDB, and the account access keys. That chapter is also online, as a tutorial.

You may ask, how does this book differ from Amazon's free SimpleDB documentation, which includes a developer guide and a "getting started" guide? Amazon's own "getting started" is certainly helpful, and it's worth downloading and trying their web app scratchpad. But Amazon's detailed developer guide concentrates on REST and SOAP requests, which most people wouldn't want to deal with direct at that low level.

This book's focus is on using the SimpleDB web services API through certain specific languages and libraries — namely Java (JDK6 — using the typical 1.6 library plus several dependencies), Python (2.5 — you need boto), and PHP (with curl). It recommends the SDBtool Firefox extension (SDBizo), which is excellent for checking the results of running the code.

I've tried the book's Java and Python examples, on Windows. Not PHP, as I've not got round to learning PHP yet, though I skimmed the PHP explanations. Similarly, I've not had time to try it all over again on Linux. Generally, the book's coverage seems fuller and better for PHP than for Java or Python. Perhaps it was originally written for PHP, and the rest was bolted on — the stuff for Java more hurriedly than for Python?

The downloadable code samples, as mentioned, are PHP only. They really should have provided downloadable code for all 3 languages, plus some fake MP3 files (see later). If you get the e-book (available in PDF and epub), you can copy and paste the Java or Python code. But that's a tad tedious, especially when the code runs onto a new page, and there are stray end of lines etc that you have to delete manually. Furthermore, the Python code provided is for the interpreter in interactive mode (not for .py files, except a couple towards the end). So, for the Python, you also have to copy/paste each line one at a time. But that still beats having to re-type pages of code in full.

In other words, if you want this book and you're only interested in PHP, you can get away with just buying the hard copy and downloading the code from the Packt site. But if you prefer Python or Java, to save your fingers and blood pressure you should buy just the e-version, or get both paper and e books together. I really hope Packt will in future provide downloadable code samples for all the languages covered.

I have more issues with the sample code given in this book. The typical imports should have been spelled out in the example Java code. Eclipse offers more than one possible import in some cases. It was "try everything till it works", at least until I found this tutorial. I've included the initial required typical imports (though not the standard java.util etc ones) in my own list of points, which I'll say more about at the end of this review. Surely it wouldn't have been difficult to include just those few lines of imports, which could have saved readers a lot of time trying to work out the correct imports. There are also errors in the Python code, and on one page the code that should have been included is missing altogether.

Now, more on the book proper. After the overview described above, this book walks you through the basic SimpleDB operations: how to create a SimpleDB "domain" (equivalent to a worksheet in a spreadsheet), list domains, create/retrieve items (like spreadsheet rows), and delete domains.

Items have attributes (spreadsheet column headings), as key:value pairs — the key is the attribute name, the value is its value, eg address:1 Acacia Avenue. An attribute can have more than one value, eg the same item can have both address:1 Acacia Avenue and address:2 Broadway. The book also lists the SimpleDB constraints on domains, items and attributes — maximum number or size, etc — but it's best to check the AWS site for the latest info.

Code examples are given for each of the 3 languages mentioned. The examples are similar, but don't always cover the same ground. If they'd done that, where possible, it would have been more helpful to those of us trying examples in more than one language. One advantage of a book with associated website is that electronic updates can be published, and it would have been great if that had been done for this book. For instance, the book gave conditional put/delete code examples only for PHP. At the date of this review, boto now supports those features, but sample supplemental Python code for that still hadn't been made available.

SimpleDB stores attribute values as UTF-8 strings. This means that comparisons for sorting or searching are done lexicographically (character by character, left to right, numbers take precedence over uppercase over lowercase), and to handle numbers or dates you have to encode and decode them yourself. So, the book has a chapter explaining lexicographical comparison, data types, and how to encode and decode data to enable proper sorting and comparison of numbers, dates, Boolean values and XML-restricted characters. In the case of numbers this means zero padding and offsets, and there's example code for decoding and encoding numbers. Unlike with PHP and Python, oddly the Java code given was for the body of the typical method that carries out the encoding etc. This could have been omitted, and they should have given example code illustrating the method's usage instead. Similarly for the date formats code.

The SimpleDB query syntax is generally covered well, in a chapter which takes readers through first creating a sample database of song metadata to run queries against. It's not too painful copy/pasting the Java code (3+ pages), but with Python in interactive mode I drew the line at creating every song item and attributes using individual statements, even with pasting, so I just tried adding a couple of random ones to test that the code worked. I say again, full downloadable code please...!

That chapter then gives helpful examples of queries against the sample database and their results, including for more complex combined queries ("and", "or" type queries, "not" etc), and querying for multiple-value attributes. It also provides code examples for sorting and counting query results. But the Java code for retrieving an item's attributes wouldn't run, and I couldn't find the method used (getItemsAttributes()) detailed in the typical documentation; perhaps the book is out of date here?

The book starts going beyond the basics from Chapter 7 onwards, with a chapter on Amazon's S3 storage service — another well known component of Amazon Web Services, where "objects" (files) may be stored in "buckets" (directories), with "keys" used to retrieve objects.

For S3, the book uses JetS3t for Java. However, the Java code given for uploading files to S3 didn't demonstrate any integration with SimpleDB at all — the files were just uploaded with their filenames as the S3 keys, and the code didn't seem to deal with the creation of your own custom S3 keys for uploaded objects. In contrast, the Python code generated the S3 keys for the files from hashes previously produced and stored in the SimpleDB database, as well as dealing with their uploading. In addition, for me the Java code for downloading files from S3 just wouldn't run, and also it wasn't clear where the files were supposed to be downloaded to locally, unlike with the Python example. Inexplicably, there was no info on how to delete objects from S3 buckets, or indeed how to delete buckets. So, while the S3 chapter is of help, it could definitely do with being expanded, especially the Java sections.

Next, money money money. AWS charges are based on usage, so the chapter on tuning and usage costs has some practical value in explaining how SimpleDB is charged for, the "BoxUsage" value returned by requests to SimpleDB, using BoxUsage to optimize queries and compute costs, and how to get BoxUsage values back with your queries using Java, Python etc. There are code examples that, when run, illustrate the different BoxUsage values you get when you use different operators or expressions in queries (eg, using LIKE costs more).

However, partitioning your data into multiple domains is covered in only a few paragraphs, with no code given. I'd have liked to see more info on that, and some sample code for the partitioning process.

To further save money, you can use a cache to store data locally, trying your local cache first; and, only if the data is not there, would your app go out to SimpleDB and incur costs for querying it. This book accordingly has a chapter on how to install and use the popular open source caching system memcached to cache your query results locally. (CacheLite for PHP is also covered.) Again, the Java sections caused me some frustration. The Java test code showed that the memcached server was running properly on my machine, but the Java code for using the cache just didn't work; it ran, but continued to query SimpleDB direct. The Python code, however, worked perfectly — except that, if you're using memcached in Windows, you'll need to use port 11211 instead of what's shown in the book. (I didn't try it in Linux.)

Finally, the book deals with running parallel operations against SimpleDB, using its BatchPutAttributes. The section on updating SimpleDB in Python by making serial consecutive calls to SimpleDB is completely missing the code for the script, but the book does then cover inserting multiple items concurrently into SimpleDB using a threadpool in Java. It also gives sample Python code for alternative ways of parallelising requests: using Python's built-in threading module, threading and queues combined, then threading using the open source workerpool module.

To conclude, in substance the book has a fair amount of useful information on the basics of getting started with SimpleDB, particularly for Python (and probably PHP). But not providing downloadable code samples in Java and Python, or "fake" MP3 files to try S3 uploading/downloading, is a minus.

Some errors, inconsistencies and missing information from the department of "I-wish-they'd-included-this-even-if-they-thought-it-was-basic-as-it's-too-easily-missed-if-it's-not-spelled-out", mean that the book is not really "complete", and not as suitable as it should be for relative beginners — especially for Java and (in whatever language) Windows. It wouldn't take much extra work to get it up to scratch on that front. Perhaps the next edition, or better still an online update/supplement?

For the more experienced, the book doesn't take readers to as advanced a stage as it could have, in my view. In particular, it would have been good to have more info and example code on partitioning data between different domains, and also how to migrate data from an existing database to SimpleDB — their code for "importing" the sample database literally just adds each item and attribute individually.

Fix the errors, add the missing info for beginners, provide downloads of code in all relevant languages and "fake files", and I'd have given it a 7. Provide working sample Java code with more explanation, plus proper integration with S3, an 8. Add fuller info on partitioning, migration, and perhaps even integration with yet more AWS services, a 9.

All opinions are personal to me: half geek, half lawyer, mostly harmless. I'm researching legal issues in cloud computing.

You can purchase Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

KuanH writes "Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide is billed as a complete guide to using Amazon's SimpleDB database API. It's most detailed for PHP. It's helpful for Python. But the Java code and explanations aren't up to the standard of the others. It includes a primer on using Amazon S3 with SimpleDB: files stored on S3, file metadata stored in SimpleDB — again, less good for Java. It also covers tuning to reduce usage costs, caching using memcached, and ways to batch-update and make serial or parallel requests to SimpleDB. However, it's missing some information that beginners might need, and it's perhaps not quite advanced enough for the more experienced. Downloadable example code is available only for PHP." Keep reading for the rest of Kuan's review. Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide author Prabhakar Chaganti, Rich Helms pages 252 publisher Packt Publishing rating 6 reviewer Kuan Hon ISBN 1847197345 summary "Getting started" guide to using Amazon's SimpleDB cloud database Say "cloud" to get the attention of CIOs seeking to cut costs in these recessionary times. One well known "database in the cloud" option is Amazon Web Services' SimpleDB, which Amazon describes as "a highly available, flexible, and scalable non-relational data store that offloads the work of database administration."

Those who prefer traditional relational databases could try eg Amazon RDS. This book only covers SimpleDB, a NoSQL or non-relational database. As is well known, NoSQL databases grew in popularity with the growth of large distributed systems and cloud computing, and their proponents tout their scalability and speed.

For anyone wanting a quick primer on NoSQL databases, this book includes a chapter on NoSQL which isn't limited to SimpleDB. It outlines some key conceptual differences between NoSQL and relational database management systems, with pros and cons, using the analogy of "a spreadsheet with some XML characteristics", and illustrating with some concrete examples. That chapter's been made available as a free sample chapter (SimpleDB versus RDBMS), so you can get a flavour of the book.

The contents list for this book is online, I won't recite it here. As well as an overview of SimpleDB, its terminology and advantages, the book goes through signing up with AWS and SimpleDB, and the account access keys. That chapter is also online, as a tutorial.

You may ask, how does this book differ from Amazon's free SimpleDB documentation, which includes a developer guide and a "getting started" guide? Amazon's own "getting started" is certainly helpful, and it's worth downloading and trying their web app scratchpad. But Amazon's detailed developer guide concentrates on REST and SOAP requests, which most people wouldn't want to deal with direct at that low level.

This book's focus is on using the SimpleDB web services API through certain specific languages and libraries — namely Java (JDK6 — using the typical 1.6 library plus several dependencies), Python (2.5 — you need boto), and PHP (with curl). It recommends the SDBtool Firefox extension (SDBizo), which is excellent for checking the results of running the code.

I've tried the book's Java and Python examples, on Windows. Not PHP, as I've not got round to learning PHP yet, though I skimmed the PHP explanations. Similarly, I've not had time to try it all over again on Linux. Generally, the book's coverage seems fuller and better for PHP than for Java or Python. Perhaps it was originally written for PHP, and the rest was bolted on — the stuff for Java more hurriedly than for Python?

The downloadable code samples, as mentioned, are PHP only. They really should have provided downloadable code for all 3 languages, plus some fake MP3 files (see later). If you get the e-book (available in PDF and epub), you can copy and paste the Java or Python code. But that's a tad tedious, especially when the code runs onto a new page, and there are stray end of lines etc that you have to delete manually. Furthermore, the Python code provided is for the interpreter in interactive mode (not for .py files, except a couple towards the end). So, for the Python, you also have to copy/paste each line one at a time. But that still beats having to re-type pages of code in full.

In other words, if you want this book and you're only interested in PHP, you can get away with just buying the hard copy and downloading the code from the Packt site. But if you prefer Python or Java, to save your fingers and blood pressure you should buy just the e-version, or get both paper and e books together. I really hope Packt will in future provide downloadable code samples for all the languages covered.

I have more issues with the sample code given in this book. The typical imports should have been spelled out in the example Java code. Eclipse offers more than one possible import in some cases. It was "try everything till it works", at least until I found this tutorial. I've included the initial required typical imports (though not the standard java.util etc ones) in my own list of points, which I'll say more about at the end of this review. Surely it wouldn't have been difficult to include just those few lines of imports, which could have saved readers a lot of time trying to work out the correct imports. There are also errors in the Python code, and on one page the code that should have been included is missing altogether.

Now, more on the book proper. After the overview described above, this book walks you through the basic SimpleDB operations: how to create a SimpleDB "domain" (equivalent to a worksheet in a spreadsheet), list domains, create/retrieve items (like spreadsheet rows), and delete domains.

Items have attributes (spreadsheet column headings), as key:value pairs — the key is the attribute name, the value is its value, eg address:1 Acacia Avenue. An attribute can have more than one value, eg the same item can have both address:1 Acacia Avenue and address:2 Broadway. The book also lists the SimpleDB constraints on domains, items and attributes — maximum number or size, etc — but it's best to check the AWS site for the latest info.

Code examples are given for each of the 3 languages mentioned. The examples are similar, but don't always cover the same ground. If they'd done that, where possible, it would have been more helpful to those of us trying examples in more than one language. One advantage of a book with associated website is that electronic updates can be published, and it would have been great if that had been done for this book. For instance, the book gave conditional put/delete code examples only for PHP. At the date of this review, boto now supports those features, but sample supplemental Python code for that still hadn't been made available.

SimpleDB stores attribute values as UTF-8 strings. This means that comparisons for sorting or searching are done lexicographically (character by character, left to right, numbers take precedence over uppercase over lowercase), and to handle numbers or dates you have to encode and decode them yourself. So, the book has a chapter explaining lexicographical comparison, data types, and how to encode and decode data to enable proper sorting and comparison of numbers, dates, Boolean values and XML-restricted characters. In the case of numbers this means zero padding and offsets, and there's example code for decoding and encoding numbers. Unlike with PHP and Python, oddly the Java code given was for the body of the typical method that carries out the encoding etc. This could have been omitted, and they should have given example code illustrating the method's usage instead. Similarly for the date formats code.

The SimpleDB query syntax is generally covered well, in a chapter which takes readers through first creating a sample database of song metadata to run queries against. It's not too painful copy/pasting the Java code (3+ pages), but with Python in interactive mode I drew the line at creating every song item and attributes using individual statements, even with pasting, so I just tried adding a couple of random ones to test that the code worked. I say again, full downloadable code please...!

That chapter then gives helpful examples of queries against the sample database and their results, including for more complex combined queries ("and", "or" type queries, "not" etc), and querying for multiple-value attributes. It also provides code examples for sorting and counting query results. But the Java code for retrieving an item's attributes wouldn't run, and I couldn't find the method used (getItemsAttributes()) detailed in the typical documentation; perhaps the book is out of date here?

The book starts going beyond the basics from Chapter 7 onwards, with a chapter on Amazon's S3 storage service — another well known component of Amazon Web Services, where "objects" (files) may be stored in "buckets" (directories), with "keys" used to retrieve objects.

For S3, the book uses JetS3t for Java. However, the Java code given for uploading files to S3 didn't demonstrate any integration with SimpleDB at all — the files were just uploaded with their filenames as the S3 keys, and the code didn't seem to deal with the creation of your own custom S3 keys for uploaded objects. In contrast, the Python code generated the S3 keys for the files from hashes previously produced and stored in the SimpleDB database, as well as dealing with their uploading. In addition, for me the Java code for downloading files from S3 just wouldn't run, and also it wasn't clear where the files were supposed to be downloaded to locally, unlike with the Python example. Inexplicably, there was no info on how to delete objects from S3 buckets, or indeed how to delete buckets. So, while the S3 chapter is of help, it could definitely do with being expanded, especially the Java sections.

Next, money money money. AWS charges are based on usage, so the chapter on tuning and usage costs has some practical value in explaining how SimpleDB is charged for, the "BoxUsage" value returned by requests to SimpleDB, using BoxUsage to optimize queries and compute costs, and how to get BoxUsage values back with your queries using Java, Python etc. There are code examples that, when run, illustrate the different BoxUsage values you get when you use different operators or expressions in queries (eg, using LIKE costs more).

However, partitioning your data into multiple domains is covered in only a few paragraphs, with no code given. I'd have liked to see more info on that, and some sample code for the partitioning process.

To further save money, you can use a cache to store data locally, trying your local cache first; and, only if the data is not there, would your app go out to SimpleDB and incur costs for querying it. This book accordingly has a chapter on how to install and use the popular open source caching system memcached to cache your query results locally. (CacheLite for PHP is also covered.) Again, the Java sections caused me some frustration. The Java test code showed that the memcached server was running properly on my machine, but the Java code for using the cache just didn't work; it ran, but continued to query SimpleDB direct. The Python code, however, worked perfectly — except that, if you're using memcached in Windows, you'll need to use port 11211 instead of what's shown in the book. (I didn't try it in Linux.)

Finally, the book deals with running parallel operations against SimpleDB, using its BatchPutAttributes. The section on updating SimpleDB in Python by making serial consecutive calls to SimpleDB is completely missing the code for the script, but the book does then cover inserting multiple items concurrently into SimpleDB using a threadpool in Java. It also gives sample Python code for alternative ways of parallelising requests: using Python's built-in threading module, threading and queues combined, then threading using the open source workerpool module.

To conclude, in substance the book has a fair amount of useful information on the basics of getting started with SimpleDB, particularly for Python (and probably PHP). But not providing downloadable code samples in Java and Python, or "fake" MP3 files to try S3 uploading/downloading, is a minus.

Some errors, inconsistencies and missing information from the department of "I-wish-they'd-included-this-even-if-they-thought-it-was-basic-as-it's-too-easily-missed-if-it's-not-spelled-out", mean that the book is not really "complete", and not as suitable as it should be for relative beginners — especially for Java and (in whatever language) Windows. It wouldn't take much extra work to get it up to scratch on that front. Perhaps the next edition, or better still an online update/supplement?

For the more experienced, the book doesn't take readers to as advanced a stage as it could have, in my view. In particular, it would have been good to have more info and example code on partitioning data between different domains, and also how to migrate data from an existing database to SimpleDB — their code for "importing" the sample database literally just adds each item and attribute individually.

Fix the errors, add the missing info for beginners, provide downloads of code in all relevant languages and "fake files", and I'd have given it a 7. Provide working sample Java code with more explanation, plus proper integration with S3, an 8. Add fuller info on partitioning, migration, and perhaps even integration with yet more AWS services, a 9.

All opinions are personal to me: half geek, half lawyer, mostly harmless. I'm researching legal issues in cloud computing.

You can purchase Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

eggyknap writes "Thanks in large part to the oft-hyped 'NoSQL' movement, database performance has received a great deal of press in the past few years. Organizations large and small have replaced their traditional relational database applications with new technologies like key-value stores, document databases, and other systems, with great fanfare and often great success. But replacing a database system with something radically different is a difficult undertaking, and these new database systems achieve their impressive results principally because they abandon some of the guarantees traditional database systems have always provided." Keep reading for the rest of eggyknap's review. PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance author Gregory Smith pages Packt Publishing publisher 468 rating Packt Publishing reviewer 184951030X ISBN takes the reader step-by-step through the process of building an efficient and responsive database using "the world's most advanced open source database" summary 8/10 For those of us who need improved performance but don't have the luxury of redesigning our systems, and even more for those of us who still need traditional transactions, data integrity, and SQL, there is an option. Greg Smith's book, PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance takes the reader step-by-step through the process of building an efficient and responsive database using "the world's most advanced open source database".

Greg Smith has been a major contributor to PostgreSQL for many years, with work focusing particularly on performance. In PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance, Smith starts at the lowest level and works through a complete system, sharing his experience with systematic benchmarking and detailed performance improvement at each step. Despite the title, the material applies not only to PostgreSQL's still fairly new 9.0 release, but to previous releases as well. After introducing PostgreSQL, briefly discussing its history, strengths and weaknesses, and basic management, the book dives into a detailed discussion of hardware and benchmarking, and doesn't come out for 400 pages.

Databases vary, of course, but in general they depend on three main hardware factors: CPU, memory, and disks. Smith discusses each in turn, and in substantial detail, as demonstrated in a sample chapter available from the publisher, Packt Publishing. After describing the various features and important considerations of each aspect of a database server's hardware, the book introduces and demonstrates powerful and widely available tools for testing and benchmarking. This section in particular should apply easily not only to administrators of PostgreSQL databases, but users of other databases, or indeed other applications as well, where CPU, memory, or disk performance is a critical factor. Did you know, for instance, the difference between "write-through" and "write-back" caching in disk, and why it matters to a database? Or did you know that disks perform better depending on which part of the physical platter they're reading? How does memory performance compare between various common CPUs through the evolution of their different architectures?

At every step, Smith encourages small changes and strict testing, to ensure optimum results from your performance efforts. His discussion includes methods for reducing and correcting variability, and sticks to easily obtained and interpreted tools, whose output is widely understood and for which support is readily available. The underlying philosophy has correctly been described as "measure, don't guess," a welcome relief in a world where system administrators often make changes based on a hunch or institutional mythology.

Database administrators often limit their tools to little more than building new indexes and rewriting queries, so it's surprising to note that those topics don't make their appearance until chapters 9 and 10 respectively, halfway through the book. That said, they receive the same detailed attention given earlier to database hardware, and later on to monitoring tools and replication. Smith thoroughly explains each of the operations that may appear in PostgreSQL's often overwhelming query plans, describes each index type and its variations, and goes deeply into how the query planner decides on the best way to execute a query.

Other chapters cover such topics as file systems, configuration options suitable for various scenarios, partitioning, and common pitfalls, each in depth. In fact, the whole book is extremely detailed. Although the tools introduced for benchmarking, monitoring, and the like are well described and their use nicely demonstrated, this is not a book a PostgreSQL beginner would use to get started. Smith's writing style is clear and blessedly free of errors and confusion, as is easily seen by his many posts on PostgreSQL mailing lists throughout the years, but it is deeply detailed, and the uninitiated could quickly get lost.

This is also a very long book, and although not built strictly as a reference manual, it's probably best treated as one, after an initial thorough reading. It covers each topic in such detail that each must be absorbed before further reading can be beneficial. Figures and other non-textual interruptions are, unfortunately, almost nowhere to be found, so despite the author's clear and easy style, it can be a tiring read.

It is, however, one of the clearest, most thorough, and best presented descriptions of the full depth of PostgreSQL currently available, and doubtless has something to teach any frequent user of a PostgreSQL database. Those planning a new database will welcome the straightforward and comprehensive presentation of hardware-level details that are difficult or impossible to change after a system goes into production; administrators will benefit from its discussion of configuration options and applicable tools; and users and developers will embrace its comprehensive description of query planning and optimization. PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance will be a valuable tool for all PostgreSQL users interested in getting the most from their database.

You can purchase PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "While it is possible to create a simple website using a base installation of Drupal, the real power of this content management system is achieved through the use of modules, which can be thought of as add-ons that extend the capabilities of Drupal in specific ways — oftentimes in conjunction with other modules. These modules are developed and contributed by PHP programmers who understand how to use one or more of the Drupal application programming interfaces (APIs) to access information stored in a Drupal database, such as content, user profiles, and theme settings. These APIs have changed with Drupal version 7, and thus Drupal coders could benefit from a book that explains how to create Drupal 7 contrib modules." Read on for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal 7 Module Development author Matt Butcher, Greg Dunlap, Matt Farina, Larry Garfield, Ken Rickard, John Albin Wilkins pages 420 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1849511162 summary A thorough guide to module building for intermediate to advanced Drupal coders. One such resource, titled Drupal 7 Module Development, was made available by Packt Publishing on 3 December 2010, under the ISBN 978-1849511162. It has half a dozen authors, all of whom are highly experienced Drupal programmers and contributors to this burgeoning open source project: Matt Butcher, Greg Dunlap, Matt Farina, Larry Garfield, Ken Rickard, and John Albin Wilkins. This team effort spans 420 pages, organized into a dozen chapters, and two appendices. Angie Byron, the Release Manager for Drupal 7, starts it off with an interesting and upbeat foreword that concisely summarizes the primary goals of this latest release of Drupal. Following it is a preface whose chapter summaries are poorly written — almost as though the writer knew nothing about Drupal. Speaking of technical knowledge, readers are expected to be familiar with Drupal, PHP, HTML, and CSS — the more so, the better. For the jQuery material, an understanding of that library and JavaScript itself would be valuable. Packt Publishing hosts a book Web page that offers a detailed description of the book, links for purchasing the print and electronic copies of the book (or the two combined, for a large discount), and the example source code for nine of the chapters (also available from the book's GitHub repositories). As with all of its other titles, the chapters end with summaries, which provide no value and simply waste space.

This book's first chapter, "Developing for Drupal 7," provides an overview of the purpose of custom modules, the practical approach that the authors will take in explaining how to create such modules, the Web technologies underpinning Drupal, the Drupal architecture, its major subsystems, and various tools commonly used for Drupal programming. Oddly, the authors hope "that the code mentioned in this chapter can serve as a foundation for your bigger and better applications," and yet no code per se is mentioned. Nonetheless, the chapter does serve as a decent introduction for PHP programmers new to "the Drupal way." The second chapter, "Creating Your First Module," shows the reader how to do exactly that, using a very simple module to illustrate the basics, such as the files that typically compose a Drupal module, as well as some Drupal coding standards. Unfortunately, regarding the code on page 38 that checks whether the $path variable is "admin/help#first," no explanation is provided as to why the "#" is not a "/," given that the URL path in the reader's browser will be "/admin/help/first," and the "#first" does not refer to a page anchor. After a worthwhile detour into Drupal internationalization and the t() function, the authors introduce both the Block API and the Testing module, through example. Incidentally, readers trying out the sample code will want to add "static" to "public function getInfo()" in first.test — as is done in all of the other Drupal 7 core test files — to avoid a PHP "strict" warning of a static call to getInfo() in simpletest_result_form().

The next two chapters focus on theming — specifically, Drupal's theme layer and techniques for theming a custom module. The material in both chapters is arguably comprehensive, and thus ideal for a reader already well-versed in Drupal 6 module development. But, for anyone else, it will likely be overwhelming in its dense detail and in the fast pace at which it is presented — and thus will discourage most newcomers. The former chapter presents numerous high-level concepts, while the latter is intended to illustrate those ideas by focusing on module theming. Yet even if the reader carefully examines and implements the sample code — usually the best way to learn any sort of programming — these chapters will probably prove quite difficult for readers to comprehend thoroughly, unless they have prior experience along these lines. Oddly, the Chapter 4 summary tells the reader that she should have "learned a little bit about contributing your experiences [sic] and knowledge back to the Drupal community," but the material does not explain how to do so. (More on that topic later.)

Chapter 5, "Building an Admin Interface," provides a detailed survey of the Drupal menu system, the Form API (including how form data is saved, which is inadequately covered by some other books), Drupal's built-in e-mail system, and the use of tokens therein. The coverage is again detailed, and would be even better had the remaining commonly-used HTML form elements — such as list boxes and radio buttons — been shown in the example code. For those readers whose heads are still spinning from the previous two chapters, this material may be a welcome change, in that the explanations are slower paced, with seemingly greater attention given to whether the Drupal newbie will be able to learn what is being taught, step by step. However, any reader who is using this chapter as a reference when creating a custom implementation of hook_menu(), will doubtlessly become frustrated by the inadequate advice on determining the valid possibilities to be used in the access arguments array: "[check] the hook_perm() implementation of the module in question." But what module? The reader is presumably creating a new one from scratch, with no permissions already set; so the authors must be referring to an existing module — but which one? If the reader were to search through all of the core and example modules, he would find no hook_perm() functions. Do the authors mean hook_permission()? This illustrates how critical it is for authors and technical editors of books purportedly for beginners, to strive to put themselves in the shoes of the poor reader, who does not possess their knowledge and experience.

As with any CMS, "content is king" for sites built using Drupal. Thus it is critical for Drupal module developers to know how to dynamically create and manage all of the elements required by a module working with content: node, entities, fields, etc. In earlier versions of Drupal, the familiar "node" concept did not encompass all of the non-node data types, such as users and comments — forcing developers to create workarounds in their modules and in their sites as a whole. Version 7 introduces "entities" and "bundles" (which can be thought of as sub-entities), to allow greater flexibility for programmers. Chapters 6 and 7 delve into these concepts, with plenty of example code and explanations thereof. Readers learn how to create database tables indirectly using the Schema API, define new entities, give users the capability to manage them, encapsulate multiple database operations into transactions, and define new field types, widgets, and formatters.

Chapter 8, which focuses on how to set and use permissions within modules, is straightforward, and includes sections on the secure use of regular form processing, as well as AJAX callbacks (for interactive form behavior that avoids the necessity of reloading the current page). Incidentally, there appears to be an error in the code on page 221: "function example_menu() example_menu() {." Chapter 9 continues in the same realm of security, specifically, use of the Node Access system within Drupal. The coverage is quite thorough, and the only problem is that some of the "tips" blocks repeat information found in the regular text. The chapter concludes with some valuable advice on how to test and debug node access modules, which can be especially difficult.

The last three chapters of the book cover some interesting and worthwhile topics: JavaScript, file management, and installation profiles. Readers learn how to add JavaScript and CSS to a site, how to use the Drupal Library API, and related matters. Sadly, readers may be perplexed by the numerous poorly-constructed sentences — especially near the beginning Chapter 10 — such as "JavaScript within a group and within the sub-group of being or not being included in every page are ordered by weight" (page 291), which sounds like a joint effort by Hamlet and the IRS publications department. The next chapter demonstrates how to use the new files and images API that was introduced in Drupal 7, and which allows developers to reduce the number of contrib modules required for building even the most basic website. Confusingly, the reader is told that, when installing Drupal (presumably version 7), he will probably see three error messages resulting from missing sites/default/files directories; but I certainly did not see this when installing any of the beta or release candidate versions, nor heard this from anyone else. The authors also explain stream wrappers, the Image API, and image styles (and the effects they can utilize). The last chapter shows how to set up custom Drupal profiles, their tasks, and the distributions that can make use of them. The reader is told that "input formats" are now referred to as "text filters," but Drupal 7 appears to have standardized on the term "text formats." The book's two appendices discuss Drupal 7's improved database layer, and security techniques applicable to all versions.

Packt's website states that there are no known errata, so one can only assume that the publisher's editors failed to spot many obvious flaws: "a[n] introduction" (page 1), "eXtensible" (page 10), "However, Not" (page 16), "it's own data" (page 17), "though means" (page 18), "architecture advanced" (page 25; it presumably should read "advanced architecture"), "( a," (page 28), "an[d] equal sign" (29), "the the" (41 and 146), "exercising [of] every" (49), "test[,] absolutely" (53), "a child element[s]" (78), "its" (84; should read "their"), "short-coming" (85), "then" (90 and 98; should read "than"), "you will be passed to" (108), "lets" (120 and 129; should read "let's"), "FormsAPI" (235), "to post spam [to] the site" (254), "ever[y] page" (291), "html" (311; twice), "is to" (318; should read "to"), "how to we" (326), "let's make create" (326), "is [a] result" (365), and "many [of] types" (376). The reviewers section lacks page numbers, but does not lack errors: ", (," "and [a] bug," and "including[,] reviewing."

The writing quality varies from chapter to chapter, and some passages are awkwardly phrased and confusing, such as "each of these two lines were split on to one line" (page 57). Scattered throughout the book, one will find cases of semicolons used where dashes are called for, commas where semicolons are called for, title case used when inappropriate or missing when appropriate (the book's preface is a veritable minefield), compound adjectives missing hyphens, adjectives incorrectly tied to nouns using hyphens, needed commas missing (Appendix A has some egregious examples), and the term "was" used where the subjunctive "were" is called for — in other words, the usual grammatical flaws found in books written by techies. Fortunately, the material is livened up with a few welcome bits of humor, and not the overreaching kind found in many programming books. Even more admirable is the attention to internationalization, unit testing, and other good practices.

The example code within the text may be intimidating to those new to Drupal, but it really helps demonstrate the concepts discussed in the text. The downloadable source code is helpful for avoiding retyping that code from the text, but needs to be cleaned up. For instance, the code for Chapter 4 is in a directory named "1162_04_All code," which suggests that it contains all three versions, but it does not. The code for Chapter 5 is split between a subdirectory named "old," which contains the newest code, and in another directory, "1162_05," which contains older code. The directory "1162_07_Code" contains no fewer than six different (and possibly differing) copies of its example module. How can the reader know which is the correct copy to use for following the book's discussion? Moreover, for some of the chapters, such as 5, the source code listed and discussed in the book does not fully match that provided in the downloadable archive file.

Overall, this book is a substantial contribution to the Drupal literature, but it is weakened by two obvious problems: Firstly, it lacks a chapter or appendix to explain how the reader could contribute a newly-created module to the Drupal community — specifically, Drupal.org's Modules section. This is a glaring omission, particularly in light of the (laudable) encouragement to the reader to participate in the community, as well as the authors' many contributions to the same. Secondly, because this book is supposedly suitable for Drupal beginners, and given the complexity of Drupal's APIs and their code requirements, the authors should have presented the concepts in more digestible chunks, at a slower pace, so as to be easily comprehended by someone new to Drupal programming using APIs. This is especially true of the second and third chapters.

The aforementioned problems could be corrected in a subsequent edition, which would be well worth the effort: Drupal 7 Module Development is an information-packed and wide-ranging resource for experienced Drupal programmers who want to enhance their existing module-building skills, and transfer them to version 7.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

You can purchase Drupal 7 Module Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

melbenson writes "Moodle 1.9 Extension Development by Jonathon Moore and Michael Churchward, published by Packt Publishing, definitely delivers what it says on the book cover — 'Customize and extend Moodle by using its robust plugin systems.' This book, intended for users with a solid knowledge of the Moodle software and Moodle technologies, does a great job of opening the doors to creative and useful ideas to take your Moodle site to the next level. The book takes the reader through many examples of customizing and editing the Moodle code in an easy to understand, user-friendly way but also presents the reader with challenging and advanced concepts." Read on for the rest of melbenson's review. Moodle 1.9 Extension Development author Jonathan Moore, Michael Churchward pages 320 publisher Packt Publishing rating 9/10 reviewer melbenson ISBN 1847194249 summary Shows you how to build all sorts of Moodle plug-ins: admin plug-ins, Blocks, Activities, Grading components, Reports, Fliters that change the way your site works and looks. I've been working with the free open-source software, Moodle, for the past 3 years as an admin in a school district and consulting, which includes experience with Moodle themes, the Moodle database, admin tasks, user technology support and the end-user interface and functionality. I also have knowledge in CSS, web development and a basic understanding of PHP and server topics. I work with Moodle, read several Moodle-related books, attend Moodle user groups and participate in the online Moodle community but amuch of the information covered and talked about is the basic tech support and technology integration (which is great!) but I've been craving to learn more of the 'geeky"' code topics in Moodle. When I saw the title of the book I was expecting material on coding, development and more technical topics compared to the other Moodle books and that is exactly what I got.

In the beginning of the book the author goes over basic, but powerful tasks like creating and modifying blocks and activities. Later on, the book discusses more advanced topics like integrating Moodle with other systems, pagelib and formslib and web services.

The 'Customize and extend Moodle by using its robust plugin systems' phrase from the book cover describes this book very well. It discussed and showed just how much you can customize your Moodle site to fit your needs and create integrations between other systems. this book covers everything from simply creating a block to integrating the Moodle system with other systems and implementing Single Sign On (SSO). The full table of contents can be seen on the Packt Publishing website. The book involved heavy discussion about PHP, which was expected since Moodle is written in PHP and the book was basically all about editing the code. I'm a newbie with PHP so some of the examples were over my head but I know I will be able to go back and reference things I didn't fully understand the first time.

After reading this book I think this book is for any programmers, database and web development people and tech savvy Moodle admins, which is what I was expecting and the reason why I was so excited to read it. I don't think this book is intended for newbies to Moodle or Moodle technologies (PHP, MySQL, CSS/HTML) however, like myself, you don't have to be an expert in all of those subjects. I would say this book is for intermediate to advanced Moodle users and programmers.

I trust that the technical information given in this book is accurate as I have read several other books from the Packt Publishing company. The author also does a good job of informing the reader of the date of publication and alerts the reader of possible changes in future versions. Although the topics in the book were technical, the author does a good job of using language that was easy to read and follow along with. The only hardware that readers will need to follow along is a computer using any type of operating system. To follow along with the examples readers will also need an installation of Moodle, which is an open-source free software. Readers can install the free software locally on their computer or install it on a hosting service.

Throughout the entire book there were real-life examples and screenshot images. The only issue with the screenshots was that they were not in color which I think could have enhanced the experience of following along. To go along with the examples there was sample code presented in the book and the full source code is available for download. The example code for download will be great for future reference and it will be useful when I go through the examples again and try to do the tasks myself and experiment on my own.

The book covered and accomplished pretty much what I had expected. I can't think of anything that I thought the book was missing, besides going into more detail about the specific topics I was personally interested in. One reason I was so excited to begin reading this book is because I've read about a half dozen Moodle books and this one, I felt, was going to contain by far the most 'technical' and 'back-end' related material compared to all of the others. I have no knowledge of any other Moodle books that are similar in subject to this one, although I have a feeling that more books like this one will be coming.

Overall, I very much enjoyed reading this book and it is personally, my favorite Moodle-related book. Not because I thought it was better written, better quality or contained the most information but because it covered exactly what I was hoping it would. I personally think the best parts about this book were the coding and advanced technical topics covered, the real life examples covered and the provided full source code for download for future experimentation and reference.

You can purchase Moodle 1.9 Extension Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "If you were to ask some database developers to cite their favorite strategies for expanding the functionality of the relational database management systems with which they work, you would probably hear a variety of answers. One individual might recommend the use of an alternate database engine optimized for the given application. Another might explain the many advantages of using stored procedures to replace SQL queries embedded in the source code of any programs that connect to databases. But one answer you likely would not receive involves changing the internals of the database engine itself. With the latest major release of MySQL, developers using that particular RDBMS are now able to extend the capabilities of the built-in database engines, by creating plug-ins. This is the topic of a book by Sergei Golubchik and Andrew Hutchings: MySQL 5.1 Plugin Development." Read on for the rest of Michael's review. MySQL 5.1 Plugin Development author Sergei Golubchik and Andrew Hutchings pages 288 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 9/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1849510608 summary A practical and example-rich introduction to developing MySQL plug-ins. This title was released by Packt Publishing on 26 August 2010, under the ISBN 978-1849510608. On the publisher's page for the book, visitors will find a detailed description, the table of contents, a sample chapter (the fourth one in the book, "Information Schema Plugins," as a PDF file), and links to purchase the print and/or electronic versions of the book. There is also a link for downloading all of the sample code used in the book, except for the commands found in the first chapter. The sample code is sufficient to demonstrate the complexity of the subject area, and thus it is good that both authors possess a lot of experience in all of the primary technologies discussed in the book — particularly MySQL. In fact, Sergei Golubchik was one of the principal architects of the MySQL Plug-in application programming interface (API). Incidentally, in the "About the Authors" section, we read that he "has continued as a MySQL AB employee since 2000," which makes it sound as though he is still employed there (now Oracle); but then we are told that he resigned to join a startup firm, which is a bit confusing.

The book spans 288 pages, most of which are organized into ten chapters, followed by an appendix and an index. The first chapter explains the details of how to compile, link, and install MySQL User Defined Functions (UDFs), as well as proper MySQL plug-ins. For those people working on Windows platforms, numerous screenshots are provided, showing how to work with Microsoft Visual Studio (which is freely available). Readers learn how to use MySQL command-line utilities for building and packaging plug-ins, and the options needed to do so. The subsequent chapter focuses on UDFs — both normal and aggregate ones — which are technically not part of the MySQL Plugin API, although they may be in the future. However, they can be thought of as precursors to true plug-ins, because they are written in C/C++, loaded dynamically at runtime, and extend the capabilities of the MySQL server — in this case, by being callable from within SQL statements. The authors explicate how to install and utilize UDFs, and provide several examples.

The book's remaining chapters explore different types of plug-ins, starting with the most basic kind of all, Daemon plug-ins, which can run code utilizing a dedicated thread in the mysqld server process. Readers are shown how Daemon plug-ins are structured — including their declarations, types, status variables, and configuration system variables. To demonstrate these components, the authors dissect four separate sample plug-ins, line by line, with a great deal of helpful commentary. The next two chapters, 4 and 5, delve into schema-related plug-ins, starting with those that create tables, and ending with more advanced topics, such as how to access and output information about a server's internal data structures. These two chapters present almost half a dozen examples, as equally detailed as those of the earlier material.

During the past several years, all relational database systems are seeing increased use of full-text parsing, for various purposes. Chapters 6 and 7 show the reader how to create plug-ins that supplement the full-text search capabilities already baked into MySQL. The first sample plug-in presented by the authors could be used by PHP programmers for parsing their scripts, while another sample could be used by developers who need to match user input (which may include typos), using a Soundex algorithm. The final three chapters cover many aspects of storage engines, ranging from a basic read-only engine to a more complex one that supports indexes. The book concludes with an appendix that surveys the primary enhancements to the Plug-in API that database developers may see in versions of MySQL after 5.1.

On the publisher's site, there are no reported errata, but here are some that I found in just the first couple pages, to get the list started: "class [a] to" (page 1), "on [a] MySQL fork" (page 2), and "ask [the] questions" (page 2). Also, countless phrases and sentences in the book are oddly constructed, with multi-word adjectives missing hyphens, commas used where semicolons are called for, and sometimes both mistakes committed in the same sentence, such as the very first sentence of the preface. In fact, the lead author admits that he prefers reading fiction to a dictionary. Regardless, the information and instruction provided by the authors are generally clear to the reader, and ably illustrated with the sample code.

The book and thus the reader benefit greatly from the extensive MySQL experience and knowledge of the authors, reflected in the depth of coverage of the various topics. MySQL 5.1 Plugin Development brings together valuable information that is otherwise tedious to find — scattered throughout the API source code, official documentation, and online forum threads. For any programmer interested in unleashing the full potential of their MySQL servers through the creation and use of plug-ins, this book is an essential resource.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance website developer and writer.

You can purchase MySQL 5.1 Plugin Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "In the past, a Web developer tasked with building an online store would most likely do so using a dedicated e-commerce system, instead of a content management system (CMS), because even though the leading CMSs offered more features and flexibility, they did not provide robust e-commerce capabilities, such as product listings, bulk import, pricing in multiple currencies, a built-in shopping cart, and integration with tax and shipping information sources. Since that time, e-commerce systems have become more like CMSs, by adding features such as blogging and forums. At the same time, CMSs are continually expanding their e-commerce potential, usually in the form of developers adding plug-ins. For developers using Drupal, there traditionally have been two major e-commerce plug-ins (known as "modules"): Ubercart and e-Commerce. The former has emerged as the leader, and is explored in Drupal E-commerce with Ubercart 2.x." Read on for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal e-commerce with Ubercart 2.x author George Papadongonas and Yiannis Doxaras pages 364 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1847199201 summary A detailed guide to using Drupal and Ubercart to make a virtual store. This book was published by Packt Publishing on 22 March 2010, under the ISBN 978-1847199201. (My thanks to the publisher for a review copy of the book.) On the publisher's page, visitors will find detailed information about the book, a table of contents, a sample chapter in PDF format (Chapter 9, "User Interface Enhancement Techniques"), errata (only three reported as of this writing), and links to purchase either the print or electronic versions of the book, or both at a large discount. The authors of this title, George Papadongonas and Yiannis Doxaras, are experienced open-source developers. They both reside in Greece, which may explain why the reader will stumble upon — and sometimes over — many oddly-formed phrases throughout the book, as though they had been written in a foreign language initially, and then translated into English. More on that later. Nonetheless, almost all of the material presented within the 364 pages can be clearly understood by anyone who is comfortable with the basic terminology of e-commerce and Drupal. The authors have their own website for the book, yet oddly it isn't mentioned anywhere in the text.

The book is organized into ten chapters and three appendices. The first chapter is a brief introduction to Drupal, Ubercart, and the test case used in the early chapters — in this case, a store selling electronics online. Chapter 2 explains how to install the minimum required Web technologies, Drupal, Ubercart, and related contrib modules — either individually or using packages such as XAMPP for the Web server and the UberDrupal installation profile for Ubercart. The authors recommend the use of the Thickbox module for lightbox functionality, but that one has since been superseded by the Colorbox module. The reader is told that the extra modules listed on pages 34-35 do not need to be installed immediately, but will be installed in each chapter as required; but this is misleading, because in later chapters the readers will discover repeatedly that they were not told when to install the modules. Readers may be puzzled as to whether or not they are expected by the authors to use UberDrupal, but it is of no consequence, because the end result is the same, namely, the Ubercart site is ready for configuration.

The third chapter covers basic configuration of both Drupal and Ubercart, and begins with a thorough introduction to the admin area of Drupal. Experienced Drupal users could skip most of the first three chapters — aside from the list of needed contrib modules on pages 31 and 32. In the brief section on downloading and installing Ubercart, the authors advise the reader to enable the core modules, but unfortunately provide no guidance on any of the optional ones that should be enabled so the reader can easily follow the test case in the book. The reference on page 48 to "path/x" (where x is a node identifier) is perplexing, because the authors fail to explain what they mean by 'path', since its literal use is invalid, and no directory path is presented. Also, they state that the default Drupal temporary directory (/tmp) does not need to be changed, but that is not true for Windows users who want to use an existing directory, such as C:\DOCUME~1\[username]\LOCALS~1\Temp (where [username] is their current Windows username). The cart settings on page 55 show four panes, instead of the two that will be seen by readers who have followed the authors' instructions exactly up to this point. A similar problem is encountered on page 65, because the text assumes that the reader has enabled product kits, although Chapter 2 recommended otherwise. The "Product features" pane is skipped, without any apparent reason. In general, the authors' coverage of the configuration settings provide little information beyond what is already explained on the settings forms themselves; this chapter would have been much more beneficial had the authors explored the typical cases in which the reader would want to change the settings, and the benefits of doing so.

The material becomes more interesting with Chapter 4, which gets into the details of managing categories, subcategories, products, and attributes. The authors begin by showing how to enhance products using both admin-created and user-generated tags for products and product kits. Yet in describing the latter type, a critical step in the process is neglected, namely, enabling the "Tags" setting. The reader is then told to create a couple sample products, and combine them into a product kit, which is a straightforward process in Ubercart — although some readers may initially be puzzled by the instructions to go to a Web page on the site http://www.mysite.com/ (also on page 106). More odd is the example product kit having a name of just a single component and a description consisting only of the other component's name. Readers learn how to bulk import a large amount of product data. In the process, we are instructed to "enable this module" (page 89), when actually all three modules need to be enabled. Also, no reason is given as to why the authors opted for the directory name "import" over the module's better default of "imports." The second figure on page 97 shows the first imported record not as a formatted product entry, but as PHP code, which is probably not what was intended. The next topic — product attributes — is important, because any shopping cart system that lacks flexible and powerful attribute management capabilities may appear at first glance to be a workable choice for creating an online store, but eventually those deficiencies will make it difficult if not impossible to implement the e-commerce setup desired by the store owner. The chapter is wrapped up with a brief but valuable description of the three ways to manage the products in an Ubercart site.

When it comes to shipping and packaging — the focus of Chapter 5 — far too many shopping cart systems burden the store admin with limited options and non-intuitive interfaces. Ubercart is relatively more straightforward, and the book shows how to specify destination countries, conditional actions, and shipping quotes — using flat rates, product weight, UPS, and USPS. Unfortunately, conditional actions are given little attention, and even the sample scenario is not demonstrated. This is a shame, because the topic is critical to developing an Ubercart-based store so it will automatically perform actions — such as notifying the customer — based upon a wide range of common events and conditions. Anyone planning on using the UPS shipping method should note that the registration URL provided has changed since publication of the book, but does point to the UPS Developer Kit, which has a registration link and other resources. The last section, on weight quotes, could prove baffling, because it does not match the current behavior of Ubercart in defining such a shipping method.

Properly calculating the appropriate taxes for customer orders, and accepting payments online, are two areas of e-commerce fraught with potential problems, and even greater legal risks. These are explored in the sixth chapter, which gets off to a shaky start with the claim that the overview page for "Tax rates and settings" has policies already configured, when in fact there are none. Readers learn about tax rates within Ubercart, payment workflow options, advantages and disadvantages of accepting credit cards on one's site, the configuration of payment settings, and details on the Ubercart modules available for the major gateway services — with an emphasis upon PayPal and Google Checkout. Oddly, the authors recommend that merchants outside of the United States and UK obtain VAT numbers, even though the former country does not have a value-added tax (at least, not yet). The chapter concludes with a brief overview of how to create your own payment gateway module. The authors mention that they are providing the reader with code samples for two of the most common payment gateway request methods, and yet there is no such code in the chapter, and the book has no downloadable code on the Packt Publishing website.

Chapter 7 looks at the related topics of customer management; order tracking, workflow, search, creation, and modification; and invoicing, payments, packaging, and shipping. Merchants will find much of this information collected into the reports built into Ubercart. Yet more thought should have been put into the diagrams, such as the one on page 160, which includes an unexplained asterisk in one status box, and an order going from the status of "product gathering" to a second status with the identical name. Also, the process of creating a new order as described does not match the current interface in Ubercart 2.4 (the current version as of this writing). The chapter continues with summaries of customer relationship management (CRM) in general, and CiviCRM in particular, and how it can be integrated into an Ubercart site. The authors state that the Ubercart Wish List module is part of the Ubercart "extra" list of submodules, but it is instead a separate project. Other methods of increasing sales are discussed, including newsletters, company blogs, discussion forums, and Twitter.

In some respects, the remaining three chapters can be thought of as a second part of the book, because they presume that you have completed all of the elementary components of your online store, and are now ready to customize its appearance, and begin marketing the site. Chapter 8 elucidates how to find, install, and modify a Drupal theme for your needs — as well as how to create your own, based upon the popular Zen and Fusion starter themes. The material is generally clear, except for the authors' claims that site visitors cannot "perform proper searches" using the default Drupal 6 theme (Garland), and that you the site creator "cannot interfere with UI" (whatever that means). Confusingly, pages 200 and 201 list all sorts of advanced theme configuration settings for Garland which don't exist. The chapter finishes with a demonstration of how to create a new Drupal theme from either a static HTML site or a Photoshop template (despite an earlier claim that the chapter would end with a reference to the Fusion Theming System, which is absent).

Chapter 9, "User Interface Enhancement Techniques," shows you how to improve an Ubercart-based site using taxonomies and recommendation systems (for product cross-selling), the Panels and Views modules (for greater flexibility in information display), discounts, and other techniques. This discussion has more wheat than chaff versus the earlier chapters, probably because the authors are exploring higher-level methods, and not stepping the reader through forms. But again, configuration settings are mentioned that will not be seen by the reader, evidently because the authors do not provide timely instructions as to the modules to install and enable, such as XML Sitemap (page 231).

The final chapter first explores a host of Drupal contrib modules aimed at online promotion, and then shows how to improve a site's security with backups, security reviews, and spam blocking. The final material comprises three appendices, covering a hotel booking system, lists of the modules used in the book, and some of the free and paid themes suitable for an Ubercart site.

The book contains numerous errata: "contributed systems" (page 1; should read "contributed modules"), "innovated" (page 7; should read "innovative"), "constrains" (page 7; should read "constraints"), "hundreds and thousands" (page 8; should read "hundreds of thousands"), "It is [a] social media ready" (page 8), "brooking" (page 10), "flash animated" (page 10; should read "Flash-animated"), "depreciated" (page 20; should read "deprecated"), "[the] Drupal installer" (page 27 twice, and 28), "[the] time zone" (30), "their home page[s]" (32), "to [the] site" (48), "such [a] service" (58), "customer [to] enter" (65), "ipod" (80), ."com//node" (86), "types or files" (88; should read "types of files"), "know, exactly" (106), "it it" (111), ", [the] shipping rate" (112), "charge[s] you" (128), "customers['] geographic locations" (132), "statements[,] discussed" (134), "logics" (134). That last one — an amusing non-word — seemed a "logical" and thus appropriate place to stop recording errata, even though I had yet to reach the halfway point in the book.

Earlier I noted that many of the phrases — and entire sentences — are awkwardly constructed. A few of them are unintentionally humorous, such as the phrase "to mess with" getting turned into "to mess up with" (page 205), and the phrase "a check for the balance" getting shredded into "a balanced check" (page 147) — which immediately brings to mind the question, What would be an unbalanced check? This problem worsens as the book progresses; by page 244, "caching time" has been shortchanged into "cashing time," and "number-one ally" has melted into "number-one alloy" (page 292). Some of the problems are present in all the chapters. For example, in countless places, the words "the" and "a" are needed but missing. While programming books generally are known for being grammatically and stylistically weak, there is no excuse for releasing a book to press that has not been thoroughly proofread. The same is true with regards to the technical editing of such a volume prior to publication. Throughout the book, URLs are missing the root directory "/" (which generates an error from the server). In most if not all places where the reader is told to leave a page's settings unchanged, he is then told to click the "Save configuration" button (before going on to the next page) — which is completely unnecessary and a waste of time.

But these are not the flaws of greatest importance. There is too much emphasis throughout this book on how to fill out form fields that are fairly obvious, and yet the most important subject matter is oftentimes glossed over. For instance, the topic of conditional actions arguably deserves its own chapter, or at least an extended section — not one and a half pages up front, and then several paragraphs later. A few key e-commerce topics are absent. A glaring example of this is the lack of discussion of how to sell digital products in one's store, which nowadays is important enough to warrant its own chapter. Subscription services (typically with recurring payments) is another worthy topic completely skipped. These deficiencies may be due to the authors' focus on explaining the admin pages and settings found within the basic Ubercart modules, rather than a much more pragmatic approach of exploring the steps needed to reach a goal (e.g., selling downloadable files) regardless of what modules are utilized. Admittedly, Ubercart and all of its constituent modules comprise enough details and moving parts that could justify a book of greater length. Yet room could have been made for those details and advanced topics by spending less time describing (obvious) form fields. Lastly, if the authors had expected the reader to be able to follow their instructions throughout the book, they should have made it more clear as to which modules and options should be enabled at each step.

Nonetheless, the authors have clearly put a lot of effort into making what could be an extremely dry subject more approachable, as they take the reader through the major phases of building a typical online store for selling physical goods. Offering complete explanations and plenty of screenshots, this book could be a valuable resource — as both tutorial and reference — for Web designers, developers, business owners, and anyone else involved in creating a Drupal/Ubercart e-commerce website.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance website developer and writer.

You can purchase Drupal e-commerce with Ubercart 2.x from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

johnmccollum writes "A wealth of tools are available to debug and test Django applications, but knowing when and how to use these resources can intimidate the new user. Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging, by Karen M. Tracey, aims to walk the user through the process of creating a web application from scratch, ensuring that the resulting code is bug-free and ready for production." Keep reading for the rest of John's review. Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging author Karen M. Tracey pages 409 publisher Packt Publishing rating 9/10 reviewer John McCollum ISBN 978-1-847197-56-6 summary Building rigorously tested and bug-free Django applications In a way, Django makes it deceptively easy to write a dynamic web application. With a few lines of code, you can have an fully functional application up and running in a short space of time, and complex applications take less time than ever to develop. Inevitably, though, bugs will creep in to the development process, and the professional developer will want to make sure that their application is as bug-free as possible before launching.

The book opens with a simple question: "How do you know when code you have written is working as intended?" The answer, of course, is that you test it. But if you're not a cowboy coder, you'll want to leverage the full power of Django's automated testing framework for best results. In the course of this book, the author develops a full web application, from start to finish, and describes how each section would be tested and debugged.

The author's intended audience for this book is perhaps one that is relatively new to Django. Ideally, the reader will have a functioning installation of Django, will have worked through at least the tutorial, and may well have written a couple of applications. This book would also be excellent for someone migrating to Python from another language, or moving into MVC frameworks for the first time. Crucially, the book doesn't just explain how to test, it also explains when and what to test too, so it serves as an ideal introduction into testing in general. There are many code examples and screenshots, and each line of code is fully explained.

The book kicks off with an examination of doctests and unit tests. Their relative pros and cons are explained in some depth, and the author does a great job in this section of discussing exactly what you should be testing, initially beginning with data models. She then moves on to more advanced unit testing strategies and applications, such as testing views and customizations of the admin area.

One of Python's greatest strengths is its ecosystem, and the following chapters cover some of the other tools you might want to integrate into your project. Django-coverage provides reporting on how much of your code is covered by tests, and Twill is a package that essentially replaces Django's test client to provide enhanced functionality — particularly for working with forms. Both packages have fully explained and in-depth examples to work through. (Code downloads are available at Packt Publishing's web site for the terminally lazy!)

With the testing section of the book complete, the author moves on to the debugging section of the book. Starting with the very basics (setting up Django in debug mode), the book then takes a detailed look at the Django debug page. This is something that I could see being useful for many new users — the debug page contains a wealth of information (and not all of it is always entirely relevant, if not outright misleading), so learning to understand this page is crucial to your success as a Djangonaut.

The book then takes a tour of the excellent django-debug-toolbar, before moving on to what was, for me, the most valuable chapter of the book: "When you don't know even know what to log: Using Debuggers." This chapter introduces the PDB (Python Debugger) library.

Like many others, I suppose, Django was my first introduction to Python. For that reason, my knowledge of the standard library is perhaps not as strong as it could be. For me, learning about the different ways of using the debugger was the highlight of the book, and something that will probably change the way I develop with Django.

The book concludes, of course, by taking the application into a production environment. And in line with the latest advice, that means setting up the site using Apache and mod_wsgi. In keeping with the theme of the book, the most common issues in deployment are identified and resolved.

This book weighs in at over four hundred pages, and its greatest strength is its wide scope. Although the basics of testing in Django are easy to understand, it's another thing entirely to see an entire application built from the ground up with testing at the forefront. As I mentioned before, the focus is as much on developing a testing and debugging strategy as it is on the technical aspects.

From a more technical point of view, the subject matter ranges from beginner to advanced. From writing the most basic doctests to debugging multi-process race conditions, the difficulty level increases incrementally, and no important details are skirted over. The prose is well-written and easy to read throughout.

If I had one gripe about the book, it would be that in places, it goes into a little too much detail. There's a section on using the Django web site (the bug tracker, the mailing list etc.) that I could have done without entirely. Although it might be useful for some users, the site is pretty self-explanatory and doesn't really warrant the attention it gets, in my opinion.

You shouldn't let that put you off though — this really is an excellent exploration of the topic. In addition, Packt Publishing will make a donation to the Django project for every book sold, so in purchasing this book, you'll be indirectly helping the project financially too.

This book is worth a place on any Django developer's bookshelf.

You can purchase Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

johnmccollum writes "A wealth of tools are available to debug and test Django applications, but knowing when and how to use these resources can intimidate the new user. Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging, by Karen M. Tracey, aims to walk the user through the process of creating a web application from scratch, ensuring that the resulting code is bug-free and ready for production." Keep reading for the rest of John's review. Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging author Karen M. Tracey pages 409 publisher Packt Publishing rating 9/10 reviewer John McCollum ISBN 978-1-847197-56-6 summary Building rigorously tested and bug-free Django applications In a way, Django makes it deceptively easy to write a dynamic web application. With a few lines of code, you can have an fully functional application up and running in a short space of time, and complex applications take less time than ever to develop. Inevitably, though, bugs will creep in to the development process, and the professional developer will want to make sure that their application is as bug-free as possible before launching.

The book opens with a simple question: "How do you know when code you have written is working as intended?" The answer, of course, is that you test it. But if you're not a cowboy coder, you'll want to leverage the full power of Django's automated testing framework for best results. In the course of this book, the author develops a full web application, from start to finish, and describes how each section would be tested and debugged.

The author's intended audience for this book is perhaps one that is relatively new to Django. Ideally, the reader will have a functioning installation of Django, will have worked through at least the tutorial, and may well have written a couple of applications. This book would also be excellent for someone migrating to Python from another language, or moving into MVC frameworks for the first time. Crucially, the book doesn't just explain how to test, it also explains when and what to test too, so it serves as an ideal introduction into testing in general. There are many code examples and screenshots, and each line of code is fully explained.

The book kicks off with an examination of doctests and unit tests. Their relative pros and cons are explained in some depth, and the author does a great job in this section of discussing exactly what you should be testing, initially beginning with data models. She then moves on to more advanced unit testing strategies and applications, such as testing views and customizations of the admin area.

One of Python's greatest strengths is its ecosystem, and the following chapters cover some of the other tools you might want to integrate into your project. Django-coverage provides reporting on how much of your code is covered by tests, and Twill is a package that essentially replaces Django's test client to provide enhanced functionality — particularly for working with forms. Both packages have fully explained and in-depth examples to work through. (Code downloads are available at Packt Publishing's web site for the terminally lazy!)

With the testing section of the book complete, the author moves on to the debugging section of the book. Starting with the very basics (setting up Django in debug mode), the book then takes a detailed look at the Django debug page. This is something that I could see being useful for many new users — the debug page contains a wealth of information (and not all of it is always entirely relevant, if not outright misleading), so learning to understand this page is crucial to your success as a Djangonaut.

The book then takes a tour of the excellent django-debug-toolbar, before moving on to what was, for me, the most valuable chapter of the book: "When you don't know even know what to log: Using Debuggers." This chapter introduces the PDB (Python Debugger) library.

Like many others, I suppose, Django was my first introduction to Python. For that reason, my knowledge of the standard library is perhaps not as strong as it could be. For me, learning about the different ways of using the debugger was the highlight of the book, and something that will probably change the way I develop with Django.

The book concludes, of course, by taking the application into a production environment. And in line with the latest advice, that means setting up the site using Apache and mod_wsgi. In keeping with the theme of the book, the most common issues in deployment are identified and resolved.

This book weighs in at over four hundred pages, and its greatest strength is its wide scope. Although the basics of testing in Django are easy to understand, it's another thing entirely to see an entire application built from the ground up with testing at the forefront. As I mentioned before, the focus is as much on developing a testing and debugging strategy as it is on the technical aspects.

From a more technical point of view, the subject matter ranges from beginner to advanced. From writing the most basic doctests to debugging multi-process race conditions, the difficulty level increases incrementally, and no important details are skirted over. The prose is well-written and easy to read throughout.

If I had one gripe about the book, it would be that in places, it goes into a little too much detail. There's a section on using the Django web site (the bug tracker, the mailing list etc.) that I could have done without entirely. Although it might be useful for some users, the site is pretty self-explanatory and doesn't really warrant the attention it gets, in my opinion.

You shouldn't let that put you off though — this really is an excellent exploration of the topic. In addition, Packt Publishing will make a donation to the Django project for every book sold, so in purchasing this book, you'll be indirectly helping the project financially too.

This book is worth a place on any Django developer's bookshelf.

You can purchase Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of all Web technologies, JavaScript may have the most checkered past — first heralded as a powerful object-oriented language for jazzing up Web pages, but later condemned as a source of spammy pop-up windows and horrid animations polluting websites everywhere. Yet during the past several years, Web designers and developers are increasingly using JavaScript unobtrusively, for client-site interactivity — as a supplement to server-side functionality, not a replacement, and built upon standards-compliant (X)HTML and CSS. As a result, the once-derided language is now enjoying a true resurgence in interest and use. This has been bolstered by the proliferation of JavaScript libraries, of which jQuery is clearly the front runner. Web programmers seeking to get up to speed on this exciting resource can turn to Learning jQuery 1.3: Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Learning jQuery 1.3 author Jonathan Chaffer, Karl Swedberg pages 444 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 9/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1847196705 summary A detailed introduction to this popular JavaScript library. Written by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg — two veteran Web developers based in Grand Rapids, Michigan — Learning jQuery 1.3 was published on 13 February 2009, under the ISBN 978-1847196705, by Packt Publishing, which kindly provided to me a copy of the book for review. There is a publisher's Web page for the book, where readers can order print or PDF versions of the book (or both, at a sizable discount); contact Packt Publishing with questions or feedback; read more information about the book, the authors, and the table of contents; and download a free sample chapter (the fourth one, titled "Effects") in PDF format. Readers who want to follow along with the authors' discussion, should note that all of the sample code used in the book can be downloaded from its support page. There is also a link for reading the reported errata, of which there are eleven, as of this writing. (The erratum for page 40 is incorrectly listed twice.)

The book begins with a foreword by John Resig, the creator of jQuery. What follows is over 400 pages of information, organized into eleven chapters and four appendices, covering all of the major topics related to jQuery, after a quick-start chapter: selectors, events, effects, DOM manipulation, AJAX, tables, forms, shufflers and rotators, plug-ins, online resources, development tools, and closures. The book has all the ingredients to serve as a full introduction to jQuery for experienced Web programmers, because it assumes no prior knowledge of jQuery (or any other JavaScript libraries); but it does assume that the reader comprehends the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — thus not wasting time by teaching these prerequisites skills, as is attempted in some other Web programming books.

The first chapter may be brief, but it is sufficient to present the major features of jQuery, its advantages versus raw JavaScript, and a quick history of its various releases after it was first mentioned by John Resig in August 2005. In addition, the reader is shown where to obtain the library, how to add it to a Web page, and a few of its basic capabilities. In the given example, multiple HTML paragraph elements are styled using just three lines of code; yet the power of jQuery would have been demonstrated even better had the authors also shown the equivalent raw JavaScript needed to perform the same functionality.

The next four chapters present the basics of jQuery upon which everything that follows is built. Readers are introduced, in Chapter 2, to the jQuery syntax for accessing individual elements and groups of elements on a Web page, using the $() factory function, CSS selectors, and jQuery's own custom selectors. As with all of the chapters that follow, several examples are used to illustrate the core ideas. The ability to intercept and react to events on a Web page — such as a user clicking on a particular link — is an essential part of client-side interactivity, and is the topic of the third chapter. But first the groundwork is set by learning how to control when code is executed, how to utilize multiple scripts on a page, and how to use jQuery with other JavaScript libraries. Then a style switcher example is used to demonstrate the "this" keyword, shorthand event methods, and compound events, as well as event capturing, bubbling, objects, targets, propagation, delegation, namespacing, and other topics. Unfortunately, the screenshots are of little help, largely because the black-and-white images fail to show user feedback, such as green backgrounds on hover, and even bolded link text. Chapter 4, which covers jQuery effects, begins by explaining how to programmatically discover and save attribute values, for later use; then it explains how to hide and show HTML elements, fade them in and out, toggle their settings, create simple custom animations, invoke effects sequentially using queuing, and queue effects on different elements using callback functions. The fifth chapter shows how to easily add and remove elements and their attributes from the DOM, and even create a new DOM structure from scratch. Most of the sample code is well explained, except for the fourth line in the insertAfter() snippet on page 96, which is not clear at all. Also, the sample text that consumes the bulk of pages 98 and 99, should be replaced with something much shorter, partly because it would be easier to locate the "span" tags within the text. This chapter, like the previous one, concludes with a "nutshell" summary that is quite helpful — and would be even more so if it listed, next to each jQuery method, the corresponding page number.

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is a combination of technologies that is seeing more widespread use every year, as developers discover the advantages of dynamic Web page interactivity without the reloading of the page each time, which of course slows down the process for the user. The sixth chapter shows how to utilize AJAX, from a jQuery perspective, with explanations and examples of the four major approaches that involve static data files, including a handy summary of when each approach would be most appropriate. Also explored are the dynamic AJAX strategies, including GET and POST requests. The authors should have mentioned that, in order to make functional the "E" and "F" dictionary entries in the example, the reader will need to load the index.html file using a Web server, and not as a static HTML file, so the calls to "e.php" and "f.php" will work. By the way, anyone confused by the reference to jQuery Reference Guide, on page 146, should be aware that it is the title of a book written by the same authors as this one.

With the seventh chapter, the authors transition from what they consider to be the tutorial portion of the book, and begin to demonstrate how the reader can utilize the earlier basics for improving Web page functionality — in this case, working with tables. The authors make good use of code snippets and screenshots to show how one can do table sorting, row striping, row highlighting, and other capabilities independent of — and in conjunction with — server-side equivalents. The subsequent chapter consists of a similar survey of jQuery goodness, but applied to forms — specifically: styling, client-side validation, auto-completion of search entry fields, and input masking (with an emphasis upon numbers). The sample HTML is a model of quality markup, except for the wrapping of checkbox input elements inside of label elements, which is noncanonical and can make it problematic to properly align all the checkboxes in a form vertically, for all browsers. Chapter 9, titled "Shufflers and Rotators," demonstrates how to create a rotator for RSS newsfeed headlines, and an image carousel featuring image enlargement with transition. Readers interested in testing out the sample code — and possibly even modifying it — should be aware that, for chapters 7 through 9, the sample code within the downloadable archive is not stored in chapter-named directories, but instead combined into an application, in the "bookstore" directory.

The last two chapters of the book are devoted to jQuery plug-ins — using those created by others, and developing one's own. In Chapter 10, to illustrate the high-level ideas, the authors focus on and recommend a number of specific plug-ins built for handling forms, advanced effects, widgets, tables, images, and charts, as well as some theming resources. In the subsequent chapter, the authors show how to develop plug-ins of varying complexity, including those that implement new global functions, implement new jQuery object methods, and extend the jQuery selector engine; the chapter wraps up with advice on how best to distribute newly-created plug-ins.

All of the chapters end with summaries, which, given the detailed and technical nature of the material within each chapter, do not add any value to the book, and could be excised without loss. The four appendices offer some valuable information: numerous online resources for readers seeking reference material; development tools for the most popular Web browsers; details on JavaScript closures; and a quick reference for the jQuery selector expressions and all of the methods. The weakest part of the book, the index, is inadequate — missing important terms, such as "animation," "callback," "iteration" (or "iterator"), and "toggling."

The following errata have yet to be listed on the book's support page: "Let[']s" (page 23), "page [is] loaded" (page 40), "if Normal was" (should read "if Normal were"; page 61), ", though" (should read "though,"; page 80), "user the $() factory function" (page 113), "slices with be" (page 283), and "though[,] there" (page 340). In the errata listed on the support page, the entry for parseFloat refers to page 74, but the error actually occurs once on page 69 and twice on pages 70, 71, and 79. In the six screenshots on pages 253 through 257, the shipping totals are incorrect. Nevertheless, the number of errata per page is far less than what is found in most computer books, especially those from Packt Publishing.

The generous amount of sample code should be quite helpful to the reader, because for most programmers, we learn best by example. However, there are many instances where a line of code is unnecessarily wrapped to a second line, even though there is plenty of room at the end of the first line to accommodate the portion of code forced down; pages 82 and 217 have glaring examples of this. The same premature wrapping is seen in some of the text, such as on pages 210 and 311.

The authors as a whole do an admirable job of explaining the central ideas. The explanations are generally clear, which is absolutely critical for a topic like jQuery that can be overwhelming to anyone unfamiliar with it — and not just as a result of the somewhat cryptic syntax (which admittedly is unavoidable), made worse by chaining and especially by the nesting of anonymous functions. Even a cursory glance through the book should make evident that the authors put a lot of effort into writing it, reflected not just in its substantial length, but also the number of examples they created for the book, and the functionality contained therein.

With its thorough coverage of key jQuery topics — from the basics to plug-in development — Learning jQuery 1.3 is an information-packed resource that can help Web developers learn how to take their JavaScript programming to the next level.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance website developer and writer.

You can purchase Learning jQuery 1.3 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of all Web technologies, JavaScript may have the most checkered past — first heralded as a powerful object-oriented language for jazzing up Web pages, but later condemned as a source of spammy pop-up windows and horrid animations polluting websites everywhere. Yet during the past several years, Web designers and developers are increasingly using JavaScript unobtrusively, for client-site interactivity — as a supplement to server-side functionality, not a replacement, and built upon standards-compliant (X)HTML and CSS. As a result, the once-derided language is now enjoying a true resurgence in interest and use. This has been bolstered by the proliferation of JavaScript libraries, of which jQuery is clearly the front runner. Web programmers seeking to get up to speed on this exciting resource can turn to Learning jQuery 1.3: Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Learning jQuery 1.3 author Jonathan Chaffer, Karl Swedberg pages 444 pages publisher Packt Publishing rating 9/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1847196705 summary A detailed introduction to this popular JavaScript library. Written by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg — two veteran Web developers based in Grand Rapids, Michigan — Learning jQuery 1.3 was published on 13 February 2009, under the ISBN 978-1847196705, by Packt Publishing, which kindly provided to me a copy of the book for review. There is a publisher's Web page for the book, where readers can order print or PDF versions of the book (or both, at a sizable discount); contact Packt Publishing with questions or feedback; read more information about the book, the authors, and the table of contents; and download a free sample chapter (the fourth one, titled "Effects") in PDF format. Readers who want to follow along with the authors' discussion, should note that all of the sample code used in the book can be downloaded from its support page. There is also a link for reading the reported errata, of which there are eleven, as of this writing. (The erratum for page 40 is incorrectly listed twice.)

The book begins with a foreword by John Resig, the creator of jQuery. What follows is over 400 pages of information, organized into eleven chapters and four appendices, covering all of the major topics related to jQuery, after a quick-start chapter: selectors, events, effects, DOM manipulation, AJAX, tables, forms, shufflers and rotators, plug-ins, online resources, development tools, and closures. The book has all the ingredients to serve as a full introduction to jQuery for experienced Web programmers, because it assumes no prior knowledge of jQuery (or any other JavaScript libraries); but it does assume that the reader comprehends the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — thus not wasting time by teaching these prerequisites skills, as is attempted in some other Web programming books.

The first chapter may be brief, but it is sufficient to present the major features of jQuery, its advantages versus raw JavaScript, and a quick history of its various releases after it was first mentioned by John Resig in August 2005. In addition, the reader is shown where to obtain the library, how to add it to a Web page, and a few of its basic capabilities. In the given example, multiple HTML paragraph elements are styled using just three lines of code; yet the power of jQuery would have been demonstrated even better had the authors also shown the equivalent raw JavaScript needed to perform the same functionality.

The next four chapters present the basics of jQuery upon which everything that follows is built. Readers are introduced, in Chapter 2, to the jQuery syntax for accessing individual elements and groups of elements on a Web page, using the $() factory function, CSS selectors, and jQuery's own custom selectors. As with all of the chapters that follow, several examples are used to illustrate the core ideas. The ability to intercept and react to events on a Web page — such as a user clicking on a particular link — is an essential part of client-side interactivity, and is the topic of the third chapter. But first the groundwork is set by learning how to control when code is executed, how to utilize multiple scripts on a page, and how to use jQuery with other JavaScript libraries. Then a style switcher example is used to demonstrate the "this" keyword, shorthand event methods, and compound events, as well as event capturing, bubbling, objects, targets, propagation, delegation, namespacing, and other topics. Unfortunately, the screenshots are of little help, largely because the black-and-white images fail to show user feedback, such as green backgrounds on hover, and even bolded link text. Chapter 4, which covers jQuery effects, begins by explaining how to programmatically discover and save attribute values, for later use; then it explains how to hide and show HTML elements, fade them in and out, toggle their settings, create simple custom animations, invoke effects sequentially using queuing, and queue effects on different elements using callback functions. The fifth chapter shows how to easily add and remove elements and their attributes from the DOM, and even create a new DOM structure from scratch. Most of the sample code is well explained, except for the fourth line in the insertAfter() snippet on page 96, which is not clear at all. Also, the sample text that consumes the bulk of pages 98 and 99, should be replaced with something much shorter, partly because it would be easier to locate the "span" tags within the text. This chapter, like the previous one, concludes with a "nutshell" summary that is quite helpful — and would be even more so if it listed, next to each jQuery method, the corresponding page number.

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is a combination of technologies that is seeing more widespread use every year, as developers discover the advantages of dynamic Web page interactivity without the reloading of the page each time, which of course slows down the process for the user. The sixth chapter shows how to utilize AJAX, from a jQuery perspective, with explanations and examples of the four major approaches that involve static data files, including a handy summary of when each approach would be most appropriate. Also explored are the dynamic AJAX strategies, including GET and POST requests. The authors should have mentioned that, in order to make functional the "E" and "F" dictionary entries in the example, the reader will need to load the index.html file using a Web server, and not as a static HTML file, so the calls to "e.php" and "f.php" will work. By the way, anyone confused by the reference to jQuery Reference Guide, on page 146, should be aware that it is the title of a book written by the same authors as this one.

With the seventh chapter, the authors transition from what they consider to be the tutorial portion of the book, and begin to demonstrate how the reader can utilize the earlier basics for improving Web page functionality — in this case, working with tables. The authors make good use of code snippets and screenshots to show how one can do table sorting, row striping, row highlighting, and other capabilities independent of — and in conjunction with — server-side equivalents. The subsequent chapter consists of a similar survey of jQuery goodness, but applied to forms — specifically: styling, client-side validation, auto-completion of search entry fields, and input masking (with an emphasis upon numbers). The sample HTML is a model of quality markup, except for the wrapping of checkbox input elements inside of label elements, which is noncanonical and can make it problematic to properly align all the checkboxes in a form vertically, for all browsers. Chapter 9, titled "Shufflers and Rotators," demonstrates how to create a rotator for RSS newsfeed headlines, and an image carousel featuring image enlargement with transition. Readers interested in testing out the sample code — and possibly even modifying it — should be aware that, for chapters 7 through 9, the sample code within the downloadable archive is not stored in chapter-named directories, but instead combined into an application, in the "bookstore" directory.

The last two chapters of the book are devoted to jQuery plug-ins — using those created by others, and developing one's own. In Chapter 10, to illustrate the high-level ideas, the authors focus on and recommend a number of specific plug-ins built for handling forms, advanced effects, widgets, tables, images, and charts, as well as some theming resources. In the subsequent chapter, the authors show how to develop plug-ins of varying complexity, including those that implement new global functions, implement new jQuery object methods, and extend the jQuery selector engine; the chapter wraps up with advice on how best to distribute newly-created plug-ins.

All of the chapters end with summaries, which, given the detailed and technical nature of the material within each chapter, do not add any value to the book, and could be excised without loss. The four appendices offer some valuable information: numerous online resources for readers seeking reference material; development tools for the most popular Web browsers; details on JavaScript closures; and a quick reference for the jQuery selector expressions and all of the methods. The weakest part of the book, the index, is inadequate — missing important terms, such as "animation," "callback," "iteration" (or "iterator"), and "toggling."

The following errata have yet to be listed on the book's support page: "Let[']s" (page 23), "page [is] loaded" (page 40), "if Normal was" (should read "if Normal were"; page 61), ", though" (should read "though,"; page 80), "user the $() factory function" (page 113), "slices with be" (page 283), and "though[,] there" (page 340). In the errata listed on the support page, the entry for parseFloat refers to page 74, but the error actually occurs once on page 69 and twice on pages 70, 71, and 79. In the six screenshots on pages 253 through 257, the shipping totals are incorrect. Nevertheless, the number of errata per page is far less than what is found in most computer books, especially those from Packt Publishing.

The generous amount of sample code should be quite helpful to the reader, because for most programmers, we learn best by example. However, there are many instances where a line of code is unnecessarily wrapped to a second line, even though there is plenty of room at the end of the first line to accommodate the portion of code forced down; pages 82 and 217 have glaring examples of this. The same premature wrapping is seen in some of the text, such as on pages 210 and 311.

The authors as a whole do an admirable job of explaining the central ideas. The explanations are generally clear, which is absolutely critical for a topic like jQuery that can be overwhelming to anyone unfamiliar with it — and not just as a result of the somewhat cryptic syntax (which admittedly is unavoidable), made worse by chaining and especially by the nesting of anonymous functions. Even a cursory glance through the book should make evident that the authors put a lot of effort into writing it, reflected not just in its substantial length, but also the number of examples they created for the book, and the functionality contained therein.

With its thorough coverage of key jQuery topics — from the basics to plug-in development — Learning jQuery 1.3 is an information-packed resource that can help Web developers learn how to take their JavaScript programming to the next level.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance website developer and writer.

You can purchase Learning jQuery 1.3 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "The shopping cart systems that power online stores have evolved from simple homebrew solutions in the CGI era to far more powerful open source packages, such as osCommerce. But even the later systems are frequently criticized as suffering from poorly-written code and inadequate documentation — as well as for being difficult to install and administer, and nearly impossible to enhance with new functionality and improved site styling, at least without hiring outside help. These problems alone would explain the rapidly growing interest in the latest generation of shopping cart systems, such as Magento, purported to be outpacing all others in adoption. In turn, technical publishers are making available books to help developers and site owners get started with this e-commerce alternative, such as Magento: Beginner's Guide, written by William Rice." Read on for the rest of Michael's review. Magento: Beginner's Guide author William Rice pages 300 publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1847195944 summary A starter guide to this popular e-commerce shopping cart. This title was published on 15 April 2009 by Packt Publishing, under the ISBN 978-1847195944. The firm makes available a Web page dedicated to the book, where visitors can find information on how to purchase the print or PDF versions of the book (or both as a bundle, at substantial savings). The site also has a link labeled "Code download" (even though there isn't any downloadable code), another link for viewing any errata (of which there is one reported, as of this writing), and a link for downloading a sample chapter (the third one, "Categories and Attributes").

The bulk of the book's 300 pages are organized into eleven chapters, which are intended to take the reader through the basic topics, in the same order they might be encountered by anyone developing a Magento-based store for the first time: an introduction; Magento system requirements and installation; product categories and attributes; tax rules; adding product information; site styling; advanced product functionality; CRM; payment processing; shipping configuration; and order fulfillment. These chapters are followed by an appendix that delineates, as numbered lists, all of the steps covered in greater detail in the chapters. The book concludes with an index whose value is immediately brought into question by the "products" entry, which presumably would be one of the most lengthy sections for an e-commerce book such as this one, yet contains only two entries, and neither one has a page number.

The book's first chapter begins by stating what Magento and the book offer, which were already covered in the preface. The author then introduces the demo store (an online vendor of coffee beans) to be used throughout the book, with screenshots. Readers can skip over this chapter, without missing anything of importance. This chapter, like all that follow, concludes with a summary, which adds no value to the book.

In Chapter 2, the author patiently steps the non-technical user through each phase of installing Magento on a Web server, with an emphasis upon Linux systems, which apparently are far less problematic for Magento than using a Windows-based hosting account (imagine that). PHP novices will likely appreciate the author's tip on how to use phpinfo() to see their server settings, but should be warned to delete that file so hackers cannot also stumble upon that information. Also, there are some technical inaccuracies in the author's discussion of search engine friendly URLs. In step 1 of the installation, he should have explained why he chose the Full Release and not the Downloader. On page 31, he instructs the reader to set some Magento files to permissions of 777, even though the previous page stated that his Web hosts' control panel does not allow that setting. Some readers may be confused by this, and should be advised to use their FTP programs for accomplishing this task, if their control panel has the same limitation. In step 3, the author could have provided some guidance as to what the reader can do if Magento refuses to proceed with the installation and provides no error messages, even though the database information is valid and confirmable by logging in at the command line. Of course, it is difficult to anticipate all the possible problems that a user may encounter. Even the official Magento documentation does not appear to address this particular issue. Lastly, the checklist at the end of the chapter, which specifies four items to confirm prior to installation, obviously should have been presented at the beginning of the chapter.

In the third chapter, the author explores some key concepts needed in working with Magento: products, categories, and attributes. Throughout the book, these three common terms — and later, "shopping cart," "payment gateways," etc. — are presented in title case, as if they were proper names, which they are not. Within the text, this formatting gives them the appearance of menu or page names, which quickly becomes annoying. A glaring example of this is section 16 on page 59. On the same page, the reader will encounter a rather cryptic heading, "Have a go hero." Nonetheless, readers should find the topic coverage to be quite useful, including tips on enabling a product navigation menu, optimizing categories, entering products, creating product images, and setting attributes. The next two chapters explain how to apply taxes to customer purchases, and how to add "simple products" (those without customer-changeable attributes), respectively. At first glance, one might conclude that Chapter 5 should immediately follow Chapter 3 — or be combined into one chapter — since both deal primarily with products. But within Magento, tax rules are a prerequisite for properly creating new products in one's store, so the chosen order makes sense.

The author shifts gears with the sixth chapter, which explores basic styling, i.e., customizing the appearance of a Magento-based storefront. The majority of the changes can be accomplished easily by the reader, because most of them are made within the Magento administrative area, and not through any involved editing of the CSS files of the default theme. Chapter 7 covers the topics of related products, grouped products, and configurable products — and thus clearly should have followed Chapter 5. Regardless, the author's use of illustrative examples, in creating the demo site, is quite helpful for the reader to see how to use each dialog box in the process of creating the various types of products.

The last four chapters of Magento: Beginner's Guide address four essential aspects of building and running an online store, beyond the products themselves: Chapter 8 is fairly brief, but explains how to configure a store's e-mail addresses and contact form (but not how to customize the e-mail templates), as well as the functionality made available by Magento for administering customers once they have become registered users on the store site. The subsequent chapter shows how to set up a Magento site to accept customer payments using PayPal, Authorize.Net, and other electronic payment options. Chapter 10 explains how to configure the various shipping options within Magento, and, like the previous chapter, focuses on trade-offs among the various options rather than the details of how to complete each dialog box. Confusingly, on page 219, the author states that you can charge a handling fee with the flat rate method, but four pages earlier states the exact opposite. The last chapter in the book covers the various phases of order fulfillment, as well as order management.

Despite the value of the book's contents, the material would have benefited from some proper editing, evidenced alone by the many errata: "freelance[r]" (on the "About the reviewer" page), "[and] so" (page 2), "distinguishes" (page 3), "top[-]two" (page 10), "Paypal" (page 11), "Card(saved)" (page 11), "php" (page 13), "reading and article" (page 17), "you web host" (page 27), "/single-origin-coffees" is missing (page 55), "Attribute[']s Model" (page 73), "Add New [Attribute] Set" (page 75), "answer[s]" (page 78), "zip codes" (pages 85-86, and others), "characters;" (should be a comma; page 104), "later [in the] book" (page 131), "discuss about" (page 131), "direct[ion] replacement" (page 133), "graphics;" (should be a comma; page 138), "tab. to" (page 141), "2@ brew..." (page 182), "can sit[e]" (page 190), "such [as] Visa" (page 195), and "Shopping Card" (page 197). Some of these errata are likely not attributable to the author, but instead introduced during the production phase of publication. There are other indicators that quality control was lacking, such as an errant period tacked on to every "Chapter 5" in the page title, on all the pages of that chapter. On a more subjective note, I found Packt Publishing's use of four different font sizes within the table of contents — no doubt intended to make higher level section names stand out — to actually reduce speed of scanning and comprehension, just as it does on Web pages that have half a dozen or more font sizes on a single page. The practice is not limited to this particular title, but appears to be standard in their lineup of books. In addition, the longer subheads are shown in such a thick and compressed font face as to be quite difficult to read, e.g., on page 239.

Throughout his book, the author's writing style is generally clear and approachable, though occasionally choppy. His background in technical instruction is exemplified by his logical, step-by-step explanations. Some readers may find this style too repetitive, such as the many mini-summaries — labeled "What just happened?" — scattered throughout the book. These are unnecessary, waste space, and could be excised. One instance of pedantry (on page 105) deserves special recognition/ribbing: "Yes and No are self-explanatory."

But all of these aforementioned flaws are relatively minor — particularly to the reader anxious to put up a new online storefront with minimum delay. Magento: Beginner's Guide is a detailed and lucid introduction to an e-commerce system quickly growing in favor.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

You can purchase Magento: Beginner's Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of the leading content management systems used by developers for creating websites, Drupal is highly regarded for many characteristics, including a much smaller initial footprint, compared to Joomla and other CMSs. Yet some developers find this a disadvantage as well, because one of the most common criticisms leveled against Drupal is its lack of built-in support for images and multimedia elements — thereby forcing new Drupal developers to choose from the thousands of contributed Drupal modules those that would be optimal for implementing their websites' multimedia functionality. Aaron Winborn's book Drupal Multimedia is intended as a guide to help such developers." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal Multimedia author Aaron Winborn pages 264 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1-847194-60-2 summary A guidebook for adding images, videos, and audio content to Drupal sites The book was put out by Packt Publishing on 30 October 2008, under the ISBN 978-1-847194-60-2. On the publisher's book page, visitors can learn more details about the book and its author, purchase the electronic or print editions of the book (or both, at a discount), download the sample source code, send feedback or questions to the publisher, read the book's table of contents, or download a sample chapter for free ("Third Party Video") in PDF format. As with all other Packt Publishing titles, the errata is annoyingly not available directly from the book page; instead the visitor must go to the general Packt Publishing support page, find the title in a lengthy drop-down list box, click a button, and finally click another link (the one that should have been on the book page from the start) — only to have the errata displayed in a pop-up window. Among all the technical book publishers, Packt's procedure for accessing errata is surely the most tedious, and one can only hope it will be improved in the future. As of this writing, only one erratum has been reported. It is listed as being on "page 0," but that instead should read "page 34" (an erratum in an erratum!). Speaking of online resources, one would expect the author's own site to have further information on the book, but there does not appear to be any there.

Drupal Multimedia is a fairly slender volume, at 264 pages, no doubt because it focuses on a limited subject area — implementing multimedia with some key contributed modules — as opposed to most of the recent spate of Drupal books, some of which try to cover every major aspect of the CMS. The material in Aaron Winborn's book is organized into eleven chapters, addressing most if not all of the key topics within the chosen subject area: Drupal basics; images, galleries, and slideshows; image theming and effects; third-party and local video; file management; audio nodes and fields; theming audio; and the future of multimedia in Drupal. The book concludes with a skimpy five-page index, which fails to contain such basic entries as Flash, FLV, SWF, sprites, star ratings, slideshows, and countless others. A robust index is especially critical for any technical book, such as this one, that divides related topics among multiple chapters, and has section and subsection names that in some cases are quite similar to one another and thus could be easily confused.

Because this book is geared more toward programmers new to Drupal, and not well-versed veterans, the first chapter — the second longest in the book — introduces the reader to the core concepts of Drupal (nodes, regions, blocks, themes, and modules — core and contributed) as well as two essential modules (CCK and Views). The explanations do not go into any great detail, but should be enough to give any Drupal newbie a head start. Nonetheless, readers may be confused by the screenshots on pages 16 through 19, which appear to be from Drupal 5. Also, the brief coverage of views arguments is inadequate, and needs to be beefed to be useful later in the book. For creating a new theme, the author advises copying wholesale an existing theme; instead, a sub-theme is a much better approach. Chapter 1 wraps up with a discussion of some basic concepts in Drupal theming, which makes puzzling the title of the section, "Advanced Theming." Speaking of themes, readers should note that when the author refers to "theming" an image or video, he means making the uploaded file display as content on the node's page (and not just exist as an attachment to that node).

For many programmers new to Drupal, the first hurdle they encounter is how to add an image to the content of a page or story — a seemingly trivial task that is built into most major CMSs — without writing HTML and hard coding the path of an image file they FTP-ed to the server. Drupal version 6 and presumably all prior versions, do not have native support for uploading and embedding in-line images. In his second chapter, the author explains how one can create image galleries, teaser thumbnails, and images embedded in content. However, in the discussion on page 45, some details are incorrect, such as the label for the "Save" button (three times) and the presence of the galleries drop-down list. Readers will undoubtedly be confused by two additional inaccuracies: There is no Navigation menu item for displaying the "image galleries" created by default, because initially the image_gallery view has no menu assigned in the Gallery page settings. Secondly, the gallery description is not shown on the gallery page; in fact, it is not even listed as an available view field. The section titled "Image Gallery Settings" suggests that the author may have been using an older version of the Image module. But this probably does not explain the erroneous statement on page 56, that "image nodes created with Image attach will automatically be marked as not published." The chapter concludes with an explanation of how to embed an image in content, using manually inserted image tags, or the ImageAssist module, optionally supplemented with a WYSIWYG HTML editor, such as TinyMCE. The fourth chapter looks at how to theme images, and discusses — it greatly varying levels of detail — style overriding, the Firebug Firefox extension, the Theme Developer module, image nodes, image-based rollover menus, sprites, light boxes, star ratings, slideshows, and various special effects: drop shadows, magnification, and watermarks.

The subsequent chapter — oddly titled "Developing for Images" — extends the discussion by showing how to insert images as fields utilizing ImageField and several supporting modules. One of those modules is referred to as "FileField Tokens" (page 70), but there is no such module; the author probably meant ImageField Tokens. Also extending the previously noted problem of non-Drupal 6 content, is the screenshot for "Display fields," on page 83, as well as the narrative, which appear to be pre-version 6. The latter half of the chapter delves into how to create galleries and slideshows (using views), user pictures, and images associated with taxonomy terms.

With Chapters 5 and 6, the author shifts attention to what is perhaps the second most commonly used type of multimedia on websites nowadays — video — with the former of those chapters devoted to third-party videos (such as content hosted on YouTube), while the latter chapter is devoted to "local video" (local in the sense of hosted on one's own remote Web server — not one's local development machine). The author demonstrates how to utilize a YouTube-hosted video, first using core Drupal modules only, then using the Embedded Video Field module. For using local video files, the author shows how to use the FileField module so the user can upload QuickTime video files. Unfortunately, the instructions on page 146 may prove confusing to beginners, since it is not entirely clear as to whether the later, more-detailed paragraphs are repeating earlier instructions, or specifying something new. More significantly, the use of the FileField module necessitates writing theme PHP code, just to have the video display on the page — which less technical readers may not feel comfortable attempting on their sites. The second part of the chapter may be more useful to the typical reader, because it covers how to embed Flash videos, a more popular format. The author advocates the use of the jQuery Media module (which he created) in conjunction with the jQ module. Unfortunately for the reader, the details of implementing this approach are glossed over at the end of the chapter, with only meager instructions ("... add .node .content a to the classes."), and without any illustrative example. No explanation is provided as to why this particular JavaScript-dependent solution is recommended, as opposed to a more straightforward one, such as the Flash Node module — which is far less problematic for FLV files. (By the way, the author states that he and some other developers are creating a fully GPL media player module and that there is a development version available of this Media Player module. But there is no such version on that page, and the situation may never change, because the project appears to have fizzled in August 2008, judging by the comments on the Drupal.org site and the author's site.)

In written tutorials, videocasts, and other discussions of Drupal multimedia, one important area that is often neglected is asset management. This includes such seemingly mundane matters as where in a Drupal site's file system one should place plug-in files and even the uploaded multimedia files themselves. A more far-reaching topic is how to best associate multimedia assets with nodes so they can be accessed by various modules — for instance, as stand-alone content types versus CCK fields. Chapter 7 examines some of these topics, first discussing how to create and theme nodes whose associated videos can be used elsewhere on a site, such as in a gallery — using the Embedded Media Field and Node Reference modules. However, some readers may become frustrated because a couple critical steps are skipped, and, even worse, no guidance is provided as to how to make the video show up on a node reference content page, or what content provider selection to use (since "Local" is not an option). Next the author considers how to set access to videos by user role — using the Asset module. Unfortunately, the reader is apparently not shown how to do anything useful with video content uploaded and managed using the Asset module, including the scenario proposed at the beginning of the section. (Incidentally, one might assume that the author's solution would use the Asset Embedded Media submodule, but it is not compatible with the latest version of Drupal 6.) The Media Mover module, and its many submodules, offer an alternate method of video asset management, and the author shows how to e-mail a video from a mobile phone, to be automatically attached to a new blog post. The chapter concludes with a brief look at Kaltura, an open-source platform for storing and editing multimedia.

Some Web developers and end-users may consider online audio as the poor cousin of video. In truth, audio-only content plays a key role in many Web applications — from podcasts embedded in RSS feeds, to sample tracks on music sellers' websites. The subsequent three chapters of the book are devoted to managing audio content within Drupal using several resources and solutions — specifically, the Audio, getID3, FileField, jQuery Media, Embedded Media Field, XSPF Playlist, and Views modules

In the last chapter, titled "The Future of Drupal Multimedia," the author speculates as to what media-related capabilities he thinks we will likely find in Drupal 7 and beyond — such as native file handling (via hook_file) and multimedia support in core Drupal, the merging or deprecation of non-FileField modules, dissociation of data from nodes, improved module interfaces and usability, embeddable widgets (for data distribution), semantic multimedia (microformats, RDF, and taxonomy-powered tagging), mobile Web access, virtual reality (such as Second Life), tactile and olfactory media, and motion sensing (such as the Wii Remote controller).

One laudable feature of this book is the inclusion of numerous screenshots, which can be quite reassuring to a reader getting lost in the technical minutia of any particular recipe. Also helpful is the manner in which the author, for the most part, keeps the reader informed as to all configuration settings — and where to find them within the Drupal administration interface — that the reader must or may want to modify, depending on his or her needs. Technical books that fail to do this can be extremely frustrating to anyone trying to learn a nontrivial technology.

Yet there are some major flaws with the book: Far too much of the material suggests that the author was using Drupal 5. Aside from the screenshots mentioned earlier, sections of the text point in that direction, such as the statement, "The multiple image issue might be taken care of by Drupal 6" (page 56). Fortunately, none of these gaffes prevent the reader from learning how to perform the tasks using version 6. The second and more important flaw is the poor coverage of Flash content, as detailed above. A follow-up edition to the book, in which all of these problems are resolved, would be most welcome and valuable.

A revision would also be an opportunity to fix the grammatical errors that should have been caught in the proofreading process. For instance, the fourth complete sentence on page 11, is missing a verb. Errata include "Autrhor" (credits page), "you [have] learned" (page 2), ". you'll" (page 2), a ")" without a "(" to match it (page 17), "isin" (page 31), "it [is] installed" (page 32), "provide files" (page 33; should instead read "provide functions"), "hierarchal" (page 46), "formated" (page 57), "[the] FTP" (page 75), "menu — By" (page 117), "going a view" (page 119), "quicktime" (page 146), and "[Submit] Audio" (page 179). In addition, there are eight pairs of adjacent words missing their separating spaces — five on page 159, and three more on page 174.

As seen in many other Packt Publishing titles, this one contains excessive usage of inappropriate title case (e.g., several on page 8 and 9 alone), though occasionally title case is neglected (e.g., "Image attach" throughout the book). In addition, some of the phrasing is rather awkward, which may pose no barrier to a reader who already understands the particular idea being discussed in the text, but could prove a real detriment to anyone unfamiliar with that idea. For instance, on page 36, the author states that "Often you may wish to override a theme that is not provided as a file in the default theme." But no theme is contained within a single file, and one does not override themes anyway; rather, one can disable a theme, or modify a copy of it, or create a variation as a sub-theme.

Yet overall, this book's strengths outweigh its weaknesses. For Drupal developers who wish to add image, audio, and video content to their sites, Drupal Multimedia is a useful resource with which to begin.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

You can purchase Drupal Multimedia from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of the leading content management systems used by developers for creating websites, Drupal is highly regarded for many characteristics, including a much smaller initial footprint, compared to Joomla and other CMSs. Yet some developers find this a disadvantage as well, because one of the most common criticisms leveled against Drupal is its lack of built-in support for images and multimedia elements — thereby forcing new Drupal developers to choose from the thousands of contributed Drupal modules those that would be optimal for implementing their websites' multimedia functionality. Aaron Winborn's book Drupal Multimedia is intended as a guide to help such developers." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal Multimedia author Aaron Winborn pages 264 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1-847194-60-2 summary A guidebook for adding images, videos, and audio content to Drupal sites The book was put out by Packt Publishing on 30 October 2008, under the ISBN 978-1-847194-60-2. On the publisher's book page, visitors can learn more details about the book and its author, purchase the electronic or print editions of the book (or both, at a discount), download the sample source code, send feedback or questions to the publisher, read the book's table of contents, or download a sample chapter for free ("Third Party Video") in PDF format. As with all other Packt Publishing titles, the errata is annoyingly not available directly from the book page; instead the visitor must go to the general Packt Publishing support page, find the title in a lengthy drop-down list box, click a button, and finally click another link (the one that should have been on the book page from the start) — only to have the errata displayed in a pop-up window. Among all the technical book publishers, Packt's procedure for accessing errata is surely the most tedious, and one can only hope it will be improved in the future. As of this writing, only one erratum has been reported. It is listed as being on "page 0," but that instead should read "page 34" (an erratum in an erratum!). Speaking of online resources, one would expect the author's own site to have further information on the book, but there does not appear to be any there.

Drupal Multimedia is a fairly slender volume, at 264 pages, no doubt because it focuses on a limited subject area — implementing multimedia with some key contributed modules — as opposed to most of the recent spate of Drupal books, some of which try to cover every major aspect of the CMS. The material in Aaron Winborn's book is organized into eleven chapters, addressing most if not all of the key topics within the chosen subject area: Drupal basics; images, galleries, and slideshows; image theming and effects; third-party and local video; file management; audio nodes and fields; theming audio; and the future of multimedia in Drupal. The book concludes with a skimpy five-page index, which fails to contain such basic entries as Flash, FLV, SWF, sprites, star ratings, slideshows, and countless others. A robust index is especially critical for any technical book, such as this one, that divides related topics among multiple chapters, and has section and subsection names that in some cases are quite similar to one another and thus could be easily confused.

Because this book is geared more toward programmers new to Drupal, and not well-versed veterans, the first chapter — the second longest in the book — introduces the reader to the core concepts of Drupal (nodes, regions, blocks, themes, and modules — core and contributed) as well as two essential modules (CCK and Views). The explanations do not go into any great detail, but should be enough to give any Drupal newbie a head start. Nonetheless, readers may be confused by the screenshots on pages 16 through 19, which appear to be from Drupal 5. Also, the brief coverage of views arguments is inadequate, and needs to be beefed to be useful later in the book. For creating a new theme, the author advises copying wholesale an existing theme; instead, a sub-theme is a much better approach. Chapter 1 wraps up with a discussion of some basic concepts in Drupal theming, which makes puzzling the title of the section, "Advanced Theming." Speaking of themes, readers should note that when the author refers to "theming" an image or video, he means making the uploaded file display as content on the node's page (and not just exist as an attachment to that node).

For many programmers new to Drupal, the first hurdle they encounter is how to add an image to the content of a page or story — a seemingly trivial task that is built into most major CMSs — without writing HTML and hard coding the path of an image file they FTP-ed to the server. Drupal version 6 and presumably all prior versions, do not have native support for uploading and embedding in-line images. In his second chapter, the author explains how one can create image galleries, teaser thumbnails, and images embedded in content. However, in the discussion on page 45, some details are incorrect, such as the label for the "Save" button (three times) and the presence of the galleries drop-down list. Readers will undoubtedly be confused by two additional inaccuracies: There is no Navigation menu item for displaying the "image galleries" created by default, because initially the image_gallery view has no menu assigned in the Gallery page settings. Secondly, the gallery description is not shown on the gallery page; in fact, it is not even listed as an available view field. The section titled "Image Gallery Settings" suggests that the author may have been using an older version of the Image module. But this probably does not explain the erroneous statement on page 56, that "image nodes created with Image attach will automatically be marked as not published." The chapter concludes with an explanation of how to embed an image in content, using manually inserted image tags, or the ImageAssist module, optionally supplemented with a WYSIWYG HTML editor, such as TinyMCE. The fourth chapter looks at how to theme images, and discusses — it greatly varying levels of detail — style overriding, the Firebug Firefox extension, the Theme Developer module, image nodes, image-based rollover menus, sprites, light boxes, star ratings, slideshows, and various special effects: drop shadows, magnification, and watermarks.

The subsequent chapter — oddly titled "Developing for Images" — extends the discussion by showing how to insert images as fields utilizing ImageField and several supporting modules. One of those modules is referred to as "FileField Tokens" (page 70), but there is no such module; the author probably meant ImageField Tokens. Also extending the previously noted problem of non-Drupal 6 content, is the screenshot for "Display fields," on page 83, as well as the narrative, which appear to be pre-version 6. The latter half of the chapter delves into how to create galleries and slideshows (using views), user pictures, and images associated with taxonomy terms.

With Chapters 5 and 6, the author shifts attention to what is perhaps the second most commonly used type of multimedia on websites nowadays — video — with the former of those chapters devoted to third-party videos (such as content hosted on YouTube), while the latter chapter is devoted to "local video" (local in the sense of hosted on one's own remote Web server — not one's local development machine). The author demonstrates how to utilize a YouTube-hosted video, first using core Drupal modules only, then using the Embedded Video Field module. For using local video files, the author shows how to use the FileField module so the user can upload QuickTime video files. Unfortunately, the instructions on page 146 may prove confusing to beginners, since it is not entirely clear as to whether the later, more-detailed paragraphs are repeating earlier instructions, or specifying something new. More significantly, the use of the FileField module necessitates writing theme PHP code, just to have the video display on the page — which less technical readers may not feel comfortable attempting on their sites. The second part of the chapter may be more useful to the typical reader, because it covers how to embed Flash videos, a more popular format. The author advocates the use of the jQuery Media module (which he created) in conjunction with the jQ module. Unfortunately for the reader, the details of implementing this approach are glossed over at the end of the chapter, with only meager instructions ("... add .node .content a to the classes."), and without any illustrative example. No explanation is provided as to why this particular JavaScript-dependent solution is recommended, as opposed to a more straightforward one, such as the Flash Node module — which is far less problematic for FLV files. (By the way, the author states that he and some other developers are creating a fully GPL media player module and that there is a development version available of this Media Player module. But there is no such version on that page, and the situation may never change, because the project appears to have fizzled in August 2008, judging by the comments on the Drupal.org site and the author's site.)

In written tutorials, videocasts, and other discussions of Drupal multimedia, one important area that is often neglected is asset management. This includes such seemingly mundane matters as where in a Drupal site's file system one should place plug-in files and even the uploaded multimedia files themselves. A more far-reaching topic is how to best associate multimedia assets with nodes so they can be accessed by various modules — for instance, as stand-alone content types versus CCK fields. Chapter 7 examines some of these topics, first discussing how to create and theme nodes whose associated videos can be used elsewhere on a site, such as in a gallery — using the Embedded Media Field and Node Reference modules. However, some readers may become frustrated because a couple critical steps are skipped, and, even worse, no guidance is provided as to how to make the video show up on a node reference content page, or what content provider selection to use (since "Local" is not an option). Next the author considers how to set access to videos by user role — using the Asset module. Unfortunately, the reader is apparently not shown how to do anything useful with video content uploaded and managed using the Asset module, including the scenario proposed at the beginning of the section. (Incidentally, one might assume that the author's solution would use the Asset Embedded Media submodule, but it is not compatible with the latest version of Drupal 6.) The Media Mover module, and its many submodules, offer an alternate method of video asset management, and the author shows how to e-mail a video from a mobile phone, to be automatically attached to a new blog post. The chapter concludes with a brief look at Kaltura, an open-source platform for storing and editing multimedia.

Some Web developers and end-users may consider online audio as the poor cousin of video. In truth, audio-only content plays a key role in many Web applications — from podcasts embedded in RSS feeds, to sample tracks on music sellers' websites. The subsequent three chapters of the book are devoted to managing audio content within Drupal using several resources and solutions — specifically, the Audio, getID3, FileField, jQuery Media, Embedded Media Field, XSPF Playlist, and Views modules

In the last chapter, titled "The Future of Drupal Multimedia," the author speculates as to what media-related capabilities he thinks we will likely find in Drupal 7 and beyond — such as native file handling (via hook_file) and multimedia support in core Drupal, the merging or deprecation of non-FileField modules, dissociation of data from nodes, improved module interfaces and usability, embeddable widgets (for data distribution), semantic multimedia (microformats, RDF, and taxonomy-powered tagging), mobile Web access, virtual reality (such as Second Life), tactile and olfactory media, and motion sensing (such as the Wii Remote controller).

One laudable feature of this book is the inclusion of numerous screenshots, which can be quite reassuring to a reader getting lost in the technical minutia of any particular recipe. Also helpful is the manner in which the author, for the most part, keeps the reader informed as to all configuration settings — and where to find them within the Drupal administration interface — that the reader must or may want to modify, depending on his or her needs. Technical books that fail to do this can be extremely frustrating to anyone trying to learn a nontrivial technology.

Yet there are some major flaws with the book: Far too much of the material suggests that the author was using Drupal 5. Aside from the screenshots mentioned earlier, sections of the text point in that direction, such as the statement, "The multiple image issue might be taken care of by Drupal 6" (page 56). Fortunately, none of these gaffes prevent the reader from learning how to perform the tasks using version 6. The second and more important flaw is the poor coverage of Flash content, as detailed above. A follow-up edition to the book, in which all of these problems are resolved, would be most welcome and valuable.

A revision would also be an opportunity to fix the grammatical errors that should have been caught in the proofreading process. For instance, the fourth complete sentence on page 11, is missing a verb. Errata include "Autrhor" (credits page), "you [have] learned" (page 2), ". you'll" (page 2), a ")" without a "(" to match it (page 17), "isin" (page 31), "it [is] installed" (page 32), "provide files" (page 33; should instead read "provide functions"), "hierarchal" (page 46), "formated" (page 57), "[the] FTP" (page 75), "menu — By" (page 117), "going a view" (page 119), "quicktime" (page 146), and "[Submit] Audio" (page 179). In addition, there are eight pairs of adjacent words missing their separating spaces — five on page 159, and three more on page 174.

As seen in many other Packt Publishing titles, this one contains excessive usage of inappropriate title case (e.g., several on page 8 and 9 alone), though occasionally title case is neglected (e.g., "Image attach" throughout the book). In addition, some of the phrasing is rather awkward, which may pose no barrier to a reader who already understands the particular idea being discussed in the text, but could prove a real detriment to anyone unfamiliar with that idea. For instance, on page 36, the author states that "Often you may wish to override a theme that is not provided as a file in the default theme." But no theme is contained within a single file, and one does not override themes anyway; rather, one can disable a theme, or modify a copy of it, or create a variation as a sub-theme.

Yet overall, this book's strengths outweigh its weaknesses. For Drupal developers who wish to add image, audio, and video content to their sites, Drupal Multimedia is a useful resource with which to begin.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

You can purchase Drupal Multimedia from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of the leading content management systems used by developers for creating websites, Drupal is highly regarded for many characteristics, including a much smaller initial footprint, compared to Joomla and other CMSs. Yet some developers find this a disadvantage as well, because one of the most common criticisms leveled against Drupal is its lack of built-in support for images and multimedia elements — thereby forcing new Drupal developers to choose from the thousands of contributed Drupal modules those that would be optimal for implementing their websites' multimedia functionality. Aaron Winborn's book Drupal Multimedia is intended as a guide to help such developers." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal Multimedia author Aaron Winborn pages 264 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1-847194-60-2 summary A guidebook for adding images, videos, and audio content to Drupal sites The book was put out by Packt Publishing on 30 October 2008, under the ISBN 978-1-847194-60-2. On the publisher's book page, visitors can learn more details about the book and its author, purchase the electronic or print editions of the book (or both, at a discount), download the sample source code, send feedback or questions to the publisher, read the book's table of contents, or download a sample chapter for free ("Third Party Video") in PDF format. As with all other Packt Publishing titles, the errata is annoyingly not available directly from the book page; instead the visitor must go to the general Packt Publishing support page, find the title in a lengthy drop-down list box, click a button, and finally click another link (the one that should have been on the book page from the start) — only to have the errata displayed in a pop-up window. Among all the technical book publishers, Packt's procedure for accessing errata is surely the most tedious, and one can only hope it will be improved in the future. As of this writing, only one erratum has been reported. It is listed as being on "page 0," but that instead should read "page 34" (an erratum in an erratum!). Speaking of online resources, one would expect the author's own site to have further information on the book, but there does not appear to be any there.

Drupal Multimedia is a fairly slender volume, at 264 pages, no doubt because it focuses on a limited subject area — implementing multimedia with some key contributed modules — as opposed to most of the recent spate of Drupal books, some of which try to cover every major aspect of the CMS. The material in Aaron Winborn's book is organized into eleven chapters, addressing most if not all of the key topics within the chosen subject area: Drupal basics; images, galleries, and slideshows; image theming and effects; third-party and local video; file management; audio nodes and fields; theming audio; and the future of multimedia in Drupal. The book concludes with a skimpy five-page index, which fails to contain such basic entries as Flash, FLV, SWF, sprites, star ratings, slideshows, and countless others. A robust index is especially critical for any technical book, such as this one, that divides related topics among multiple chapters, and has section and subsection names that in some cases are quite similar to one another and thus could be easily confused.

Because this book is geared more toward programmers new to Drupal, and not well-versed veterans, the first chapter — the second longest in the book — introduces the reader to the core concepts of Drupal (nodes, regions, blocks, themes, and modules — core and contributed) as well as two essential modules (CCK and Views). The explanations do not go into any great detail, but should be enough to give any Drupal newbie a head start. Nonetheless, readers may be confused by the screenshots on pages 16 through 19, which appear to be from Drupal 5. Also, the brief coverage of views arguments is inadequate, and needs to be beefed to be useful later in the book. For creating a new theme, the author advises copying wholesale an existing theme; instead, a sub-theme is a much better approach. Chapter 1 wraps up with a discussion of some basic concepts in Drupal theming, which makes puzzling the title of the section, "Advanced Theming." Speaking of themes, readers should note that when the author refers to "theming" an image or video, he means making the uploaded file display as content on the node's page (and not just exist as an attachment to that node).

For many programmers new to Drupal, the first hurdle they encounter is how to add an image to the content of a page or story — a seemingly trivial task that is built into most major CMSs — without writing HTML and hard coding the path of an image file they FTP-ed to the server. Drupal version 6 and presumably all prior versions, do not have native support for uploading and embedding in-line images. In his second chapter, the author explains how one can create image galleries, teaser thumbnails, and images embedded in content. However, in the discussion on page 45, some details are incorrect, such as the label for the "Save" button (three times) and the presence of the galleries drop-down list. Readers will undoubtedly be confused by two additional inaccuracies: There is no Navigation menu item for displaying the "image galleries" created by default, because initially the image_gallery view has no menu assigned in the Gallery page settings. Secondly, the gallery description is not shown on the gallery page; in fact, it is not even listed as an available view field. The section titled "Image Gallery Settings" suggests that the author may have been using an older version of the Image module. But this probably does not explain the erroneous statement on page 56, that "image nodes created with Image attach will automatically be marked as not published." The chapter concludes with an explanation of how to embed an image in content, using manually inserted image tags, or the ImageAssist module, optionally supplemented with a WYSIWYG HTML editor, such as TinyMCE. The fourth chapter looks at how to theme images, and discusses — it greatly varying levels of detail — style overriding, the Firebug Firefox extension, the Theme Developer module, image nodes, image-based rollover menus, sprites, light boxes, star ratings, slideshows, and various special effects: drop shadows, magnification, and watermarks.

The subsequent chapter — oddly titled "Developing for Images" — extends the discussion by showing how to insert images as fields utilizing ImageField and several supporting modules. One of those modules is referred to as "FileField Tokens" (page 70), but there is no such module; the author probably meant ImageField Tokens. Also extending the previously noted problem of non-Drupal 6 content, is the screenshot for "Display fields," on page 83, as well as the narrative, which appear to be pre-version 6. The latter half of the chapter delves into how to create galleries and slideshows (using views), user pictures, and images associated with taxonomy terms.

With Chapters 5 and 6, the author shifts attention to what is perhaps the second most commonly used type of multimedia on websites nowadays — video — with the former of those chapters devoted to third-party videos (such as content hosted on YouTube), while the latter chapter is devoted to "local video" (local in the sense of hosted on one's own remote Web server — not one's local development machine). The author demonstrates how to utilize a YouTube-hosted video, first using core Drupal modules only, then using the Embedded Video Field module. For using local video files, the author shows how to use the FileField module so the user can upload QuickTime video files. Unfortunately, the instructions on page 146 may prove confusing to beginners, since it is not entirely clear as to whether the later, more-detailed paragraphs are repeating earlier instructions, or specifying something new. More significantly, the use of the FileField module necessitates writing theme PHP code, just to have the video display on the page — which less technical readers may not feel comfortable attempting on their sites. The second part of the chapter may be more useful to the typical reader, because it covers how to embed Flash videos, a more popular format. The author advocates the use of the jQuery Media module (which he created) in conjunction with the jQ module. Unfortunately for the reader, the details of implementing this approach are glossed over at the end of the chapter, with only meager instructions ("... add .node .content a to the classes."), and without any illustrative example. No explanation is provided as to why this particular JavaScript-dependent solution is recommended, as opposed to a more straightforward one, such as the Flash Node module — which is far less problematic for FLV files. (By the way, the author states that he and some other developers are creating a fully GPL media player module and that there is a development version available of this Media Player module. But there is no such version on that page, and the situation may never change, because the project appears to have fizzled in August 2008, judging by the comments on the Drupal.org site and the author's site.)

In written tutorials, videocasts, and other discussions of Drupal multimedia, one important area that is often neglected is asset management. This includes such seemingly mundane matters as where in a Drupal site's file system one should place plug-in files and even the uploaded multimedia files themselves. A more far-reaching topic is how to best associate multimedia assets with nodes so they can be accessed by various modules — for instance, as stand-alone content types versus CCK fields. Chapter 7 examines some of these topics, first discussing how to create and theme nodes whose associated videos can be used elsewhere on a site, such as in a gallery — using the Embedded Media Field and Node Reference modules. However, some readers may become frustrated because a couple critical steps are skipped, and, even worse, no guidance is provided as to how to make the video show up on a node reference content page, or what content provider selection to use (since "Local" is not an option). Next the author considers how to set access to videos by user role — using the Asset module. Unfortunately, the reader is apparently not shown how to do anything useful with video content uploaded and managed using the Asset module, including the scenario proposed at the beginning of the section. (Incidentally, one might assume that the author's solution would use the Asset Embedded Media submodule, but it is not compatible with the latest version of Drupal 6.) The Media Mover module, and its many submodules, offer an alternate method of video asset management, and the author shows how to e-mail a video from a mobile phone, to be automatically attached to a new blog post. The chapter concludes with a brief look at Kaltura, an open-source platform for storing and editing multimedia.

Some Web developers and end-users may consider online audio as the poor cousin of video. In truth, audio-only content plays a key role in many Web applications — from podcasts embedded in RSS feeds, to sample tracks on music sellers' websites. The subsequent three chapters of the book are devoted to managing audio content within Drupal using several resources and solutions — specifically, the Audio, getID3, FileField, jQuery Media, Embedded Media Field, XSPF Playlist, and Views modules

In the last chapter, titled "The Future of Drupal Multimedia," the author speculates as to what media-related capabilities he thinks we will likely find in Drupal 7 and beyond — such as native file handling (via hook_file) and multimedia support in core Drupal, the merging or deprecation of non-FileField modules, dissociation of data from nodes, improved module interfaces and usability, embeddable widgets (for data distribution), semantic multimedia (microformats, RDF, and taxonomy-powered tagging), mobile Web access, virtual reality (such as Second Life), tactile and olfactory media, and motion sensing (such as the Wii Remote controller).

One laudable feature of this book is the inclusion of numerous screenshots, which can be quite reassuring to a reader getting lost in the technical minutia of any particular recipe. Also helpful is the manner in which the author, for the most part, keeps the reader informed as to all configuration settings — and where to find them within the Drupal administration interface — that the reader must or may want to modify, depending on his or her needs. Technical books that fail to do this can be extremely frustrating to anyone trying to learn a nontrivial technology.

Yet there are some major flaws with the book: Far too much of the material suggests that the author was using Drupal 5. Aside from the screenshots mentioned earlier, sections of the text point in that direction, such as the statement, "The multiple image issue might be taken care of by Drupal 6" (page 56). Fortunately, none of these gaffes prevent the reader from learning how to perform the tasks using version 6. The second and more important flaw is the poor coverage of Flash content, as detailed above. A follow-up edition to the book, in which all of these problems are resolved, would be most welcome and valuable.

A revision would also be an opportunity to fix the grammatical errors that should have been caught in the proofreading process. For instance, the fourth complete sentence on page 11, is missing a verb. Errata include "Autrhor" (credits page), "you [have] learned" (page 2), ". you'll" (page 2), a ")" without a "(" to match it (page 17), "isin" (page 31), "it [is] installed" (page 32), "provide files" (page 33; should instead read "provide functions"), "hierarchal" (page 46), "formated" (page 57), "[the] FTP" (page 75), "menu — By" (page 117), "going a view" (page 119), "quicktime" (page 146), and "[Submit] Audio" (page 179). In addition, there are eight pairs of adjacent words missing their separating spaces — five on page 159, and three more on page 174.

As seen in many other Packt Publishing titles, this one contains excessive usage of inappropriate title case (e.g., several on page 8 and 9 alone), though occasionally title case is neglected (e.g., "Image attach" throughout the book). In addition, some of the phrasing is rather awkward, which may pose no barrier to a reader who already understands the particular idea being discussed in the text, but could prove a real detriment to anyone unfamiliar with that idea. For instance, on page 36, the author states that "Often you may wish to override a theme that is not provided as a file in the default theme." But no theme is contained within a single file, and one does not override themes anyway; rather, one can disable a theme, or modify a copy of it, or create a variation as a sub-theme.

Yet overall, this book's strengths outweigh its weaknesses. For Drupal developers who wish to add image, audio, and video content to their sites, Drupal Multimedia is a useful resource with which to begin.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

You can purchase Drupal Multimedia from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Stephen Brandon writes "It used to be that to set up a database-backed web site required at least a server guy, a database administrator, a programmer, and a designer. Joomla! and other modern CMS systems have opened the door to allow non-administrators to be able to set up complete e-commerce or informational sites, using great free software and easy-to-find commercial hosting. What then of security? A new book by Tom Canavan, Joomla Web Security, aims to bridge the knowledge gap, introducing Joomla! admins to a set of security tools, and skills sometimes found lacking in the Joomla! community." Read on for the rest of Stephen's review. Joomla! Web Security author Tom Canavan pages 248 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7 reviewer Stephen Brandon ISBN 1847194885 and 978-1-847194-88-6 summary Useful but needs more Joomla! 1.5-specific content Joomla! Web Security is Packt Publishing’s eighth Joomla! title, and they are to be congratulated for providing much-needed documentation for Open Source projects. Written by Tom Canavan and published in October 2008, it can be found under ISBN 1847194885 and 978-1-847194-88-6.

According to the back cover, this book is written for “anyone seriously using Joomla! for any kind of business With this book they will be able to secure their sites, understand the attackers, and more, without the drudging task of looking up in forums, only to be flamed, or not even find the answers.” Prior knowledge of Joomla is assumed, but prior knowledge of securing websites is not.

Why bother with a book on Joomla! security? In my experience, many people come to Joomla! from a design and content perspective. They are not server gurus, just people who know enough about design to select a good-looking template, then organize suitable content to meet the informational and marketing needs of the organization or business for whom they work.

Template – content – web host – the new site is up and running in short order. The first time the site goes down or the site is hacked however, such a site designer/administrator may well be struggling as the back cover quote suggests.

Although this volume is the only current one that I could find concentrating on Joomla! security, the Joomla! team does have a dedicated Security Task Force, and a fair amount of security information starting from http://docs.joomla.org/. The information on joomla.org, while comprehensive, is not as in-depth as most of the information in Joomla! Web Security.

Written in the author’s chatty, easy-to-read style, chapter 1 covers a lot of basics of Joomla! security, from checking that the installation files have not been tampered with, to choosing hosting, some php and apache settings, permissions, and setting up security metrics.

Given that the choice of hosting is one of the most crucial decisions determining site security and uptime, the author chooses to concentrate on some unexpected angles. Granted, the checklist of physical security is comprehensive (“Is there water detection under this raised floor? Do you have a man-trap entrance to the building?”), but the target audience might be better served by a similarly comprehensive checklist of how to choose safer shared hosting. Notable by its absence was any mention of suPHP, PhpSuExec (see tutorial) or any similar scheme for running PHP files under the ownership of the account-holder rather than the standard httpd or nobody user. Without this, any other client on your shared hosting can read your database credentials and almost certainly gain read-write access to your database — with it, clients on shared hosting are much more efficiently segregated, making shared hosting a more viable option for less security-critical installations.

Absent too was mention of Joomla! 1.5’s FTP layer. Whilst in Joomla! 1.0 you needed to set 777 permissions in order to install extensions or upload images and files via Joomla!, the FTP layer allows Joomla! to FTP these files to itself, maintaining a tighter permissions structure in the absence of suPHP or PhpSuExec.

The section “Setting Up Security Metrics” however shows the author’s strengths. This, chapter 2 “Test and Development” and chapter 10, “Incident Management”, prescribe a methodical approach to security, ensuring that you are well-prepared for any eventuality. For the more mission-critical of the sites that I administer, this has prompted me to review my procedures, but I suspect that these are chapters that will be glossed over by a majority of the target audience.

It’s this sort of dichotomy that mars the book slightly for me. What I would like to give to the Joomla! webmasters that I support as part of my day-job is a book that clearly explains common issues in the installation and administration of Joomla!. Joomla! Web Security seems to promise this, but isn’t willing to provide all the detail required by the less-experienced (no mention of what numerical file permissions actually mean, nor how to obtain the MD5 checksum of a file you downloaded), and seems a little too eager to jump up to higher-level management issues, as worthy as these topics are. And why is there a mini-tutorial on how to use the software development management system Lighthouse, when there are barely any step by step instructions with screenshots on specifically Joomla! topics anywhere in the book?

On a positive note, chapter 3’s “Tools” introduced me to some previously-unknown packages as well as some old friends. Every Joomla! administrator should become familiar with these: HISA (J! 1.0 only), the Joomla! Tools Suite (J!1.5 only in legacy mode), Joomla! Diagnostics (some problems on J!1.5), JCheck (J!1.5 only works in cron mode). The obvious issue is that many of these don’t operate fully or at all for Joomla! 1.5. The sections on NMAP, Wireshark, Metasploit and Nessus however are well written and relevant.

If anyone needs convincing that the threats to a Joomla! site are real, point them to the central chapters of this book. Here Tom Canavan lays out “How the Bad Guys Do It”, and details the anatomy of attacks. This is a real eye-opener and should be required reading for any budding site administrator. It’s good to see a checklist of further topics for study (p. 144).

Finally we return to more specifically Joomla! topics. A section of recipes for .htaccess and php.ini files covers such useful topics as apache’s mod_redirect, password protection and access control. The “Log Files” chapter is pleasingly Joomla!-specific and also covers some logfile analysis tools.

Joomla! Web Security is rounded off with an appendix summarizing some of the key points of the book, and listing port numbers, apache status codes and TLD domain codes. The list of critical settings for .htaccess and php.ini is prescriptive and useful in this format.

While writing this review I noticed that the author has written a previous volume on a similar topic: Dodging the Bullets — A Disaster Preparation Guide for Joomla! Based Websites. Critical reviews of that book suggested that it was aimed towards the larger corporate user of Joomla!, and held little for the Joomla! administrator who simply needed to know and understand the settings and tools required for site security. This volume redresses the balance somewhat, with more hands-on advice, and I would recommend it over Dodging the Bullets for the average Joomla! administrator.

Though Joomla! Web Security is a worthwhile addition to a Joomla! bookshelf, my wish would still be for an even more practical guide, particularly one addressing J!1.5 developments and going into much more detail about selecting a hosting partner. Even without this, however, there is a ton of good information here and I recommend the book.

Availability: On the publisher’s web page for this book you will find the TOC, general introduction, a link to the sample chapter, code download, and facilities for on-line purchase. Various discounts and bundles (including Adobe e-book) are offered on the site; hard copies are also available through Barnes and Noble and other usual channels.

Stephen Brandon is author of the popular MetaMod Joomla! module and web manager for an international non-profit organization."

You can purchase Joomla! Web Security from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Stephen Brandon writes "It used to be that to set up a database-backed web site required at least a server guy, a database administrator, a programmer, and a designer. Joomla! and other modern CMS systems have opened the door to allow non-administrators to be able to set up complete e-commerce or informational sites, using great free software and easy-to-find commercial hosting. What then of security? A new book by Tom Canavan, Joomla Web Security, aims to bridge the knowledge gap, introducing Joomla! admins to a set of security tools, and skills sometimes found lacking in the Joomla! community." Read on for the rest of Stephen's review. Joomla! Web Security author Tom Canavan pages 248 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7 reviewer Stephen Brandon ISBN 1847194885 and 978-1-847194-88-6 summary Useful but needs more Joomla! 1.5-specific content Joomla! Web Security is Packt Publishing’s eighth Joomla! title, and they are to be congratulated for providing much-needed documentation for Open Source projects. Written by Tom Canavan and published in October 2008, it can be found under ISBN 1847194885 and 978-1-847194-88-6.

According to the back cover, this book is written for “anyone seriously using Joomla! for any kind of business With this book they will be able to secure their sites, understand the attackers, and more, without the drudging task of looking up in forums, only to be flamed, or not even find the answers.” Prior knowledge of Joomla is assumed, but prior knowledge of securing websites is not.

Why bother with a book on Joomla! security? In my experience, many people come to Joomla! from a design and content perspective. They are not server gurus, just people who know enough about design to select a good-looking template, then organize suitable content to meet the informational and marketing needs of the organization or business for whom they work.

Template – content – web host – the new site is up and running in short order. The first time the site goes down or the site is hacked however, such a site designer/administrator may well be struggling as the back cover quote suggests.

Although this volume is the only current one that I could find concentrating on Joomla! security, the Joomla! team does have a dedicated Security Task Force, and a fair amount of security information starting from http://docs.joomla.org/. The information on joomla.org, while comprehensive, is not as in-depth as most of the information in Joomla! Web Security.

Written in the author’s chatty, easy-to-read style, chapter 1 covers a lot of basics of Joomla! security, from checking that the installation files have not been tampered with, to choosing hosting, some php and apache settings, permissions, and setting up security metrics.

Given that the choice of hosting is one of the most crucial decisions determining site security and uptime, the author chooses to concentrate on some unexpected angles. Granted, the checklist of physical security is comprehensive (“Is there water detection under this raised floor? Do you have a man-trap entrance to the building?”), but the target audience might be better served by a similarly comprehensive checklist of how to choose safer shared hosting. Notable by its absence was any mention of suPHP, PhpSuExec (see tutorial) or any similar scheme for running PHP files under the ownership of the account-holder rather than the standard httpd or nobody user. Without this, any other client on your shared hosting can read your database credentials and almost certainly gain read-write access to your database — with it, clients on shared hosting are much more efficiently segregated, making shared hosting a more viable option for less security-critical installations.

Absent too was mention of Joomla! 1.5’s FTP layer. Whilst in Joomla! 1.0 you needed to set 777 permissions in order to install extensions or upload images and files via Joomla!, the FTP layer allows Joomla! to FTP these files to itself, maintaining a tighter permissions structure in the absence of suPHP or PhpSuExec.

The section “Setting Up Security Metrics” however shows the author’s strengths. This, chapter 2 “Test and Development” and chapter 10, “Incident Management”, prescribe a methodical approach to security, ensuring that you are well-prepared for any eventuality. For the more mission-critical of the sites that I administer, this has prompted me to review my procedures, but I suspect that these are chapters that will be glossed over by a majority of the target audience.

It’s this sort of dichotomy that mars the book slightly for me. What I would like to give to the Joomla! webmasters that I support as part of my day-job is a book that clearly explains common issues in the installation and administration of Joomla!. Joomla! Web Security seems to promise this, but isn’t willing to provide all the detail required by the less-experienced (no mention of what numerical file permissions actually mean, nor how to obtain the MD5 checksum of a file you downloaded), and seems a little too eager to jump up to higher-level management issues, as worthy as these topics are. And why is there a mini-tutorial on how to use the software development management system Lighthouse, when there are barely any step by step instructions with screenshots on specifically Joomla! topics anywhere in the book?

On a positive note, chapter 3’s “Tools” introduced me to some previously-unknown packages as well as some old friends. Every Joomla! administrator should become familiar with these: HISA (J! 1.0 only), the Joomla! Tools Suite (J!1.5 only in legacy mode), Joomla! Diagnostics (some problems on J!1.5), JCheck (J!1.5 only works in cron mode). The obvious issue is that many of these don’t operate fully or at all for Joomla! 1.5. The sections on NMAP, Wireshark, Metasploit and Nessus however are well written and relevant.

If anyone needs convincing that the threats to a Joomla! site are real, point them to the central chapters of this book. Here Tom Canavan lays out “How the Bad Guys Do It”, and details the anatomy of attacks. This is a real eye-opener and should be required reading for any budding site administrator. It’s good to see a checklist of further topics for study (p. 144).

Finally we return to more specifically Joomla! topics. A section of recipes for .htaccess and php.ini files covers such useful topics as apache’s mod_redirect, password protection and access control. The “Log Files” chapter is pleasingly Joomla!-specific and also covers some logfile analysis tools.

Joomla! Web Security is rounded off with an appendix summarizing some of the key points of the book, and listing port numbers, apache status codes and TLD domain codes. The list of critical settings for .htaccess and php.ini is prescriptive and useful in this format.

While writing this review I noticed that the author has written a previous volume on a similar topic: Dodging the Bullets — A Disaster Preparation Guide for Joomla! Based Websites. Critical reviews of that book suggested that it was aimed towards the larger corporate user of Joomla!, and held little for the Joomla! administrator who simply needed to know and understand the settings and tools required for site security. This volume redresses the balance somewhat, with more hands-on advice, and I would recommend it over Dodging the Bullets for the average Joomla! administrator.

Though Joomla! Web Security is a worthwhile addition to a Joomla! bookshelf, my wish would still be for an even more practical guide, particularly one addressing J!1.5 developments and going into much more detail about selecting a hosting partner. Even without this, however, there is a ton of good information here and I recommend the book.

Availability: On the publisher’s web page for this book you will find the TOC, general introduction, a link to the sample chapter, code download, and facilities for on-line purchase. Various discounts and bundles (including Adobe e-book) are offered on the site; hard copies are also available through Barnes and Noble and other usual channels.

Stephen Brandon is author of the popular MetaMod Joomla! module and web manager for an international non-profit organization."

You can purchase Joomla! Web Security from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Every major content management system (CMS) offers considerable functionality for building Web sites out of the box. But to get the most out of any CMS, its functionality must be extended through the addition of modules, most of which are created by third-party developers. For instance, a given CMS may need to be supplemented by an e-commerce module in order to use that CMS for building an online store. Joomla, one of the most widely used CMSs, is no exception. Web developers interested in creating their own Joomla extensions can read Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development, authored by Joseph LeBlanc." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development author Joseph LeBlanc pages 284 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1847196200 summary An introductory guide to creating Joomla extensions. Released by Packt Publishing on 11 December 2008, with the ISBN 978-1847196200, this book can be considered the second edition of LeBlanc's previous effort, Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP, published almost exactly one year earlier. Oddly, this second edition has the same title as the first (though a different subtitle), and yet is not identified by the publisher as a second edition. This is not the first Packt Publishing book whose second edition was instead given a slightly different name — a practice that may prove confusing to readers who could be uncertain as to whether an older book by the same author contains different material and thus should be purchased as a supplement to the newer book.

Nonetheless, this revised edition strengthens Packt Publishing's position as a leading — if not the preeminent — publisher of technical books devoted to CMSs. The firm makes available a Web page for the book that offers a detailed description, the table of contents, all of the sample code used in the book, and a free sample chapter ("Using JavaScript Effects," Chapter 8). There are links for submitting feedback, contacting the publisher with a question, and ordering the electronic version of the book, which is now available at a reduced price — even more so when purchased with the print version. Errata are not available on this book-specific page, but instead can only be accessed through the Packt Publishing support page, where the visitor has to find the particular book again. The publisher should move the links for sample code, errata, and feedback, to each book's individual page. As of this writing, no errata have been reported for this second edition.

At 284 pages, Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development is certainly not overwhelming in size. In fact, one of the most common complaints about the first edition was its small size (176 pages). The revised edition's material is organized into a dozen chapters, covering a range of topics: an overview of Joomla and extensions; starting to create the example extension; interfacing with the Joomla database, and MVC; creating a front-end interface; use of JavaScript classes; a module for listing pages; user interface enhancements to the extension; JavaScript effects; creating three example plug-ins; adding configuration parameters; adding e-mail and internationalization features; and bundling all of the created elements into a Joomla archive file for distribution.

As with most if not all similar Joomla books, Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development assumes that the reader has a solid understanding of PHP and MySQL, as well as some familiarity with administering a Joomla site. Absolutely no prior knowledge of Joomla extension development is required, and as a consequence this book can be a guide for any PHP programmer who knows how to install and administer Joomla, and wishes to take it to the next level through the development of custom Joomla extensions.

In the book's first chapter, LeBlanc explains the purpose of extending Joomla, and the advantages of this approach over hacking the Joomla core code in order to customize a site's functionality — a principle that should be known by any developer familiar with CMSs. He briefly discusses how Joomla extensions fall into five categories: components, modules, plug-ins, templates, and languages. The chapter continues with brief descriptions of what the subsequent chapters will cover — much of which is redundant, since that is already covered in the preface. This unsubstantial chapter next presents a brief mention of the example project to be created throughout the book (a restaurant reviews site), but offers no project requirements, constraints, or design parameters. Also noted are the requisite technologies one will need for creating the project on one's own: a Web server, PHP, MySQL, and Joomla 1.5. This chapter, like all others, ends with a chapter summary.

With Chapter 2, the author and the reader get into the actual technical content of the book — and not a moment too soon, having at this point passed more than five percent of the pages that follow the table of contents. This chapter's material should be especially welcome to any reader completely unfamiliar with Joomla components, because it explains how they are structured, how to execute them, the separation of front-end and back-end (administrator) directories, and how to register a component in the database (thereby enabling navigation to that component's page). Code and examples are provided that show how to create primary and secondary toolbars for the example project, as well as the native toolbar buttons. On page 17, the use of '_JEXEC' to prevent direct access to a Joomla PHP file, is explained three times; once would be enough. In fact, most if not all times that this (recommendable) technique appears in code in later chapters, its purpose is explained all over again.

One of the essential chapters for getting started on the example project, is the third, which discusses back-end development for the project, beginning first with the database table and its corresponding JTable class, for holding the restaurant reviews information. The discussion of best practices for a table prefix is a good idea, but many readers would most likely have appreciated some illustrative use of the inherited JTable methods. Next, the author briefly describes how the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern can be used to simplify the code that will be written for the example project, and then explains the basic ideas of MVC, even more briefly. Naturally, the order of these two discussions should have been reversed. The chapter concludes with coverage of the Joomla code for creating the project's forms, as well as processing and managing the data.

With the fourth chapter, LeBlanc temporarily switches to front-end development, and demonstrates the Joomla code that allows visitors to the example project site to see a list of restaurant reviews, view the details of each, read comments posted by other visitors, and post their own comments. In addition, the use of search-engine-friendly (SEF) links is explored, including how to create and parse the needed HTTP request variables' parts.

In the subsequent chapter, the author steps the reader through the process of implementing profiles of restaurant critics in the example project — and in turn illustrates how to override JTable methods, sort records comprising database query results, track how many times particular records are viewed, implement record check-out and check-in functionality (for collaborative editing), store user information, generate page elements using the JHTML class, and enable user ordering of displayed records by using the JPagination class.

Module development is the focus of the sixth chapter, which explains how to register a new module in the Joomla database, how to create and configure one, and how to build and use a helper class. In Chapter 7, the lengthiest of all, the author explains how to: modify a controller to publish and unpublish articles (with a nice example of making a function more generic), delete database records, prompt the user with a confirmation dialog box, redirect the user to an alternate page, require user input for form fields using JavaScript, paginate any large number of records when output, search all available records and display the results, place toolbars within views, and implement user comments. On page 133, when LeBlanc states that "the backend does not work with JavaScript turned off," he should clarify whether he is referring to the Joomla administrative back-end or the example project back-end.

As Web developers increasingly utilize JavaScript libraries within their Web-based applications, the same is happening within the major CMSs, including Joomla and Drupal. In Chapter 8, LeBlanc shows how Joomla programmers can use JavaScript for creating modal boxes (using either raw HTML or views), tool tips, sliding panes, and Google Maps integrated with one's Joomla site. In the discussion of configuring modal boxes, the height and width parameters in the sample code certainly do not match the appearance of the figure on page 167. While most of the chapter makes use of the (native) MooTools library, this portion of the book is capped off with an examination of an alternative, jQuery, which is becoming quite popular. The author wisely provides some valuable advice to any reader considering using both JavaScript libraries simultaneously.

In Chapter 9, the focus shifts back toward more conventional Joomla extension topics — specifically, plug-ins. The author shows how to register new plug-ins in a Joomla database, how to create them, and what events can be registered (as functions in your plug-in), such as a user logging in or content being output. This knowledge is applied to creating plug-ins for the example project in order to support advanced searching of content, and for content authors to be able to have an example site automatically generate an information box when it detects specially tagged text in the content, before outputting it.

PHP programmers new to creating their own Joomla extensions, oftentimes struggle with figuring out how best to specify configuration settings so they are not buried in the code itself nor need to be added manually through MySQL queries — and, in turn, how to make it as easy as possible for those settings to be specified by any developer or site administrator who is using the custom extension. Chapter 10 shows how to do just that, with the information divided among the three types of Joomla extensions that most commonly need this flexibility: modules, plug-ins, and components.

Chapter 11 is somewhat like a catch-all repository for some miscellaneous topics: Leveraging Joomla's native article e-mailing functionality, Joomla extensions can be further enhanced by allowing the user to e-mail component content to other people. Joomla has built-in internationalization, allowing you to supplement any installable language packs with phrases for your custom extension's front-end and back-end user interface text — for any of the languages you choose to support. LeBlanc shows how to do that, for his example project. He also shows how to safely allow users to upload files to your Joomla server.

The final chapter of the book demonstrates how to package up all of the code and other files that you have created, so anyone else who wants to leverage that functionality can install your extension in their own Joomla-based Web site.

The book has a number of small blemishes, including several errata, e.g., "can [be] defined" (page 20), "set these variables to whatever value[s]" (page 31), "it the function proceeds" (page 74), "!." (page 76), "existing/modules" (page 112), and "contain[s] newlines" (page 238). There is the occasional erroneous capitalization of words (witness the first sentence in the "About the Reviewer" section), incorrect use of hyphens for creating adjectives, and inconsistent spelling of words (such as "back-end" and "backend"). All of these should have been caught by the publisher's line editors.

In some passages there is a dearth of commas that would help the reader know when to pause. The code formatting, such as indentation and brace placement, is not always consistent (e.g., pages 81 and 116). The chapter subheads should be in title case, but are instead in sentence case. Some of the HTML example code suffers from "div-itis," such as the use of div tags instead of label tags where appropriate (e.g., page 66). The Joomla root URL on the reader's local Web server — assumed by the author in all of the subsequent project URLs throughout the book — should have been mentioned in the first chapter, when discussing the prerequisite technologies for creating the example project, because that is the point in the book at which the reader would most likely have installed Joomla on their server.

All of the chapter summaries simply add bulk but no value to the book, and should be chopped, because the chapters are short enough to not justify any summarization. Moreover, in at least one instance (Chapter 10), the summary contains higher-level perspective not presented in the chapter itself, where it would be far more timely to the reader. In addition, the book provides apparently no figure numbers or captions, which arguably saves space, since readers rarely refer to them if they are reading the text closely, though less so when skimming through a technical book. Compared to its predecessor, this edition would still benefit from a lay-flat binding, and it still has the pointless header and footer lines, as well as page number bracketing (which admittedly seems to be part of the publisher's branding).

None of the aforesaid problems are of any gravity. The main problem with the book is that far too many of the discussions are rather cursory and fast-paced, lacking in both clear explanations of critical concepts and also an empathy for readers struggling to understand those concepts. For instance, the marketing copy for the book claims that the reader will learn the Model-View-Controller design pattern, when in fact the book fails to teach it well — instead only offering two foodservice examples, which are inadequate, particularly for any reader unfamiliar with design patterns in general. In other words, there is adequate explanation as to the specific steps for creating the example project code and other needed elements, but there is not enough explanation as to how those steps fit into the bigger picture, and how they could be enlarged so that the budding Joomla developer could create his or her own extensions, quite different from the book's example project.

On the other hand, this new version has several notable improvements over the previous edition, such as greater emphasis on Joomla 1.5-style coding, as well as more attractive screenshots, with far less pixelation. More importantly, there are three new chapters, addressing JTable, JHTML, JUser, JavaScript, e-mail, languages, and file uploading. As in the first edition of the book, LeBlanc opts for a nice balance of exposition, example code, and illustrative figures — along with the bolding of any changes in code shown in multiple places. Scattered throughout the book are handy tips and warnings to Joomla developers. Joomla's online documentation for extension development is not much better than it was a year ago, and thus there is still a need for helpful books such as this one.

On balance, Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development is an approachable and useful resource for any developer who wants to maximize the functionality of their own Joomla-based Web sites — and perhaps share that new functionality with other developers by contributing the resultant extensions to the Joomla community.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

You can purchase Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Every major content management system (CMS) offers considerable functionality for building Web sites out of the box. But to get the most out of any CMS, its functionality must be extended through the addition of modules, most of which are created by third-party developers. For instance, a given CMS may need to be supplemented by an e-commerce module in order to use that CMS for building an online store. Joomla, one of the most widely used CMSs, is no exception. Web developers interested in creating their own Joomla extensions can read Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development, authored by Joseph LeBlanc." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development author Joseph LeBlanc pages 284 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-1847196200 summary An introductory guide to creating Joomla extensions. Released by Packt Publishing on 11 December 2008, with the ISBN 978-1847196200, this book can be considered the second edition of LeBlanc's previous effort, Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP, published almost exactly one year earlier. Oddly, this second edition has the same title as the first (though a different subtitle), and yet is not identified by the publisher as a second edition. This is not the first Packt Publishing book whose second edition was instead given a slightly different name — a practice that may prove confusing to readers who could be uncertain as to whether an older book by the same author contains different material and thus should be purchased as a supplement to the newer book.

Nonetheless, this revised edition strengthens Packt Publishing's position as a leading — if not the preeminent — publisher of technical books devoted to CMSs. The firm makes available a Web page for the book that offers a detailed description, the table of contents, all of the sample code used in the book, and a free sample chapter ("Using JavaScript Effects," Chapter 8). There are links for submitting feedback, contacting the publisher with a question, and ordering the electronic version of the book, which is now available at a reduced price — even more so when purchased with the print version. Errata are not available on this book-specific page, but instead can only be accessed through the Packt Publishing support page, where the visitor has to find the particular book again. The publisher should move the links for sample code, errata, and feedback, to each book's individual page. As of this writing, no errata have been reported for this second edition.

At 284 pages, Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development is certainly not overwhelming in size. In fact, one of the most common complaints about the first edition was its small size (176 pages). The revised edition's material is organized into a dozen chapters, covering a range of topics: an overview of Joomla and extensions; starting to create the example extension; interfacing with the Joomla database, and MVC; creating a front-end interface; use of JavaScript classes; a module for listing pages; user interface enhancements to the extension; JavaScript effects; creating three example plug-ins; adding configuration parameters; adding e-mail and internationalization features; and bundling all of the created elements into a Joomla archive file for distribution.

As with most if not all similar Joomla books, Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development assumes that the reader has a solid understanding of PHP and MySQL, as well as some familiarity with administering a Joomla site. Absolutely no prior knowledge of Joomla extension development is required, and as a consequence this book can be a guide for any PHP programmer who knows how to install and administer Joomla, and wishes to take it to the next level through the development of custom Joomla extensions.

In the book's first chapter, LeBlanc explains the purpose of extending Joomla, and the advantages of this approach over hacking the Joomla core code in order to customize a site's functionality — a principle that should be known by any developer familiar with CMSs. He briefly discusses how Joomla extensions fall into five categories: components, modules, plug-ins, templates, and languages. The chapter continues with brief descriptions of what the subsequent chapters will cover — much of which is redundant, since that is already covered in the preface. This unsubstantial chapter next presents a brief mention of the example project to be created throughout the book (a restaurant reviews site), but offers no project requirements, constraints, or design parameters. Also noted are the requisite technologies one will need for creating the project on one's own: a Web server, PHP, MySQL, and Joomla 1.5. This chapter, like all others, ends with a chapter summary.

With Chapter 2, the author and the reader get into the actual technical content of the book — and not a moment too soon, having at this point passed more than five percent of the pages that follow the table of contents. This chapter's material should be especially welcome to any reader completely unfamiliar with Joomla components, because it explains how they are structured, how to execute them, the separation of front-end and back-end (administrator) directories, and how to register a component in the database (thereby enabling navigation to that component's page). Code and examples are provided that show how to create primary and secondary toolbars for the example project, as well as the native toolbar buttons. On page 17, the use of '_JEXEC' to prevent direct access to a Joomla PHP file, is explained three times; once would be enough. In fact, most if not all times that this (recommendable) technique appears in code in later chapters, its purpose is explained all over again.

One of the essential chapters for getting started on the example project, is the third, which discusses back-end development for the project, beginning first with the database table and its corresponding JTable class, for holding the restaurant reviews information. The discussion of best practices for a table prefix is a good idea, but many readers would most likely have appreciated some illustrative use of the inherited JTable methods. Next, the author briefly describes how the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern can be used to simplify the code that will be written for the example project, and then explains the basic ideas of MVC, even more briefly. Naturally, the order of these two discussions should have been reversed. The chapter concludes with coverage of the Joomla code for creating the project's forms, as well as processing and managing the data.

With the fourth chapter, LeBlanc temporarily switches to front-end development, and demonstrates the Joomla code that allows visitors to the example project site to see a list of restaurant reviews, view the details of each, read comments posted by other visitors, and post their own comments. In addition, the use of search-engine-friendly (SEF) links is explored, including how to create and parse the needed HTTP request variables' parts.

In the subsequent chapter, the author steps the reader through the process of implementing profiles of restaurant critics in the example project — and in turn illustrates how to override JTable methods, sort records comprising database query results, track how many times particular records are viewed, implement record check-out and check-in functionality (for collaborative editing), store user information, generate page elements using the JHTML class, and enable user ordering of displayed records by using the JPagination class.

Module development is the focus of the sixth chapter, which explains how to register a new module in the Joomla database, how to create and configure one, and how to build and use a helper class. In Chapter 7, the lengthiest of all, the author explains how to: modify a controller to publish and unpublish articles (with a nice example of making a function more generic), delete database records, prompt the user with a confirmation dialog box, redirect the user to an alternate page, require user input for form fields using JavaScript, paginate any large number of records when output, search all available records and display the results, place toolbars within views, and implement user comments. On page 133, when LeBlanc states that "the backend does not work with JavaScript turned off," he should clarify whether he is referring to the Joomla administrative back-end or the example project back-end.

As Web developers increasingly utilize JavaScript libraries within their Web-based applications, the same is happening within the major CMSs, including Joomla and Drupal. In Chapter 8, LeBlanc shows how Joomla programmers can use JavaScript for creating modal boxes (using either raw HTML or views), tool tips, sliding panes, and Google Maps integrated with one's Joomla site. In the discussion of configuring modal boxes, the height and width parameters in the sample code certainly do not match the appearance of the figure on page 167. While most of the chapter makes use of the (native) MooTools library, this portion of the book is capped off with an examination of an alternative, jQuery, which is becoming quite popular. The author wisely provides some valuable advice to any reader considering using both JavaScript libraries simultaneously.

In Chapter 9, the focus shifts back toward more conventional Joomla extension topics — specifically, plug-ins. The author shows how to register new plug-ins in a Joomla database, how to create them, and what events can be registered (as functions in your plug-in), such as a user logging in or content being output. This knowledge is applied to creating plug-ins for the example project in order to support advanced searching of content, and for content authors to be able to have an example site automatically generate an information box when it detects specially tagged text in the content, before outputting it.

PHP programmers new to creating their own Joomla extensions, oftentimes struggle with figuring out how best to specify configuration settings so they are not buried in the code itself nor need to be added manually through MySQL queries — and, in turn, how to make it as easy as possible for those settings to be specified by any developer or site administrator who is using the custom extension. Chapter 10 shows how to do just that, with the information divided among the three types of Joomla extensions that most commonly need this flexibility: modules, plug-ins, and components.

Chapter 11 is somewhat like a catch-all repository for some miscellaneous topics: Leveraging Joomla's native article e-mailing functionality, Joomla extensions can be further enhanced by allowing the user to e-mail component content to other people. Joomla has built-in internationalization, allowing you to supplement any installable language packs with phrases for your custom extension's front-end and back-end user interface text — for any of the languages you choose to support. LeBlanc shows how to do that, for his example project. He also shows how to safely allow users to upload files to your Joomla server.

The final chapter of the book demonstrates how to package up all of the code and other files that you have created, so anyone else who wants to leverage that functionality can install your extension in their own Joomla-based Web site.

The book has a number of small blemishes, including several errata, e.g., "can [be] defined" (page 20), "set these variables to whatever value[s]" (page 31), "it the function proceeds" (page 74), "!." (page 76), "existing/modules" (page 112), and "contain[s] newlines" (page 238). There is the occasional erroneous capitalization of words (witness the first sentence in the "About the Reviewer" section), incorrect use of hyphens for creating adjectives, and inconsistent spelling of words (such as "back-end" and "backend"). All of these should have been caught by the publisher's line editors.

In some passages there is a dearth of commas that would help the reader know when to pause. The code formatting, such as indentation and brace placement, is not always consistent (e.g., pages 81 and 116). The chapter subheads should be in title case, but are instead in sentence case. Some of the HTML example code suffers from "div-itis," such as the use of div tags instead of label tags where appropriate (e.g., page 66). The Joomla root URL on the reader's local Web server — assumed by the author in all of the subsequent project URLs throughout the book — should have been mentioned in the first chapter, when discussing the prerequisite technologies for creating the example project, because that is the point in the book at which the reader would most likely have installed Joomla on their server.

All of the chapter summaries simply add bulk but no value to the book, and should be chopped, because the chapters are short enough to not justify any summarization. Moreover, in at least one instance (Chapter 10), the summary contains higher-level perspective not presented in the chapter itself, where it would be far more timely to the reader. In addition, the book provides apparently no figure numbers or captions, which arguably saves space, since readers rarely refer to them if they are reading the text closely, though less so when skimming through a technical book. Compared to its predecessor, this edition would still benefit from a lay-flat binding, and it still has the pointless header and footer lines, as well as page number bracketing (which admittedly seems to be part of the publisher's branding).

None of the aforesaid problems are of any gravity. The main problem with the book is that far too many of the discussions are rather cursory and fast-paced, lacking in both clear explanations of critical concepts and also an empathy for readers struggling to understand those concepts. For instance, the marketing copy for the book claims that the reader will learn the Model-View-Controller design pattern, when in fact the book fails to teach it well — instead only offering two foodservice examples, which are inadequate, particularly for any reader unfamiliar with design patterns in general. In other words, there is adequate explanation as to the specific steps for creating the example project code and other needed elements, but there is not enough explanation as to how those steps fit into the bigger picture, and how they could be enlarged so that the budding Joomla developer could create his or her own extensions, quite different from the book's example project.

On the other hand, this new version has several notable improvements over the previous edition, such as greater emphasis on Joomla 1.5-style coding, as well as more attractive screenshots, with far less pixelation. More importantly, there are three new chapters, addressing JTable, JHTML, JUser, JavaScript, e-mail, languages, and file uploading. As in the first edition of the book, LeBlanc opts for a nice balance of exposition, example code, and illustrative figures — along with the bolding of any changes in code shown in multiple places. Scattered throughout the book are handy tips and warnings to Joomla developers. Joomla's online documentation for extension development is not much better than it was a year ago, and thus there is still a need for helpful books such as this one.

On balance, Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development is an approachable and useful resource for any developer who wants to maximize the functionality of their own Joomla-based Web sites — and perhaps share that new functionality with other developers by contributing the resultant extensions to the Joomla community.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

You can purchase Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Most Web developers are familiar with one or more content management systems (CMSs), and how they can be used to create Web sites more efficiently than by hand. These developers may have deep knowledge of how to install, configure, customize, and extend a CMS. But far more rare is knowledge of how to develop a CMS of one's own, and the programming considerations required to do so successfully. These are the main themes of Martin Brampton's book PHP5 CMS Framework Development." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. PHP5 CMS Framework Development author Martin Brampton pages 348 publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847193579 summary An in-depth look at creating a CMS, focusing on Aliro. This title was released by Packt Publishing on 6 June 2008, under the ISBNs 1847193579 and 978-1847193575. In addition to an appendix on packaging Aliro extensions, the book's material is organized into 14 chapters, covering various CMS topics: overall CMS architecture; users and administrators; code organization; user sessions; databases and data objects; access control; supporting extensions of the CMS; data caching and handlers; menus; support for multiple human languages; presentation services; miscellaneous services, such as file handling, e-mail delivery, and admin functionality; error handling; and how to manage many types of content.

At the very beginning of the preface, the author notes that "This book guides you through the design and implementation decisions necessary to create a working architecture for a PHP5-based content management system." Martin Brampton is qualified for this task, given his strong background in CMS development, having served as the leader of the Mambo development team during a critical period of its evolution, and later creating his own CMS, Aliro. It should be noted that the book does not assume any prior knowledge of CMSs in general or Aliro in particular, although in most respects this work is very much a case study of the architecture and design decisions of that specific CMS. However, the book does assume a solid understanding of PHP and object-oriented principles.

All of the code samples come from the Aliro content management system, of which Martin Brampton is the project architect. On the book's Web page, the publisher has made available links to purchase the electronic version of the book, to download the source code, to post feedback on the book, to ask questions, to read the table of contents and media reviews, and to download a sample chapter (Chapter 6: Access Control). The only problem with these offerings is that the source code is not organized by chapter, but instead comprises the source code for Aliro. (The publisher's page labels it as 2.6 MB, as of this writing, but Aliro is about three times that size.) Consequently, readers who want to find specific code should search through the files using their favorite programmer's editor.

The author devotes the first chapter of the book to presenting his perspective on the advantages of using CMSs for site development, the required and the desirable features of a CMS, and some system management issues. Also covered are reasons for using PHP 5, its object-oriented capabilities, XHTML, and the Model-View-Controller pattern. He then discusses sundry topics on site hosting, JavaScript, site security, and CMS-specific terminology. Many readers may find interesting the arguments for separating system administrative access (as done in Aliro, for instance) versus integrating it with the regular site interface and using access control to restrict non-admin users (as done in Drupal, for instance). The chapter concludes with a summary, which for this and the following two chapters, may be of value to some readers, since these chapters are more narrative than the others. But the chapter summaries that follow, for the more technical material, could be disposed of in future editions, since readers will seek within the chapters for the information covered.

Throughout much of the history of the Web, one of the most problematic aspects of site development has been the management of users and administrators — especially with CMSs causing the two distinct groups to be splintered into a spectrum ranging from anonymous visitors with no privileges, to site administrators with full privileges, along with authorized users, content contributors, and content editors. In his second chapter, the author examines the challenges of user authentication, password storage, SQL injection, and other access issues. He proposes a framework solution and also a division of user data into two tables, as done in Aliro. He describes some of the key code utilized within his CMS (naturally, the full code is obtainable since Aliro is an open-source project). Chapter 4 addresses an area that frequently mystifies new PHP programmers — namely, how to create, utilize, and protect user sessions. Thus, this material should have been placed immediately after the second chapter.

The third chapter is devoted to the critical architectural issue of how to best organize one's code. Given that the two aforementioned chapters — dealing with users and sessions — both contain a fair amount of code, this chapter's meta-information should have been presented prior to both Chapters 2 and 4. Nonetheless, the author covers such topics as inclusion and the singleton pattern. He makes a strong case for favoring small classes, stored in separate source code files, and only loading them when needed, using PHP 5's autoloading capability.

In Chapter 5, the author spends some time exploring some of the key issues for storing data in a CMS framework, including dependency upon a particular RDBMS, item counting and ordering, database security, SQL validation, PHP exception handling, and the techniques that the author used for effectively dealing with these challenges when developing his own CMS. The first portion of the chapter, which essentially presents the problems, is fairly disjointed compared to the other material; the remaining portion of the chapter, which covers all of the solutions, is certainly more complete.

The next two chapters of the book, 6 and 7, are focused on topics more specific to CMSs: access control, and extensions to the CMS (components, modules, plug-ins, and templates), respectively. Chapter 8 explores caching and cache handlers, as well as the advantages of using them. The ninth chapter, on menus and page handling, is quite specific to Aliro, and thus will prove disappointing to any reader who hopes to get ideas for their own menu code. In contrast, Chapter 10 should be of interest to anyone who would like their Web sites to be usable and appealing to Internet visitors who do not read the single language of any site not designed for foreign use. Character sets and language extensions are discussed, as well as a third-party solution that is available.

For many years there has been an ongoing debate among PHP developers, as to whether or not to use templating systems as a way of separating presentational content from business logic and functional content. At essence is a question pondered by most if not all dedicated PHP developers: What is the easiest and yet most maintainable way to deliver one's XHTML code, using PHP? This is just one of many subjects discussed in Chapter 11, "Presentation Services," which is easily one of the most compelling and wide ranging sections of the book. Chapter 12 addresses the topic of allowing a site to interact with other services, such as those for WYSIWYG editing and XML parsing. Error handling is explored in Chapter 13, including errors within application code — from PHP itself and from business logic problems — and the database. The book's final chapter covers what the author refers to as "real content," by which he means the content contributed by administrators and users to a CMS, such as articles, comments, forum postings, calendar entries, and other items. The book's single appendix explains how to package an Aliro extension for release, and would most likely be of no interest to anyone not creating such extensions for distribution.

The book has few weaknesses. Occasionally the author will state something that could be misleading to the beginning programmer. For instance, on the first page of the first chapter (not an auspicious start) he refers to the World Wide Web as a markup language. On the contrary, the markup language used to create the Web, is HTML. As we are seeing more frequently in technical books, the writing itself could use a bit more editing — such as hyphens missing from adjective phrases in many locations in the text. Lastly, some programmers may find the author's GNU style of code formatting rather bizarre in appearance.

Overall, PHP programmers who are committed to following best practices in site security, code organization, database usage, and other important factors in any site development, will find plenty of ideas in this book to consider and possibly apply to their own coding. Readers who simply see the book's title, and perhaps browse quickly through its contents, may get the false impression that the information would only be of value to someone who wants to create their own CMS from scratch. The book may be of considerable value for such an effort, but it offers more than that. Many of the most critical issues in architecting and implementing a CMS, apply to non-CMS Web sites as well. Also, as a veteran of software development, the author conveys worthy advice on development practices — such as in the first chapter — regardless of the chosen computer language. In addition, for the growing number of developers who are exploring the inner workings of CMSs — usually with the idea of extending their functionality by writing modules — an appreciation for how the creator of a CMS thinks, could be helpful. Ideas are illustrated throughout with sample code — none of them excessive in length. PHP5 CMS Framework Development offers lessons in PHP 5 object-oriented programming and Web site development that goes beyond CMSs and Aliro.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.

You can purchase PHP5 CMS Framework Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of all the content management systems (CMSs) that a Web developer could use for creating a new site, the best ones allow the developer to extend the chosen CMS's capabilities, by adding new functionality, in the form of third-party modules. This is one of many reasons why Drupal is growing in popularity: Developers can choose from hundreds of Drupal modules but not all functionality that a developer might want has been captured in a module, and many of the modules are unfinished or otherwise limited in capabilities. Fortunately, PHP programmers can create their own modules, and one way to get up to speed is Learning Drupal 6 Module Development, authored by Matt Butcher." Learning Drupal 6 Module Development author Matt Butcher pages 328 publisher Packt Publishing rating 9/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847194443 summary A step-by-step guide to creating new Drupal 6 modules Published on 10 May 2008 by Packt Publishing, under the ISBNs 1847194443 and 978-1847194442, the book is intended as a tutorial for developing your first Drupal 6 module; yet it also explains how to create themes and custom content types, how to use external XML APIs, and how to add AJAX functionality to your Drupal site using jQuery.

The book spans 328 pages, grouped into nine chapters, each devoted to a major topic of Drupal module development: Drupal's architecture and primary concepts (nodes, users, blocks, menus, etc.); an introduction to building a new module; Drupal's theme system, and how to create a custom one; module theming; using JavaScript, AJAX, and JSON; creating a custom administration module; creating a new content type, using the CCK; filters, input formats, hooks, actions, and triggers; installation profiles, how to develop one, and how to package a distribution. Throughout the book, the author illustrates key ideas by applying them to a sample Web site, named the Philosopher Bios. The material assumes that the reader has a solid understanding of the essentials of PHP and SQL, and familiarity with Drupal's administration area. But no advanced PHP or MySQL knowledge is required, nor prior experience creating Drupal modules and themes.

Packt Publishing has made available a Web page for the book, where visitors can order the book (print and electronic copies), download the book's sample code, provide feedback to the publisher, send in a question, read a summary of the book or the table of contents, and obtain a sample chapter (Chapter 2 — "Creating Our First Module"). One would expect to find a link to errata reported for this specific book, but this page does not have such a link. In fact, none of the book profile pages on Packt Publishing's site appear to have links to their respective errata. Instead, the visitor must go to their support page, specify the book of interest (the drop-down list should default to the last book review, but it does not), and finally click on the errata link, which should have been on the individual book's page. After clicking a link, a small and non-resizable browser window pops up, listing the known errata.

To Web developers unversed in Drupal's architecture and the use of modules to extend Drupal's core capabilities, the first chapter of this book should be quite valuable, because the author explains how Drupal's functionality has been logically organized into modules. For developers unfamiliar with CMS modules, the author sums it up nicely: "A module is a bundle of PHP code and supporting files that use Drupal's APIs and architecture to integrate new functional components into the Drupal framework." As noted earlier, the author presents overviews of the most critical Drupal concepts, including core modules, hooks, themes, nodes, comments, users, blocks, page rendering, menus, and forms. Unlike what is found in far too many programming books, the explanations in this chapter are generally quite complete, authoritative, and clear — with the exception of the last note on page 8 pertaining to system modules. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the demonstration site created in the book, as well as some developer tools recommended by the author.

In the second chapter, readers learn the basics of creating a module — in this case, one that accesses a philosophy reading list from Goodreads. Anyone who does not yet own a copy of the book, can quickly see the overall style of the book's information and presentation, by downloading the aforementioned sample chapter. There are few blemishes in this chapter: A short (and apparently non-facetious) phrase in one of the notes, "Drupal is meticulously documented..." (page 30), should come as a surprise to anyone who has stumbled into one of the gaps in Drupal's online documentation. The reader should beware that the code for the two private functions used in the sample module, differs between the book's code and that in the download archive, with no indication to the reader from either source as to which is to be preferred, if any. The book's code has other problems, as described in the errata. Also, tags such as "<channel/>" and "<item/>" may give the reader a false impression that those are empty tags (i.e., single tags, and not paired open/close tags). Unfortunately, this nonstandard and confusing notation is used throughout the book.

Theming a Web site is an important part of making it attractive and more usable to site visitors, and Drupal, like any solid CMS, has built-in support for applying themes to a site. In the third chapter, the author explores Drupal's theme system and theme engines, as well as how to create a new theme, and how to use Drupal's hook system for overriding a template function. The discussion is better than that seen in any other book, but could be further strengthened if the author were to explain the reasoning behind some of the suggested practices, such as making redundant copies of a parent theme's images for a sub-theme. Any readers implementing the "descartes" sub-theme should note that template.php, in the download code, begins with "<?" and not "<?php," which will cause problems if their PHP has short_open_tag set to Off. Chapter 5 extends the ideas presented earlier, and shows the reader how to create a new module with a default theme. The discussion of how to register a theme and, more specifically, the naming conventions, is in some places rather turgid — not due only to the writing, but partly Drupal's overriding scheme. But it does not help to have array keys such as "theme_function_name" mentioned in the text but not in the code (should it be "<theme function name>," following his earlier naming convention?). Partway through the fourth chapter, the author acknowledges that the reader may be getting lost in the terminology, and clarifies it. This is a worthy practice that could have been employed in several other places in the book (and by the authors of other programming books).

In the fifth chapter, readers will find a detailed discussion of how to leverage the power of AJAX, jQuery, and JSON to allow modules to refresh with changed content, without requiring Drupal to reload the entire Web page. Chapter 6 explains how to create a module with an administration interface, as well as how to use the powerful Forms API (FAPI), and the Mail API, among other Drupal capabilities available to the programmer. Creating a nontrivial content type that incorporate specialized fields, is the subject of Chapter 7. It is accomplished by building a new module, rather than the more common approach of using the Content Construction Kit (CCK). Readers will also benefit from an introduction to the Schema API, which is valuable for generating database-neutral SQL code. In Chapter 8, the author explains how to create content filters, actions, and hooks, as well as how to assign a trigger to an action. Like the previous two chapters, this one is fairly long and takes some work to fully digest, but doing so is essential for learning how to make the most of hooks, among the other topics. The author also shows how to indicate that your new module depends upon others. The final chapter covers installation profiles and packages, which allow the developer to put together a customized version of Drupal containing the new modules he or she has created, in addition to any dependent non-core modules.

Overall, Learning Drupal 6 Module Development accomplishes its primary goals, and provides information that would even be of interest to Drupal developers who may have no intention of ever creating their own modules and themes, but who would like to learn a lot more about Drupal's underlying architecture, and some of the differences between versions 5 and 6. The author tackled a difficult subject area, and presents enough explanations that would allow any experienced PHP programmer to work through the examples and learn from them. There are plenty of screenshots and diagrams, all of which are helpful. However, a few of the screenshots are intended to show color changes, which makes no sense because all of the screenshots are grayscale only. Rather than choosing orange and pink and other colors, distinct shades of gray would probably have been a better approach.

The book's remaining flaws — aside from those noted above — are relatively minor. The chapter summaries are of no value, and could be dropped in the interests of making the book leaner. Some of the paragraphs are overly short, and should be combined with adjacent ones (e.g., "Here is one very good reason."; page 111). Some of the phrasing is weak (e.g., "has got better and better"; page 18), confusing (e.g., "a typical template work"; page 60), or incorrect (e.g., "uninspiring"; should read "uninspired"; page 70). Other similar problems are identified in the book's errata. The author misses many opportunities to use commas to improve the text's readability, and even uses them incorrectly with parentheses (page 64). Some proper names do not have correct title case, such as "Windows explorer" (page 35). Throughout the manuscript, "hookname" should instead read "hook name." The possessive term "its" should contain no apostrophe (page 185, for example). Occasionally, a (non-critical) word is missing, such as in "content is main content" (page 33). Yet in none of these instances should the alert reader be unable to determine what the author is stating.

None of the weaknesses identified above detract from the overall value of the book. As of this writing, Learning Drupal 6 Module Development is the most promising and information-rich resource for Drupal developers interested in creating their own modules and themes.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor."

You can purchase Learning Drupal 6 Module Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of all the content management systems (CMSs) that a Web developer could use for creating a new site, the best ones allow the developer to extend the chosen CMS's capabilities, by adding new functionality, in the form of third-party modules. This is one of many reasons why Drupal is growing in popularity: Developers can choose from hundreds of Drupal modules but not all functionality that a developer might want has been captured in a module, and many of the modules are unfinished or otherwise limited in capabilities. Fortunately, PHP programmers can create their own modules, and one way to get up to speed is Learning Drupal 6 Module Development, authored by Matt Butcher." Learning Drupal 6 Module Development author Matt Butcher pages 328 publisher Packt Publishing rating 9/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847194443 summary A step-by-step guide to creating new Drupal 6 modules Published on 10 May 2008 by Packt Publishing, under the ISBNs 1847194443 and 978-1847194442, the book is intended as a tutorial for developing your first Drupal 6 module; yet it also explains how to create themes and custom content types, how to use external XML APIs, and how to add AJAX functionality to your Drupal site using jQuery.

The book spans 328 pages, grouped into nine chapters, each devoted to a major topic of Drupal module development: Drupal's architecture and primary concepts (nodes, users, blocks, menus, etc.); an introduction to building a new module; Drupal's theme system, and how to create a custom one; module theming; using JavaScript, AJAX, and JSON; creating a custom administration module; creating a new content type, using the CCK; filters, input formats, hooks, actions, and triggers; installation profiles, how to develop one, and how to package a distribution. Throughout the book, the author illustrates key ideas by applying them to a sample Web site, named the Philosopher Bios. The material assumes that the reader has a solid understanding of the essentials of PHP and SQL, and familiarity with Drupal's administration area. But no advanced PHP or MySQL knowledge is required, nor prior experience creating Drupal modules and themes.

Packt Publishing has made available a Web page for the book, where visitors can order the book (print and electronic copies), download the book's sample code, provide feedback to the publisher, send in a question, read a summary of the book or the table of contents, and obtain a sample chapter (Chapter 2 — "Creating Our First Module"). One would expect to find a link to errata reported for this specific book, but this page does not have such a link. In fact, none of the book profile pages on Packt Publishing's site appear to have links to their respective errata. Instead, the visitor must go to their support page, specify the book of interest (the drop-down list should default to the last book review, but it does not), and finally click on the errata link, which should have been on the individual book's page. After clicking a link, a small and non-resizable browser window pops up, listing the known errata.

To Web developers unversed in Drupal's architecture and the use of modules to extend Drupal's core capabilities, the first chapter of this book should be quite valuable, because the author explains how Drupal's functionality has been logically organized into modules. For developers unfamiliar with CMS modules, the author sums it up nicely: "A module is a bundle of PHP code and supporting files that use Drupal's APIs and architecture to integrate new functional components into the Drupal framework." As noted earlier, the author presents overviews of the most critical Drupal concepts, including core modules, hooks, themes, nodes, comments, users, blocks, page rendering, menus, and forms. Unlike what is found in far too many programming books, the explanations in this chapter are generally quite complete, authoritative, and clear — with the exception of the last note on page 8 pertaining to system modules. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the demonstration site created in the book, as well as some developer tools recommended by the author.

In the second chapter, readers learn the basics of creating a module — in this case, one that accesses a philosophy reading list from Goodreads. Anyone who does not yet own a copy of the book, can quickly see the overall style of the book's information and presentation, by downloading the aforementioned sample chapter. There are few blemishes in this chapter: A short (and apparently non-facetious) phrase in one of the notes, "Drupal is meticulously documented..." (page 30), should come as a surprise to anyone who has stumbled into one of the gaps in Drupal's online documentation. The reader should beware that the code for the two private functions used in the sample module, differs between the book's code and that in the download archive, with no indication to the reader from either source as to which is to be preferred, if any. The book's code has other problems, as described in the errata. Also, tags such as "<channel/>" and "<item/>" may give the reader a false impression that those are empty tags (i.e., single tags, and not paired open/close tags). Unfortunately, this nonstandard and confusing notation is used throughout the book.

Theming a Web site is an important part of making it attractive and more usable to site visitors, and Drupal, like any solid CMS, has built-in support for applying themes to a site. In the third chapter, the author explores Drupal's theme system and theme engines, as well as how to create a new theme, and how to use Drupal's hook system for overriding a template function. The discussion is better than that seen in any other book, but could be further strengthened if the author were to explain the reasoning behind some of the suggested practices, such as making redundant copies of a parent theme's images for a sub-theme. Any readers implementing the "descartes" sub-theme should note that template.php, in the download code, begins with "<?" and not "<?php," which will cause problems if their PHP has short_open_tag set to Off. Chapter 5 extends the ideas presented earlier, and shows the reader how to create a new module with a default theme. The discussion of how to register a theme and, more specifically, the naming conventions, is in some places rather turgid — not due only to the writing, but partly Drupal's overriding scheme. But it does not help to have array keys such as "theme_function_name" mentioned in the text but not in the code (should it be "<theme function name>," following his earlier naming convention?). Partway through the fourth chapter, the author acknowledges that the reader may be getting lost in the terminology, and clarifies it. This is a worthy practice that could have been employed in several other places in the book (and by the authors of other programming books).

In the fifth chapter, readers will find a detailed discussion of how to leverage the power of AJAX, jQuery, and JSON to allow modules to refresh with changed content, without requiring Drupal to reload the entire Web page. Chapter 6 explains how to create a module with an administration interface, as well as how to use the powerful Forms API (FAPI), and the Mail API, among other Drupal capabilities available to the programmer. Creating a nontrivial content type that incorporate specialized fields, is the subject of Chapter 7. It is accomplished by building a new module, rather than the more common approach of using the Content Construction Kit (CCK). Readers will also benefit from an introduction to the Schema API, which is valuable for generating database-neutral SQL code. In Chapter 8, the author explains how to create content filters, actions, and hooks, as well as how to assign a trigger to an action. Like the previous two chapters, this one is fairly long and takes some work to fully digest, but doing so is essential for learning how to make the most of hooks, among the other topics. The author also shows how to indicate that your new module depends upon others. The final chapter covers installation profiles and packages, which allow the developer to put together a customized version of Drupal containing the new modules he or she has created, in addition to any dependent non-core modules.

Overall, Learning Drupal 6 Module Development accomplishes its primary goals, and provides information that would even be of interest to Drupal developers who may have no intention of ever creating their own modules and themes, but who would like to learn a lot more about Drupal's underlying architecture, and some of the differences between versions 5 and 6. The author tackled a difficult subject area, and presents enough explanations that would allow any experienced PHP programmer to work through the examples and learn from them. There are plenty of screenshots and diagrams, all of which are helpful. However, a few of the screenshots are intended to show color changes, which makes no sense because all of the screenshots are grayscale only. Rather than choosing orange and pink and other colors, distinct shades of gray would probably have been a better approach.

The book's remaining flaws — aside from those noted above — are relatively minor. The chapter summaries are of no value, and could be dropped in the interests of making the book leaner. Some of the paragraphs are overly short, and should be combined with adjacent ones (e.g., "Here is one very good reason."; page 111). Some of the phrasing is weak (e.g., "has got better and better"; page 18), confusing (e.g., "a typical template work"; page 60), or incorrect (e.g., "uninspiring"; should read "uninspired"; page 70). Other similar problems are identified in the book's errata. The author misses many opportunities to use commas to improve the text's readability, and even uses them incorrectly with parentheses (page 64). Some proper names do not have correct title case, such as "Windows explorer" (page 35). Throughout the manuscript, "hookname" should instead read "hook name." The possessive term "its" should contain no apostrophe (page 185, for example). Occasionally, a (non-critical) word is missing, such as in "content is main content" (page 33). Yet in none of these instances should the alert reader be unable to determine what the author is stating.

None of the weaknesses identified above detract from the overall value of the book. As of this writing, Learning Drupal 6 Module Development is the most promising and information-rich resource for Drupal developers interested in creating their own modules and themes.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor."

You can purchase Learning Drupal 6 Module Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Many Web developers wish to create e-commerce sites that also support collaborative editing of content, community forums, and other features that can increase traffic to the sites. But most shopping cart products do not include those capabilities, or, if such third-party add-ons exist, they may be quite limited in functionality. Similarly, most if not all content management systems (CMSs) lack native e-commerce capabilities. Yet that barrier is being overcome, because a handful of e-commerce modules have been created for the most popular CMSs. Perhaps the most promising pairing, at this time, is Drupal and the e-Commerce module — a combination covered in the book Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce by Michael Peacock." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce author Michael Peacock pages 264 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847194060 summary A thorough guide to the Drupal e-Commerce This title was published by Packt Publishing on 31 March 2008, under the ISBNs 1847194060 and 978-1847194060, and is a recent addition to their growing lineup of books focusing on Drupal and Joomla. The firm hosts the book's Web page, where readers can download the sample code, submit feedback, post a question about the book, read an online excerpt, and download a sample chapter (number 8) on "Creating a Better Selling Experience," as a PDF file. In addition, readers can purchase the handy e-book version, which contains everything found in the print version.

The first chapter serves as an introduction to Drupal and the e-Commerce module, and also explains how to download the two of them, as well as the additional module (Token) upon which the latter depends. The author explains the purpose of each area within Drupal's "Site configuration" section, and what changes the reader should make, if any. Also, he provides the background story for the sample e-commerce Web site that is built throughout the book — in this case, a dinosaur model shop. It should be noted that the diagram on page 6 does an effective job of explaining the basic idea of how a CMS works (better than the similar figures seen in other CMS books), and it is followed by an explanation of what e-commerce is. However, it is doubtful that any developer who purchased this book would need to be told what are CMSs and e-commerce.

In the second chapter, the author briefly reviews the steps for adding content and navigation to a Drupal-powered site, by adding pages and menus, respectively. Also, some additional modules are enabled, for creating a contact form and a blog, for the sample site. Up to this point in the book, readers will have become accustomed to the author explicitly guiding them through the steps necessary for creating the sample site. Thus it may come as a surprise to such readers when they see the second figure on page 40, showing the navigation menu, including new sections for dinosaurs and the museum, and a link to a contact page. The two new sections were briefly mentioned three pages earlier, but the steps for creating them were not; the steps for adding the contact page link were apparently not mentioned anywhere. However, any experienced Drupal developer should have no difficulty figuring out how to add these navigation menu items.

With the third chapter, the book shifts focus from Drupal basics to implementing an e-commerce site. Aspects of running an online business — such as site accessibility laws, legal issues, and privacy laws — are mentioned, though readers outside of the United Kingdom will most likely not be pleased by the UK-centricity of the material. Other topics covered include product types, groupings, details, photos, and advertising, as well as customer service.

In Chapter 4, readers learn about the e-Commerce product types and their corresponding modules, and how to add products to the store catalog — including specialized types of products, such as apparel, services, and bundled products ("parcels"). Chapter 5 briefly covers users, rules, permissions, settings, rules, registration, e-mail messages to users, users' pictures, taxonomy, requiring registration, customer management, user orders, contacting users, and adding your business's staff to your site. It also touches upon taxonomy and how to use it for controlling user access to content. But the author fails to explain why this is needed for the online store. Providing such a rationale up front is especially important when asking readers to work their way through potentially daunting subjects such as taxonomy, and implementing them in their own test sites, if they are following what the author is doing.

The sixth chapter begins with an unneeded review of the themes built into Drupal version 5.x, with even more space taken up describing three red-based color schemes. This is followed by a discussion of how to modify whichever of those themes is enabled, and, very briefly, how to create a new theme. In this chapter and many others, the author frequently reminds us that the hypothetical client, Doug of Doug's Dinos, is "really pleased" with the "great looking site." Readers can judge for themselves just how great is the site's design. Admittedly, in a book such as this that does not focus on Web design, a sample site can be quite basic. But the constant praise is unwarranted.

Allowing customer checkout and payment are critical to any e-commerce site, and those topics are explored in Chapter 7. The topic coverage is fairly complete, though occasionally the author does not make clear where in the Drupal administration section the reader will find the particular topic under discussion, e.g., the global anonymous purchase policy. Chapter 8 offers a lot of valuable information, including how to: add shopping cart and search elements to every page, automatically create user accounts, add images to product listings, offer discounts based on customer role, provide coupons, allow bulk purchasing, set up auction and donation products, and automatically adjust charge prices based on various conditions.

Chapter 9 delves into the particulars of calculating taxes and shipping costs, as well as accepting payments through various gateways, including PayPal, which is explored in detail. The only part that will be misleading to readers, is the claim that PayPal's IPN "pings" your server for each customer transaction. Actually, their server does not ping yours, but instead posts transaction data that you can use for updating your online database.

Chapter 10 presents a number of modules and techniques for making an e-commerce site more secure, and also covers domain name, Web hosting, and site maintenance issues. The security modules discussed are definitely worth considering. Some readers may be confused by the Backups section of cPanel mentioned by the author, since not all cPanel installations offer it.

The last two chapters of the book address invoicing, CRM, and marketing one's site. The discussions of search engine optimization, viral marketing, newsletters, etc., are quite cursory, and readers interested in those topics would fare better by consulting books, online articles, and other resources that are much more thorough. The chapter's topic that will probably be of most value to e-commerce developers, is the demonstration of how to significantly customize the layout of invoices, using CSS. The book's sole appendix explains how to install WampServer.

All the chapters conclude with brief summaries, which, without exception, are a waste of space — especially considering the brevity of most of the chapters. The old oratory principle of "tell them what you're going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them" may be terrific for speeches, but not for books. That is primarily because someone in an audience listening to a live speech does not have the luxury of looking into the past to hear a portion of the speech again, nor of looking into the future to anticipate what the speaker will say next. Readers of books, on the other hand, can of course jump backward and forward quickly to review or preview material, as needed.

The quality of the book's writing is noticeably weak, with countless awkward phrases and run-on sentences. Some are downright puzzling, e.g., "Thanks for your custom!" (page 125); did the author mean "order?" Throughout the book, one finds a remarkable underuse of commas, frequent mixing up of "that" and "which," misplacement of commas and parentheses, misuse of commas in place of semicolons and even periods (e.g., page 124), semicolons in place of colons, and missing hyphens from adjective phrases. Most noticeable — and at times laughable — is the excessive use of exclamation marks, reflecting a common misconception that they jazz up otherwise dull material. For example, page 49 contains three completely unnecessary exclamation marks, not counting the two contained within a customer testimonial. In addition, the book contains several errata, such as: "loose" (should read "lose"; pages 8 and 195), "leads customers" (should read "leads to customers"; page 57), "products" (should read "product's"; page 62), "customers' role" (should read "customers' roles"; page 88), "to mentioned" (should read "to mention"; page 131), "its does" (page 159), "If a more" (should read "If more"; page 202), "businesses" (should read "business's"; page 221), and many more.

An additional blemish of the book, albeit minor, is that there is little consistency in how the author describes to the reader the navigation steps for going to a particular area of Drupal administration. Sometimes he presents a breadcrumb-style menu path, starting with the highest level menu item. (The majority of readers would probably find this to be the most logical format.) On other occasions, he reverses the order and describes it narratively. Least useful is his listing of the URL, such as "http://localhost/drupal-5.7/admin/users/roles," which may not even match the Drupal root URL that the reader has set up in their development environment.

Despite the aforementioned problems, Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce is a welcome addition to the growing list of more specialized Drupal titles, and is currently the premier resource for anyone who wishes to use Drupal and the e-Commerce module for creating a virtual store.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.

You can purchase Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Web developers are oftentimes under pressure to build attractive sites as quickly as possible, and thus they are increasingly making use of content management systems (CMSs), which offer most of the functionality typically needed in a site, such as user authentication, site-wide styling, and of course managing content contributed by site owners and users. Joomla is an extremely popular and heavily-used CMS, partly because it is one of the easiest to install, configure, and use as a starting point for a new site. But with all CMSs, Joomla's online documentation and forums can prove frustrating to the new developer. Books such as the recently published Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 are intended to fill that gap." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 author Hagen Graf pages 384 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 184719530X summary An introductory-level guide to the latest version of Joomla. Written by Hagen Graf, with a guest chapter by Angie Radtke, Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 was published on 28 March 2008 by Packt Publishing, under the ISBNs 184719530X and 978-1847195302. It is an update of his earlier book, Building Websites with Joomla! v1.0, put out by the same publisher. Like the previous edition, this latest one is aimed at beginning and intermediate Web developers who wish to learn how to make the most of Joomla for building new sites or maintaining existing ones that they have inherited.

The author has organized the book's material into 17 chapters and seven appendices, covering the major topics of interest to Joomla developers: terms, concepts, and sample sites; Joomla installation; a site's major elements; customization of language, and by templates; the administrative interface; the primary menus (Site, Menus, Content, Components, and Extensions); some commonly used tools; some popular extensions; writing templates; accessibility; MVC, components, modules, and plug-ins; building a sample site; and analysis of some bonus templates. The book's 384 pages conclude with a rather sparse index.

On the publisher's Web page, visitors can read more about the book, download the sample code, post feedback or a question, read the online table of contents, and download a sample chapter, namely, the second one in the book, on Joomla installation. The publishers also make it possible to purchase an electronic version of the book, which could be especially handy for any reader who would like to reference the book while working off-site, and without lugging the print version along with their laptop.

The publisher's site characterizes it as a "fast paced tutorial," but the book gets off to a slow start, on a micro level and on a macro level. The first eight paragraphs are devoted to explaining the concept of a content management system, and its variations, which is essentially a waste of space for the typical reader of such a book. Any developer interested in reading a Joomla book certainly does not need such a lengthy explication. If the purpose is to enlighten people unfamiliar with how Web applications work, then more care should be devoted to clarifying phrases that would confuse such neophytes, such as "the net." In fact, most of the introductory material could be excised or summarized. In addition, Mac users will not be pleased with the PC centricity, unremedied until Chapter 2. The first chapter later bogs down in a wearisome comparison of a Web site with a piece of real estate. Throughout the chapter, the level of discussion alternates between quite simplistic — presumably for the complete neophyte — to intermediate. It is as if the author realizes that there is a tremendous amount of material to cover, and thus needs to move along at a decent pace — one that can be comprehensible to intermediate programmers — and yet occasionally interjects overly simple material, in the hopes of not leaving behind the newbies. Overall, it doesn't work, and the chapter in particular, and the book in general, should instead target Web developers who have some experience with CMSs, or at least basic Web site creation.

The second chapter explains what underlying technologies are needed in conjunction with Joomla, and how to install them for testing. Readers should note that page 31 may give the impression that XAMPP is the only available package that includes Apache, MySQL, and PHP — but it is not. The third chapter provides a nice overview of the various major components on the homepage of a brand new Joomla site. One minor flaw is in the image on page 52, in which the "Resources" menu should be placed above the "Key Concepts" menu, as seen on page 54 and as seen by the reader if they are following along using their own Joomla installation (a practice highly recommended by both the book's author and this author).

Chapter 4 demonstrates how to install a different language for the public site and the administrator site — in this case, German. Readers whose primary or only language is English may be confused as to why the author begins the detailed Joomla coverage with this more specialized topic, rather than starting with the material found at the beginning of the next chapter. It is possible that the author concluded that the rest of the reading audience would want to first install the language module for their primary language, which makes sense. On page 68, the author refers to the template named Kepri as "previously introduced," but I can't find where this was done, and the index is of no help (it does not even have a section for the letter K). Far more confusing, and irritating, is when authors make reference to some file that the reader cannot find. For example, Hagen Graf instructs the reader to "download the language files from the German translation team's website." Sure, but where? Four pages later, we are told to upload tmpl_bertrand.zip, but not where to find the file. It turns out that it is in 5302_Code/chapter 16/, in the downloadable sample code from the publisher's site.

The fifth chapter is almost as short as the fourth one, and briefly describes the configuration of the Joomla administration site. The author recommends that readers still using Internet Explorer switch over to Mozilla Firefox (amen), yet oddly describes Firefox as two different browsers. There are some other minor flaws: The list of 17 toolbar elements, on page 72, would be more efficient if it were alphabetized. The second illustration on page 73 supposedly shows the results of filtering for enabled modules only, and yet the drop-down menu does not reflect that. The version numbers stated in the text on page 77, do not match those shown in the illustration on that page. Yet none of these blemishes lessen the value of the material.

Chapter 6 covers the Site menu, whose components can be accessed directly from the menu items or from icons on the Control Panel page. The author asserts that the icons allow faster access, but actually the menu items are more direct. The chapter is informative, and would be more so if the author explained what is really happening with — and how to utilize — debug messages ("Debug Language").

Chapters 7 through 10 go into the details of the Menus, Content, Components, and Extensions menus. Most of the explanations are straightforward, except that on page 143, whose third paragraph is downright baffling; also, the "Default Section Layout" and "Archive Blog" display formats mentioned are not available or even shown in the illustration on the previous page. On the first page of the seventh chapter, the author begins to introduce "an example from joomlart.com," but apparently forgot to include the example itself. Also, in the discussion of "Parameters — Component," the last two options — Target and Icon — were neglected.

Chapter 11 briefly describes three of the built-in tools, and Chapter 12 shows the reader how to install some popular extensions for customizable message boards, document management, and image galleries. The coverage of the extensions is enough to get the reader started, but the author really should explain why the reader would need to reboot their computer after installing Fireboard (page 203), or even restart the Apache server, if that is what the author meant.

With Chapters 13 through 15, Hagen Graf shifts to Joomla topics that would be of most interest to veteran Web programmers: how to develop your own templates, components, modules, and plug-ins. Sadly, at this critical juncture, the narrative and sample code become noticeably more muddled and confusing than what is found in the earlier chapters (which mostly consist of explaining the individual controls within Joomla's administrative area, and are thus easier to get right). For instance, to readers unfamiliar with div tags (likely a minority), the author recommends "selfhtml," without explaining what or where it is; presumably it is the German site SELFHTML, which is of no value to the English language readers of this book. Further on, the template provided in the downloadable code styles one's Joomla site as if no template were even in use, and not like the preview thumbnail image. The author's reference on page 229 to "one command" is baffling, and the publisher's left-justification of all the CSS rules makes the template's CSS even less readable. By the time readers reach the section titled "Integration of the Joomla! Module," they may be quite frustrated, and asking themselves, "What Joomla module?!" — despite the author's self-congratulatory comment "this has worked so well."

Chapter 14 was written by Angie Radtke, co-creator of the increasingly popular Beez template, which offers a lot more flexibility than most if not all other Joomla templates. She discusses Web accessibility ("barrier freedom") in general, and as implemented in particular by her template. The general discussion would be of interest to anyone unfamiliar with how to make Web sites more accessible, and is more thorough than what is found in some other Web design books. The template discussion would primarily be valuable to anyone developing a new template — especially one based upon Beez — and who is otherwise not aware of accessibility considerations. However, in any future editions, the HTML and CSS code should certainly be formatted better. For more advanced Joomla developers, Chapter 15 may be the most compelling one of all, because it describes how to create your own components, modules, and plug-ins — starting with an overview of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern.

In the penultimate chapter, the author steps through the process of setting up a simple Web site (in this case, for a winery). Working through the example will help readers solidify the knowledge they gained in the earlier chapters. It would also be handy for someone proficient with CMSs who simply wants to try Joomla in the least amount of time — somewhat like a quick-start guide. The book states that Joomla does not have an e-commerce shop component. Presumably the author is referring to the fact that, at the time of his book's writing, VirtueMart did not yet support Joomla 1.5; the latest release apparently does. Lastly, much of the vintner story is superfluous and could be condensed or cut. The last chapter briefly discusses a number of available templates. The book concludes with seven appendices, most quite brief: online resources; jdoc details; two methods for changing a template logo; a link to the Joomla API; how to reset the admin password; how to migrate a Joomla version 1.0 site to 1.5; the PHP register_globals setting apropos of Joomla security.

Like so many technical books, this one certainly has its noticeable strengths and weaknesses. The author's high regard for Joomla, as well as his extensive experience with it, is truly evident throughout his book. Also, he does touch upon all the major areas that would be of interest to the Joomla programmer.

However, the book's writing could be cleaned up and clarified a great deal. It could certainly use a lot more well-placed commas to increase readability — especially for the many run-on sentences — and far fewer exclamation marks. On a larger scale, the chapter summaries add no value and should be cut. The book contains many compound adjectives lacking hyphens, just as there are a few complete statements incorrectly separated by commas and not semicolons. Many of the expressions are rather odd and puzzling; for instance, "graphic scripts" (page 250), "easiest solution nothing shifts" (page 258), and "barrier freedom" instead of the much more universal term "accessibility." Non-German readers may be turned off by the book's German centricity. Furthermore, readers don't need to be told, twice, that the German translations were done by the German translation team. The book contains at least 49 errata (which I have reported to the publisher). These do not include countless instances of the term "that" being used incorrectly in place of "who," by both the primary and guest authors. Given the considerable number of errors, the reader may begin to wonder whether the book was edited prior to production.

The book falters most when it veers away from Joomla administration toward marketing and business topics. For instance, eBay is characterized as a "flea market" (page 55), but it is more of an online auction. On the same page, the discussion on advertising, frozen spinach, etc., adds no value to the book, could easily puzzle readers, and is somewhat disjointed from the topic at hand — contradicting the author's assertion that the book is cohesive (same page). Overall, the book could use a fair amount of trimming.

In terms of the book's production, the quality is fine, but Packt Publishing is the only technical publisher that I know of that insists upon using a glossy ink, which makes the book's pages somewhat difficult to read depending upon the angle of one's reading light as it bounces off the page. Also, whoever set the text on the pages should have refrained from removing most of the indentation from the code.

From an editing perspective, Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 is in need of considerable improvement — especially those passages that will prove most confusing to readers. But from a technical perspective, the book offers a lot of valuable information to new Joomla developers, and could easily become the preferred resource that they turn to when building their first Joomla Web sites.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.

You can purchase Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "For creating Web sites, developers are increasingly making use of content management systems (CMSs), any of which can provide the framework for a new site. But just as there are many similarities among all the leading CMSs, there are some significant differences, such as how easy they are to install, administer, and build upon, for creating new sites. If developer loyalty is any measure of the present and future success of a CMS, then Drupal should be considered a standout among other CMSs. For instance, its online documentation alone is often cited as a distinguishing advantage. But most developers would prefer learning Drupal from a book, such as Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6, by David Mercer." Keep reading below for the rest of Michael's review. Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 author David Mercer pages 380 publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847192971 summary A comprehensive, readable, and upbeat guide to Drupal 6. This particular book was published on 1 February 2008, under the ISBNs 1847192971 and 978-1847192974. It is one of the latest titles from Packt Publishing, a relatively new technical publishing firm that is nonetheless gaining a reputation for its support of the open source software movement, including open source CMSs such as Drupal and Joomla. The firm's "about us" page notes that, with the purchase of every book that covers an open source technology, they pay a royalty to that open source project. A recent article on the Drupal Web site states that the company has raised more than $100,000 through these open source royalties.

In his book's "About the Author" section, David Mercer mentions that this title is a follow-up to a first edition of the book, even though the publication information that follows the title page, mentions nothing about this being a second edition. Most likely he is referring to his 2006 book titled Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites, which covered Drupal version 4.7.

The publisher makes available a Web page devoted to the book, where readers can download the sample code, submit feedback, post a question about the book, read an online excerpt, and obtain a sample chapter, on "Advanced Content," as a PDF file. Readers can also purchase the electronic version of the book, which contains everything found in the print version. For any programmer who plans on developing Drupal sites on a laptop, while away from their home or office technical library, the e-book version could prove especially valuable and convenient.

Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 aims to cover all the major aspects of using Drupal, and is targeted at Drupal beginners, though the author does state in the preface that the book's broad coverage may be helpful to intermediate users. The information spans 380 pages, and is organized into 10 chapters and one appendix, covering: an introduction to Drupal, installation, modules and blocks, site configuration, user access control, creating content, advanced content, themes, advanced features, site management, and site deployment.

The first chapter serves as an introduction to Drupal, and explains the purpose of CMSs, the advantages of Drupal and other open source software, a brief history of Drupal, what Drupal offers to the site developer, and the many types of sites that can be built. The author discusses the reasons for keeping an unfinished site unavailable to visitors, the purpose of a placeholder page, and the importance of planning the intended site ahead of time. Especially useful to the beginner is the second half of the chapter, which discusses the support information available on the Drupal Web site, such as the well-regarded Handbook in the forums. The chapter concludes with a summary that, like all the others in the book, adds no value and could be cut, to make the book more concise. Newcomers to programming in general, and Drupal in particular, may find this chapter to be quite worthwhile; but experienced Drupal developers can skip it.

To the uninitiated, installing a substantial piece of software and getting it running, is usually the first hurdle, and sometimes the most difficult. Chapter 2 explains how to obtain and install Apache, PHP, and MySQL — in the form of Apache2Triad. This is preceded by a brief overview of the underlying needed technologies, which would be helpful to someone unfamiliar with them. However, the diagram on page 33 could certainly use better labeling of the inner components. Also, on page 47, the reader is instructed to look for the file php.ini in "C:\windows"; that may be the case for users of Apache2Triad, but for everyone else, the PHP configuration file is by default located in the PHP root directory. Nevertheless, the chapter explains not only the (relatively few) steps involved in installing Drupal on a Windows server, but also explains how to troubleshoot some of the more common problems that can be encountered. It concludes with an overview of the administration area, and how to create a simple homepage. The author provides the URL that a reader can use in case they accidentally disable user login (including admin login); but the URL (.../user/login) would only work if the reader succeeded in enabling clean URLs.

The critical topics of modules, blocks, menus, and links, are discussed in the third chapter, titled "Basic Functionality." It covers how to enable and configure modules, and how to find and install third-party modules. Three commonly used modules — Forum, Comments, and Search — are examined in detail, as is a third-party module that implements DHTML menus. They are put to use in constructing the sample Web site used throughout the book for illustrative purposes. The chapter's material is comprehensible, but the discussion of primary and secondary links, at the end, could certainly use clarification.

Chapter 4 is straightforward, and covers the fundamentals of site configuration. The author discusses clean URLs, error reporting, file uploading, system event logging and reports, high-level site information, and site maintenance. The subsequent chapter addresses the powerful functionality within Drupal for allowing site administrators to control user access to content — utilizing roles, permissions, users, registration, and access rules. It is a valuable discussion, marred only by a subpar illustration at the beginning (on page 117), and, at the end, the absence of a clear explanation as to the application of host type access rules.

All of the aforementioned topics would be of little value in a site that had no content, and in Chapters 6 and 7, David Mercer discusses simple and advanced content, respectively. The former chapter covers the various types of content, how to work with them, and how to administer content — with particular emphasis on two of the modules that are most applicable to content: Aggregator and Book. The illustration on page 152 does not include the "language" filter criterion mentioned on the next page. The biggest improvement that could be made to this chapter, would be for the author to more frequently specify how in the Drupal menu system the reader can go to the administrative section under discussion — similar to site breadcrumbs. Currently, the reader has to skip back, sometimes several pages, just to discover the steps needed to go to the specific Drupal section. In the subsequent chapter, the author explores taxonomy, the Content Construction Kit (CCK), and handling content posting using HTML and PHP. But the illustration on page 216 is missing the URL filter; the multi-page summary of HTML should be replaced with a few references to quality online HTML guides; the initial HTML code on page 227 is missing from the screenshot; and the image file path on page 228 should not have the localhost hardcoded.

Chapter 8 discusses Drupal's user interface and themes, at some length — in fact, too much length, as this is some of the book's most long-winded material. The CSS review section could be replaced with a few well-chosen links. It is stated that all five available themes have been enabled in the discussion, and yet that is not reflected in any of the screenshots. The penultimate chapter covers some advanced features — OpenID, actions, triggers, languages, localization, performance, caching, throttling, and JavaScript. Apropos of that last topic, the author several times advises the reader to "reload" a theme in order to implement any change to the .info file, but fails to explain how the reader can do the reload. For resolving this question, the book's index is characteristically unhelpful. The final chapter briefly explores Drupal site backup, task scheduling, and other site maintenance issues. The section on the Path and Pathauto modules should be combined with Chapter 4's section on clean URLs. The appendix explains how to deploy a site, and thus should have been located at the beginning of the last chapter.

Overall, the book accomplishes most of which it sets out to achieve. It provides a generous amount of information about Drupal, and discusses the material at an even pace that should not overwhelm even the most inexperienced programmer. Also, the book is packed with screenshots and other illustrations, so the reader can see the pages where they would make changes, and also see the effects. Nonetheless, readers will get even more out of it if they follow along and make the changes in a sample Drupal installation.

Despite the book's merits, it still has some areas of weakness. They include, as alluded to earlier, the index, which is missing some key topics, such as views and clean URLs, to mention only two.

In various places throughout the book, the writing could be markedly improved. Many of the sentences are awkwardly constructed, and consequently more difficult to understand at first glance. This is especially true in the first chapter, which has more high-level description and less technical detail. In addition, many of the sentences are run on, exacerbated by a lack of commas, which would alert the reader when to pause within the sentences. Dashes are frequently used where semicolons are called for. In some instances, new terms are incorrectly put in title case (e.g. on page 8). The terms "which" and "that" are sometimes interchanged incorrectly, as are "that" instead of "who" (e.g., page 126).

In general, the book is too wordy — on a large scale (chapter summaries, and entire paragraphs, that could be excised), and on a small scale (unneeded phrases here and there, such as "hopefully like contributing meaningfully" on page 34). The discussions, while friendly, could certainly use some tightening up and correction. Readers can do without the imagined musings of a Web server and a Google bot. In the aforesaid article on the Drupal site, the author notes, "...I have cut out quite a bit of the old text and trimmed that which remained..." Further cutting and trimming needs to be done.

Like most programming books nowadays, this one contains numerous errata: "DevelopmentEnvironment" (page i), "openID" (page 3), "Javascript" (ditto), "little to now experience" (page 4),....and many many more.

Some of the phrasing in the book is a bit awkward; for instance: "sell it on as" (page 28), "Meg" (for MB; page 35), "before last again" (page 84), and "remit" (presumably to mean boundaries; pages 116 and 117). There are some inconsistencies, such as on page 4, where, in the same CSS rule, we see both "#FF0000" and "#aaa." There are countless compound adjectives lacking hyphens (too many to catalog here). Finally, there are too many exclamation marks that serve no purpose.

This is the first book I have ever seen — and I hope the last — for which the title is never written in title case, but instead in sentence case. This may be of no consequence on the book's title page, where the nature of the title is obvious. But it becomes quite misleading when incorporated into a regular sentence, such as in the second paragraph on page 2, which causes the reader to initially conclude that the author is talking about the process of "Building powerful and robust websites..." Only later does it become clear that the author is not discussing any such building process, but rather the book itself.

Yet aside from these blemishes, the book does an excellent job of covering all the important topics that would be of interest to beginning and intermediate Drupal programmers. The author clearly has a genuine passion for Drupal, and frequently encourages readers to contribute to the Drupal community and its growing body of knowledge. Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 is a comprehensive, approachable, and valuable guide to making the most of Drupal — easily recommendable.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.

You can purchase Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "For creating Web sites, developers are increasingly making use of content management systems (CMSs), any of which can provide the framework for a new site. But just as there are many similarities among all the leading CMSs, there are some significant differences, such as how easy they are to install, administer, and build upon, for creating new sites. If developer loyalty is any measure of the present and future success of a CMS, then Drupal should be considered a standout among other CMSs. For instance, its online documentation alone is often cited as a distinguishing advantage. But most developers would prefer learning Drupal from a book, such as Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6, by David Mercer." Keep reading below for the rest of Michael's review. Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 author David Mercer pages 380 publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847192971 summary A comprehensive, readable, and upbeat guide to Drupal 6. This particular book was published on 1 February 2008, under the ISBNs 1847192971 and 978-1847192974. It is one of the latest titles from Packt Publishing, a relatively new technical publishing firm that is nonetheless gaining a reputation for its support of the open source software movement, including open source CMSs such as Drupal and Joomla. The firm's "about us" page notes that, with the purchase of every book that covers an open source technology, they pay a royalty to that open source project. A recent article on the Drupal Web site states that the company has raised more than $100,000 through these open source royalties.

In his book's "About the Author" section, David Mercer mentions that this title is a follow-up to a first edition of the book, even though the publication information that follows the title page, mentions nothing about this being a second edition. Most likely he is referring to his 2006 book titled Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites, which covered Drupal version 4.7.

The publisher makes available a Web page devoted to the book, where readers can download the sample code, submit feedback, post a question about the book, read an online excerpt, and obtain a sample chapter, on "Advanced Content," as a PDF file. Readers can also purchase the electronic version of the book, which contains everything found in the print version. For any programmer who plans on developing Drupal sites on a laptop, while away from their home or office technical library, the e-book version could prove especially valuable and convenient.

Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 aims to cover all the major aspects of using Drupal, and is targeted at Drupal beginners, though the author does state in the preface that the book's broad coverage may be helpful to intermediate users. The information spans 380 pages, and is organized into 10 chapters and one appendix, covering: an introduction to Drupal, installation, modules and blocks, site configuration, user access control, creating content, advanced content, themes, advanced features, site management, and site deployment.

The first chapter serves as an introduction to Drupal, and explains the purpose of CMSs, the advantages of Drupal and other open source software, a brief history of Drupal, what Drupal offers to the site developer, and the many types of sites that can be built. The author discusses the reasons for keeping an unfinished site unavailable to visitors, the purpose of a placeholder page, and the importance of planning the intended site ahead of time. Especially useful to the beginner is the second half of the chapter, which discusses the support information available on the Drupal Web site, such as the well-regarded Handbook in the forums. The chapter concludes with a summary that, like all the others in the book, adds no value and could be cut, to make the book more concise. Newcomers to programming in general, and Drupal in particular, may find this chapter to be quite worthwhile; but experienced Drupal developers can skip it.

To the uninitiated, installing a substantial piece of software and getting it running, is usually the first hurdle, and sometimes the most difficult. Chapter 2 explains how to obtain and install Apache, PHP, and MySQL — in the form of Apache2Triad. This is preceded by a brief overview of the underlying needed technologies, which would be helpful to someone unfamiliar with them. However, the diagram on page 33 could certainly use better labeling of the inner components. Also, on page 47, the reader is instructed to look for the file php.ini in "C:\windows"; that may be the case for users of Apache2Triad, but for everyone else, the PHP configuration file is by default located in the PHP root directory. Nevertheless, the chapter explains not only the (relatively few) steps involved in installing Drupal on a Windows server, but also explains how to troubleshoot some of the more common problems that can be encountered. It concludes with an overview of the administration area, and how to create a simple homepage. The author provides the URL that a reader can use in case they accidentally disable user login (including admin login); but the URL (.../user/login) would only work if the reader succeeded in enabling clean URLs.

The critical topics of modules, blocks, menus, and links, are discussed in the third chapter, titled "Basic Functionality." It covers how to enable and configure modules, and how to find and install third-party modules. Three commonly used modules — Forum, Comments, and Search — are examined in detail, as is a third-party module that implements DHTML menus. They are put to use in constructing the sample Web site used throughout the book for illustrative purposes. The chapter's material is comprehensible, but the discussion of primary and secondary links, at the end, could certainly use clarification.

Chapter 4 is straightforward, and covers the fundamentals of site configuration. The author discusses clean URLs, error reporting, file uploading, system event logging and reports, high-level site information, and site maintenance. The subsequent chapter addresses the powerful functionality within Drupal for allowing site administrators to control user access to content — utilizing roles, permissions, users, registration, and access rules. It is a valuable discussion, marred only by a subpar illustration at the beginning (on page 117), and, at the end, the absence of a clear explanation as to the application of host type access rules.

All of the aforementioned topics would be of little value in a site that had no content, and in Chapters 6 and 7, David Mercer discusses simple and advanced content, respectively. The former chapter covers the various types of content, how to work with them, and how to administer content — with particular emphasis on two of the modules that are most applicable to content: Aggregator and Book. The illustration on page 152 does not include the "language" filter criterion mentioned on the next page. The biggest improvement that could be made to this chapter, would be for the author to more frequently specify how in the Drupal menu system the reader can go to the administrative section under discussion — similar to site breadcrumbs. Currently, the reader has to skip back, sometimes several pages, just to discover the steps needed to go to the specific Drupal section. In the subsequent chapter, the author explores taxonomy, the Content Construction Kit (CCK), and handling content posting using HTML and PHP. But the illustration on page 216 is missing the URL filter; the multi-page summary of HTML should be replaced with a few references to quality online HTML guides; the initial HTML code on page 227 is missing from the screenshot; and the image file path on page 228 should not have the localhost hardcoded.

Chapter 8 discusses Drupal's user interface and themes, at some length — in fact, too much length, as this is some of the book's most long-winded material. The CSS review section could be replaced with a few well-chosen links. It is stated that all five available themes have been enabled in the discussion, and yet that is not reflected in any of the screenshots. The penultimate chapter covers some advanced features — OpenID, actions, triggers, languages, localization, performance, caching, throttling, and JavaScript. Apropos of that last topic, the author several times advises the reader to "reload" a theme in order to implement any change to the .info file, but fails to explain how the reader can do the reload. For resolving this question, the book's index is characteristically unhelpful. The final chapter briefly explores Drupal site backup, task scheduling, and other site maintenance issues. The section on the Path and Pathauto modules should be combined with Chapter 4's section on clean URLs. The appendix explains how to deploy a site, and thus should have been located at the beginning of the last chapter.

Overall, the book accomplishes most of which it sets out to achieve. It provides a generous amount of information about Drupal, and discusses the material at an even pace that should not overwhelm even the most inexperienced programmer. Also, the book is packed with screenshots and other illustrations, so the reader can see the pages where they would make changes, and also see the effects. Nonetheless, readers will get even more out of it if they follow along and make the changes in a sample Drupal installation.

Despite the book's merits, it still has some areas of weakness. They include, as alluded to earlier, the index, which is missing some key topics, such as views and clean URLs, to mention only two.

In various places throughout the book, the writing could be markedly improved. Many of the sentences are awkwardly constructed, and consequently more difficult to understand at first glance. This is especially true in the first chapter, which has more high-level description and less technical detail. In addition, many of the sentences are run on, exacerbated by a lack of commas, which would alert the reader when to pause within the sentences. Dashes are frequently used where semicolons are called for. In some instances, new terms are incorrectly put in title case (e.g. on page 8). The terms "which" and "that" are sometimes interchanged incorrectly, as are "that" instead of "who" (e.g., page 126).

In general, the book is too wordy — on a large scale (chapter summaries, and entire paragraphs, that could be excised), and on a small scale (unneeded phrases here and there, such as "hopefully like contributing meaningfully" on page 34). The discussions, while friendly, could certainly use some tightening up and correction. Readers can do without the imagined musings of a Web server and a Google bot. In the aforesaid article on the Drupal site, the author notes, "...I have cut out quite a bit of the old text and trimmed that which remained..." Further cutting and trimming needs to be done.

Like most programming books nowadays, this one contains numerous errata: "DevelopmentEnvironment" (page i), "openID" (page 3), "Javascript" (ditto), "little to now experience" (page 4),....and many many more.

Some of the phrasing in the book is a bit awkward; for instance: "sell it on as" (page 28), "Meg" (for MB; page 35), "before last again" (page 84), and "remit" (presumably to mean boundaries; pages 116 and 117). There are some inconsistencies, such as on page 4, where, in the same CSS rule, we see both "#FF0000" and "#aaa." There are countless compound adjectives lacking hyphens (too many to catalog here). Finally, there are too many exclamation marks that serve no purpose.

This is the first book I have ever seen — and I hope the last — for which the title is never written in title case, but instead in sentence case. This may be of no consequence on the book's title page, where the nature of the title is obvious. But it becomes quite misleading when incorporated into a regular sentence, such as in the second paragraph on page 2, which causes the reader to initially conclude that the author is talking about the process of "Building powerful and robust websites..." Only later does it become clear that the author is not discussing any such building process, but rather the book itself.

Yet aside from these blemishes, the book does an excellent job of covering all the important topics that would be of interest to beginning and intermediate Drupal programmers. The author clearly has a genuine passion for Drupal, and frequently encourages readers to contribute to the Drupal community and its growing body of knowledge. Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 is a comprehensive, approachable, and valuable guide to making the most of Drupal — easily recommendable.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.

You can purchase Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "For any Web site based upon Drupal, an increasingly popular CMS, the styling of the site is controlled by whatever Drupal "theme" has been installed, enabled, and chosen, by the site administrator. Out of the box, Drupal offers only a handful of themes, and thus site administrators oftentimes will instead opt for a theme developed by a third-party. However, if the administrator cannot find one that exactly matches their needs or those of their client, then they will either have to pay someone to custom-build a theme, or learn how to do it themselves. Fortunately, creating a new theme or modifying an existing one, is not that difficult, as demonstrated in Drupal 5 Themes, by Ric Shreves." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal 5 Themes author Ric Shreves pages 260 publisher Packt Publishing rating 6/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847191827 summary A guide to modifying Drupal themes, and creating new ones. The book was published on 22 December 2007, by Packt Publishing, under the ISBNs 1847191827 and 978-1847191823. It is a slender volume, at only 260 pages, and yet covers most of the basics, in eight chapters and one appendix: the basic elements of a Drupal theme, including the files involved; finding, installing, configuring, managing, and uninstalling themes; theme engines, with a focus upon the most commonly used one, PHPTemplate; style sheets and themeable functions; overriding CSS rules, Drupal functions, and template files; modifying an existing theme, using the popular Zen theme as an example; creating a new PHPTemplate-based theme from scratch, and how to extend it; creating a theme not based upon an engine; theming Drupal forms. On the book's Web page, visitors can download most of the sample code presented in the book, send the publisher feedback, ask the publisher a question, and download a sample chapter (number 3, "Working with Theme Engines") as a PDF file.

On the positive side of the ledger, Drupal 5 Themes is a solid introduction to Drupal theming, and the author takes his time in explaining the key concepts. Extensive use is made of sample code, in addition to screenshots of themed pages, admin pages, directory trees, and more.

On the negative side of the ledger, the book contains many small errors — even for a first edition. There are far too many misspellings: "new-comer" (page 8), "where ever" (page 10), "blocks manager" (on the same page — even the same paragraph!), "in depth" (as an adjective, on pages 23 and 24), "jump start," "down side" (both on page 27), "sites" (as a possessive, page 54), "some where" (page 87), and one that undermines the technical credibility of the author, "FavIcon" (page 50). Sadly, there are numerous other errata. For instance, on page 47, we stumble over "to the tailoring an existing theme." On page 10, "assemble to core" should instead read "assemble the core." In several instances, "comprise" is mistaken for "compose." The alert reader will spot other signs of sloppy editing: One pages 18-19, the author should have chosen either "Tables Free" or "CSS-based," and be consistent. The penultimate paragraph on page 123 has double periods. The synonym of "theme" that is posited, "template," is related, but not synonymous; but the common term "skin" isn't even mentioned. On page 188, "page-blog-tpl.php" contains a typo.

Some of the author's phrasing is quite awkward, e.g., "Dev Server" (page 120) apparently means a local Web server. In fact, throughout the book he flip-flops on using lowercase or title case for such terms as "block" and "region." The overuse of title case is also found throughout the book, with some of it almost laughable, e.g., "... the Big Picture." In terms of the writing style, it could certainly be improved, such as judicious use of commas where needed — particularly in the countless run-on sentences. In general, this book contains more errata and style gaffes than any other computer book I have ever seen, on an absolute basis — even worse per page, considering it has perhaps half the number of pages of the typical computer book.

Turning to the technical material itself, there are inconsistencies as well. For instance, some URLs contain root directory slashes, while others do not. Some menu breadcrumbs use ">" as a delimiter, while others use "|." Furthermore, the Drupal menu breadcrumbs (e.g., "administer>themes") should be in sentence case, not lowercase, to match Drupal's names. Fortunately, none of the aforementioned flaws prevent the reader from understanding the book's material, but they reveal insufficient effort in the writing and editing phases, and suggest that other, less obvious, mistakes were possibly made.

In terms of the book's production, it could be improved. Some of the images are highly pixelated — especially the screenshots of directory trees. What will perhaps be most annoying to some readers, is the publisher's use of a glossy black ink that causes each page to reflect one's reading light. One might initially hope that this is an unavoidable disadvantage of the publisher perhaps choosing an environmentally friendly ink, or some similar reason, but nowhere in the book is the type or choice of ink mentioned. This suggests the poor choice was made for economic and not ecologic reasons.

The chapter summaries add nothing to the discussion, and could be removed without loss.

We now turn to specific chapters. In Chapter 2, the author discusses how to install and configure themes, and also touches upon global configuration settings, as well as module and block management. This information is put to use in the second part of the chapter, which covers the customization of Garland, the default Drupal theme. Some of the material in this chapter could prove puzzling or even misleading to many readers. The author states that enabling a theme and setting it as the default, applies it to "both front end and back end of the site" (page 31). Actually, it only changes the front-end theme; the back-end theme is set via Administer > Site configuration > Administration theme; oddly, he actually acknowledges this much later. In the theme configuration screenshots in Chapter 2, the "gagarin" theme is missing, even though it was supposedly installed earlier. On page 40, the author instructs, "To access all the user permissions and configuration screens in one place, view your administrator console by module." But Administer > Site building > Modules is not where the administrator sets user permissions and blog configurations. In the discussion of page specific visibility settings, the third radio button option (entering PHP code to control the visibility of the block) is only displayed if the user has enabled "use PHP for block visibility" in Administer > User management > Access control. The figure caption on page 50 could give a reader the mistaken idea that Drupal renames the custom logo image to "garland_logo.gif" automatically, prior to the configuration settings being saved, which is mentioned afterwards. On page 58, the illustration shows PHP code that appears to contain an extraneous tag, , which is probably a holdover from the illustration on page 56; in fact, it breaks the code, because the presence of that string always effectively returns TRUE. On pages 86 and 87, the PHP code contains four back ticks, which should be replaced with straight apostrophes.

Theme engines, specifically PHPTemplate, is explored in Chapter 3. The author explains the primary functionality of the six files that constitute this built-in theme engine. These are illustrated by comparing two PHPTemplate themes — Garland versus Gagarin. The chapter concludes with brief overviews of three other theme engines, PHPTAL, Smarty, and PHP XTemplate.

Modifying a theme to customize a Drupal site, can be done in one of two ways, or a combination of the two, which is the typical approach: overriding default CSS rules, and overriding themeable functions. Chapters 4 and 5 explain how to do so, with the former containing a list of themeable functions organized by functionality. Chapter 5 covers the details of overriding Drupal CSS and functions, including a valuable discussion of the various options open to the developer for overriding functions, including step-by-step instructions. The chapter concludes with a brief explanation as to how to intercept template files.

Chapters 6 and 7 form the heart of the book, because they explain the details of modifying an existing theme and building a new one from scratch. Anyone interested in learning how to style their Drupal-based Web site with maximum flexibility, will find these two chapters of value. However, there are several pitfalls the reader will want to watch for: Early in Chapter 6, the author instructs the reader who is following along to rename the theme-specific functions in the template.php file from "zen_" to "tao_." Yet this is insufficient, because the page formatting for this new theme, tao, already differs from Zen's. This is likely due to the theme PHP files not finding one or more CSS files that still contain the name "zen." In fact, to completely replace the old theme name throughout Zen's code, one needs to change nine other PHP files. In the section describing how to set up the menus, the weights for the "Home" and "Contact Us" links are supposedly set to 10 and -10, respectively, which would place the former to the left of the latter; yet the illustration on page 148 shows the opposite. The "Blog Entries" weight should be -10 instead of 10. The weights for the footer navigation menu links appear to be equally messed up. In addition, both instances of "yourdomain" is followed by an erroneous space. Frankly, it is as if the book had never been technically edited.

Chapter 7, the longest in the book, is possibly the one that will receive the most study by readers who wish to learn the intricacies of making their own theme from the ground up. The author provides a step-by-step explanation as to what is involved in creating a new theme, and the advantages and disadvantages to alternative approaches. He uses a sample theme, "Bluewater," to illustrate the ideas. The problems with this material are fairly minor: The diagram caption on page 152 states that the elements within the CSS are ordered alphabetically, and yet no alphabetical ordering is apparent. In fact, the ordering doesn't even match that in the page.tpl.php file. In addition, page.tpl.php contains a couple curly quotes, though this does not affect its functionality. Aside from these issues, the discussion is quite thorough, and the reader ends up with a fully functional — though not especially attractive — Drupal theme. The chapter concludes with coverage of template variables, the use of multiple templates, dynamic theming, and developing a theme without the use of any theme engine. However, on page 188, the author states where you can find an example page but there's almost nothing on that page — as of this writing — aside from links to pornographic photos and video. Did the author intend for readers to find them? Either way, it signifies poor judgment on the part of the author.

For many PHP developers, working with form pages is oftentimes the most problematic part of creating a Web site. Fortunately, this book tackles the topic, in Chapter 8, as it pertains to Drupal sites.

In spite of the terribly sloppy writing and editing (both narrative and technical), Drupal developers interested in creating their own themes, or modifying those created by other developers, will find straightforward and detailed coverage in Drupal 5 Themes.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.

You can purchase Drupal 5 Themes from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Among the hundreds of content management systems (CMSs) available for building Web sites, Plone may not be the most popular; but for the majority of experienced Python developers, it is without equal. This is partly due to Plone being one of the few major CMSs written in Python, and partly due to its powerful extensibility. Customizing and extending Plone, however, are not for the faint of heart. Fortunately, help is at hand, in Professional Plone Development, a book written by seasoned Plone developer Martin Aspeli." Read below for the rest Of Michael's review. Professional Plone Development author Martin Aspeli pages 420 publisher Packt Publishing rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847191983 summary A practical exploration of how to extend the CMS Plone. Professional Plone Development was put out by Packt Publishing, on 26 September 2007, under the ISBNs 1847191983 and 978-1847191984. On the book's Web page, visitors can order a copy of the book (more on this later), download the sample source code found in the book, submit feedback, ask questions of the publisher, and download a sample chapter — specifically, Chapter 2, which presents the case study used by the author. For anyone who wants to get the most out of this book, downloading and working through the sample code would be extremely valuable.

The book's material is organized into 19 chapters, spanning 420 pages — despite what is reported on the publisher's Web page, which as of this writing indicates that the book comprises 300 pages. The book's chapters are grouped into four parts. The first one, the briefest, sets the stage for what follows, by presenting a context for Plone development, including the CMS's history, its competition, its use as a stand-alone application versus use as a framework, and other foundational matters. It also introduces the case study — a cinema chain's Web site — used throughout the book to illustrate the concepts being taught. Lastly, the first part of the book covers the development environment needed by the reader to follow along, including discussion of Zope, which is an open source application server designed for creating CMSs and other Web-based applications.

The second part of the book covers Plone customization: basic concepts, laying out a site's strategy, security and workflow issues, add-on products, and creating a new theme. The book's third part, the longest, covers how to extend Plone with new functionality: Zope programming essentials, custom content types, standalone views and forms, working with a relational databases, user management, creating user interfaces with KSS, and more. The fourth and last part of the book addresses real world deployment of one's extensions, including Zope server management, production server setup, LDAP authentication, and possibilities for the future. Unlike most technical books, the author provides at the end a brief yet worthwhile section on where the reader can go next to learn more along the same lines as the book. The brevity of the section is certainly not from a lack of knowledge or helpfulness on the part of the author, but rather the dearth of information available to developers interested in learning about how to extend Plone.

There's a great deal to like about this book. The author clearly possesses the expertise and experience needed for providing instruction on a challenging topic such as this. His explanations are not abbreviated, as seen in so many other technical monographs. Furthermore, most programmers learn best by viewing and mentally dissecting sample code. For such people, Martin Aspeli's practical approach — focusing on a substantial sample application — will prove more engaging and instructive than the made-up and oftentimes overly simplistic examples found in many computer programming books — including the increasingly popular cookbook titles. On the other hand, by placing almost all of the discussion within the framework of a single sample application, the author diminishes the potential of the book for reference purposes. To benefit the most from this book, the reader definitely would want to work through all of the chapters, in detail, and in the order presented.

In presenting the many steps of creating the case study application, the author provides a generous amount of information on what he considers to be best practices, to make the Plone development process more reliable, and the resulting code easier to maintain and further extend in the future. The confident authority with which the author covers these principles, and the validity of the examples provided, demonstrates his knowledge of the subject matter, and reassures the reader that the author has the experience to provide reliable technical guidance.

In terms of prerequisites, readers should have a solid familiarity with Python and Plone. The book covers Plone version 3.0, but still would be of value to developers who have not yet upgraded from an earlier 2.x release.

Professional Plone Development is definitely best suited for Plone developers and administrators from the intermediate to advanced levels. However, even someone fairly new to Plone, would benefit from what it offers. In fact, carefully working through all of the material, and taking the time to really understand it, could take a developer from the beginner to the intermediate level. With further experience, subsequent rereadings of the book would likely yield further insights. It's that kind of book — meaty and in-depth, and not in any way a shallow "dummies" book.

However, there are some criticisms that should be leveled against this book, although none of them have anything to do with the writing of the author or the sample code. Rather, these are recommendations for future improvement directed to the publisher. First and foremost, the book's print on the page, is quite shiny — and not in the sense of a "Firefly" compliment. Rather, it reflects light as if the ink were extremely glossy. As a result, depending upon the placement of one's reading light, the page being viewed invariably has a large shiny spot, forcing the reader to keep rocking the book back and forth, relative to the light source, in order to shift the glare away from the section on the page that is currently being viewed. Of the hundreds if not thousands of technical books I have read, this is the only one with this type of printing, and I hope it is the last. This problem is not seen with the largest text of all, such as "Part N" at the beginning of each of the book's four major parts.

The images in the book, of which there are few, have a high degree of pixelation, which makes them look cheap, though it certainly does not make them impossible to read. As with the book's text, the pictures suffer from the same annoying shininess.

Earlier it was mentioned that the prospective reader can order a copy of the book from the publisher's Web site. However, I would not recommend this until the publisher improves the way that they package their books for shipping. Rather than enclosing the book in a plastic bag or a piece of clean wrapping paper, to protect it, the book is placed bare inside of the shipping box, in which it bounces around during transit, as it makes its way to the purchaser from the shipping/distribution facility. Consequently, the corners and edges of the book are easily curled, and the outside surfaces of the book's cover are scratched from the imperfections found in the shipping box's interior. This shows what can happen with books that are mailed with no internal protection. Publishers should not assume that what the shipping department sees when they place the book in the box, is what the customer sees days later when they receive it. Fortunately, this book is available from all major online booksellers, including the 11 firms listed on the publisher's Web page, for various countries. While this might not guarantee better protection of the book's cover, I have had far fewer similar problems with Amazon.com, for instance.

Despite these production flaws — all of which can be corrected — Professional Plone Development is a worthy addition to the library of any Plone administrator interested in making the most of their Plone installation, any Python developer who wants to create Web sites without reinventing the wheel, and any professional programmer interested in taking advantage of the growing demand for Plone developers.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.

You can purchase Professional Plone Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "One of the most powerful and popular content management systems (CMSs) is Joomla, a superior derivative of Mambo. Out of the box, Joomla makes it relatively easy to build Web sites that allow collaborative editing of content, attractive styling via prebuilt templates, and many more features. A Joomla-based site can be further improved by adding custom modules, components, and other extensions to the CMS, without any modification to the core Joomla code. A resource that explains how to do this, is Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP, by Joseph L. LeBlanc." Read on for the rest of Michael's review. Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development author Joseph L. LeBlanc pages 176 publisher Packt Publishing rating 8 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 1847191304 summary A practical tutorial for creating Joomla! 1.5 extensions

The book is put out by Packt Publishing, under the ISBNs 1847191304 and 978-1-847191-30-4. The publisher maintains a page on their site dedicated to the book, where visitors can read summaries of the chapters and the overall book, order the e-book version (in PDF format) at a discount, download the book's sample source code, read and submit errata and feedback, and download a sample chapter, namely, "Chapter 1: Joomla! Extension Development: An Overview" (also in PDF format). Note that, as of this writing, the errata and feedback do not have their own links, but are located on the page accessible via the link "Code download," which should be clarified.

The book's title page bills it as "A practical tutorial for creating your first Joomla! 1.5 extensions with PHP," and that is exactly what the book is. Rather than organizing the information in a cookbook style — which is quite popular in programming books nowadays — this particular one uses a narrative approach, in which the author illustrates the concepts by stepping the reader through an example project. He begins with a clean install of Joomla, without any of the sample data, and shows how to "build extensions to create, find, promote, and cross-link restaurant reviews."

The nine chapters of the book are organized in a logical manner, and in the order that the typical developer would go about extending a Joomla-based site: overview; Joomla's component structure and registration; backend and front-end development; module development; using the model-view-controller design pattern (MVC); creating plug-ins; adding configurability for the extensions that you have created; packaging the extension elements for use by other Joomla developers.

In explaining the key concepts and procedures for building custom extensions to a Joomla site, the author takes a methodical approach, with a healthy balance between exposition, sample code, and illustrative figures. The chapters read quickly, and the code changes from one section to the next are helpfully bolded. The chapter summaries, as with most programming books, add no value, and could be beneficially dropped, thereby saving space.

The author states in the first chapter that there are three types of extensions within Joomla: components, modules, and plug-ins. This could be confusing to anyone who has read the articles that help introduce Joomla to the new developer, and are contained in the sample data found in Joomla version 1.5. Those articles include one titled "Extensions," which lists two additional extension types — templates and languages — not considered such by LeBlanc. However, that article does not make clear as to why templates and languages should even be considered extensions, which seems counterintuitive at first glance.

The presentation of all of the material in LeBlanc's book is not perfect, but it is certainly more than adequate. It is unfortunate that the book does not have a lay-flat binding, which tends to be more of a problem with slender volumes such as this one (176 pages), since much thicker books have more weight to keep both sides down on the table at the same time when the book is open. All of the screenshots have a bit too much pixelation, which makes the smallest text within the screenshots more difficult to read. However, none of that text is unreadable. The book's text outside of the screenshots is quite easy to read, with a generously-sized font and a logical layout of each page's material. Almost every page has two horizontal lines, one at the top, and one at the bottom; they serve no purpose, and could be eliminated to save ink and space, as could the brackets around every page number. The same is true for the much larger and thicker brackets used to delineate warnings, notes, tips, and tricks. There were a few other very minor flaws in the book. For instance, in the information about the reviewer, "MySQL" is misspelled. In the Table of Contents, the "Available Toolbar Buttons" line appears to be one font size too small, and thus inconsistent with the other subsection heads. All of these weaknesses are of little consequence and could be fixed in the next edition.

Even if a reader initially had no interest in developing their own extensions to Joomla, this book could easily spark their interest, given that the book shows just how powerful those extensions can be, as well as how doable they are, by any competent programmer familiar with PHP and MySQL. In fact, even if the reader were to later decide that they had no interest in creating any extensions, they could still benefit from the book's discussion of how components are structured within Joomla — a more clear explanation than anything I have seen in the official Joomla documentation. Joomla may be an excellent CMS, but the documentation quality does not come close to the value of Joomla itself. That is why there is such a great need for books such as this one.

Although Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP has some weaknesses — as do most if not all technical books nowadays — for any developer interested in getting the most out of Joomla by building custom extensions, LeBlanc's contribution should prove especially informative and useful.

Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, freelance writer, and the editor of PristinePlanet.com's free newsletter.

You can purchase Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

The Citizen writes "Packt Publishing has released details of an award scheme for open source Content Management Systems to enter and win a $5,000 prize. From the article: 'The Packt Open Source Content Management System Award is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) that has been selected by a panel of judges and visitors to PacktPub.com.' They're asking for people to submit nominations for their favorite open source Content Management System now."

The Citizen writes "Packt Publishing has released details of an award scheme for open source Content Management Systems to enter and win a $5,000 prize. From the article: 'The Packt Open Source Content Management System Award is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) that has been selected by a panel of judges and visitors to PacktPub.com.' They're asking for people to submit nominations for their favorite open source Content Management System now."

Robert Nagle writes "Over the last year, Zope and Plone have gained mindshare as open source web application servers. In the last few months, two books have come out about how to use, extend and administer Plone. One is Andy McKay's Definitive Guide to Plone (available for free online), and the other is Julie Meloni's Plone Content Management Essentials." Read on for Nagle's review of both books. (See each) author (See each) pages (See each) publisher (See each) rating (See each) reviewer Robert Nagle ISBN (See each) summary McKay's book is indeed definitive; Meloni's book is a good introduction

The Zope/plone combination offers a variety of advantages to the open source developer: robust workflow capabilities, conformity to Web standards, cross-platform support and a sophisticated security model. On the other hand, it has a steep learning curve and deals with objects in an object database (instead of the usual RDBMS/LAMP data model).

First, here's 30 seconds of what Plone is all about (the Slashdot editors can provide the bunnies). Zope is a Python-backed web application server which includes a Zope Management Interface (or ZMI), a web-based interface to modify templates and interact with/administer the Zope Object Database (ZODB). Although Zope can be a standalone webserver, in fact people usually put it behind Apache for reasons of security, performance and caching. Years ago, Zope used a custom scripting language (DTML) to do its business logic, but later switched to an XML-based templating language called ZPT and let users use Python-based scripts to perform actions. Zope is the application server; CMF is the content management framework, and Plone is the standards-compliant front end that lets you manage skins, slots, styles, portlets, forms, actions, content types and installation of products. Then there's archetypes, which make it easier to create new content types and web forms. Oh, have I mentioned that we're dealing with objects here? In other words, we're not just throwing data and text into SQL); we're creating different types of content (documents, events, multimedia objects), storing them as objects (with actions, metadata, etc) and then summoning them (or parts of them) from the object database with ZPT using macros and indices.

From a design perspective, Plone is elegant although so multi-layered that it's often hard to figure out where to make changes. Also, while the Plone front end is snazzy, most users end up having to go to the ZMI to modify the template and edit actions (which, depending on how you look at it, can be an advantage or disadvantage). Finally, although the list of open source products for Plone and Zope is impressive, they don't necessarily play well together, and many products for Zope don't work in Plone and vice versa.

Definitive Guide to Plone author Andy McKay pages 584 publisher Apress rating 5 ISBN 1590593294

That is where Andy McKay's book and Julie Meloni's book come in. Of the two books, Andy's is more comprehensive and geared toward the experienced developer (and typical Slashdot reader); Julie's book does more hand-holding and provides more thorough explanations of introductory concepts.

As a lead plone developer, McKay has intimate knowledge of the good, the bad and the ugly for plone. Although his chapters fly by certain introductory tasks at record speed, he explains things well and offers lots of tips and hints throughout the book. (I can't tell you how many times I've put the book down and exclaimed, 'Aha, so that's how you ...'). The sequence of presentation is generally logical with one exception: in chapter 14 (page 459), the book mentions that you can use Zope Enterprise Objects to debug a live server without having to shut down Plone. That is valuable -- even vital-- information, and belonged in the earlier chapter on installing Zope. Although the chapters don't go into great depth, his code examples and commentary are sufficient to explain what is going on.

It's not the main focus of the book, but the sections on system administration (caching, tuning, scaling) are well done although some things are missing (like Virtual Host Monster). It's assumed that readers will be able to find this information elsewhere.

The best parts about McKay's book are how it relates Python programming to Plone. The deeper you get into Plone, the more important it is to write Python scripts and do basic Python debugging. Even basic sysadmin tasks like product management seems to require an understanding of object-oriented concepts. One initial difficulty comes with the idea of URL paths corresponding not to actual directories but objects being contained within other objects. (So that login_form in http://foobar/login_form doesn't necessarily reside within the foobar directory, but is in any directory or object acquired by the foobar object). This type of URL (called a traversal) is explained well enough in the book, but often makes it difficult to figure out where to find things within the ZMI and the file system. Who would have ever thought that the place to edit the login_form object for http://foobar/login_form is /foobar/portal_skins/plone_forms/login_form within the ZMI (which is actually /zopeinstance/products/CMFPlone/skins/plone_forms/ login_form.pt on the file system)? That's why McKay's skin example (in Chapter 7) accomplishes so many things; it provides a "guided tour" through the layers (i.e., scripts, templates, etc) contained within portal_skins; it also runs through the process of creating custom templates and forms based on existing ones. This, by the way, is one of the niftiest features of Zope/Plone; you push a Customize button in the ZMI, and voila! you've cloned an object for customizing. This is dense stuff, but after reading this chapter, I have a better sense of the beast I'm dealing with.

I particularly liked the book's chapters on archetypes and manipulating content types. If Zope/Plone is about manipulating objects, then it helps to have a variety of objects to manipulate. Archetypes lets you create new content types and new views for content types. By providing Python libraries for fields and widgets, archetypes makes it relatively easy to create web forms for data input. McKay's book covers this topic thoroughly and clearly. I also appreciated the chapter on searches and indexing (and the helpful table of indices and index types); this filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. The sections on security and workflow contained good examples, and the book also contained a section on internationalization. The programming chapters are the best parts about the book.

On the negative side, I wish there were more charts and tables in the book (perhaps as appendices). A lot of this is already found within Zope help or the Plone site, but it would have been handy to have these things as reference. Although McKay's book contains a good (though brief) introduction to Zope Page Templates, the explanation of the syntax is scattered throughout the ZPT chapter; it would have been much better to summarize all the tal tags in a single table.

Also, at many points during the ZPT chapter and other chapters, McKay refers to Plone and archetype API classes that are described nowhere else in the book. It took me a while to figure out where these things were coming from (and I would refer you to here for API descriptions). The book would have benefited from a better description of APIs, even a high level view of it (You can find some quick references here).

Because of its focus on development, McKay's book spends almost no time on third-party products or "sanctioned" products available in the plone collective. This is somewhat understandable (given the mercurial nature of product development), but the casual reader might finish the book without realizing that additional additional products even exist. (Here's a fairly comprehensive list of Plone and Zope products).

Also, I would have liked better explanation about change management. Plone has its own product installer, but I always have difficulties upgrading products. How do you test products before actually deploying them? How do you manage upgrades (and how do you upgrade Zope itself?) For such an extensible project as Plone, managing the installation, testing and upgrade of third-party products can be a disaster waiting to happen.

Plone Content Management Essentials author Julie C. Meloni pages 258 publisher SAMS rating 3 ISBN 0672326876

Julie Meloni's book takes a different approach to the subject, one geared less to Python development and more to deploying third-party products and customizing site appearances. I'm tempted to say that the typical Slashdot reader would find this book "shallow," but really that is not fair. Although Meloni's book contains a short appendix on Python, it focuses more on how Plone works out of the box and how to take advantage of core functionality. In fact, Meloni's slender book contains many useful sections probably deemed too elementary for McKay's book: how structured text works, for example.

Rather than trying to cover everything Plone-related, Meloni identifies a small number of typical tasks and explains them in detail. For example, the book documents the Plone style sheets and how to modify them in the ZMI. Too basic, you say? Well, yes, but it's still useful reference material. Rather than trying to teach you how to write your own Plone product or content type from scratch, she walks us through using that nifty Customize button to clone existing templates for customization (although to tell the truth, you still need would need to know a good bit about Python and ZPT syntax to complete the task). Although the book's section on skins focused mainly on how they relate to style sheets, I found the section on customizing slots to be particularly useful.

In contrast to McKay's book, Meloni spends a separate chapter on deploying and using several popular plone products: a discussion board, a weblog and a photo album. Given that several competing products exist for each category, and that better products are likely to come out later, this chapter will probably be the first to go out of date.

Perhaps the book could have spent less time on the products themselves and more on managing products and testing/troubleshooting them.

Of the two books, McKay's book is the more indispensable, even though I still wound up consulting external sources fairly often for clarification. On the other hand, after reading first McKay's book and then Meloni's, I wish I had read Meloni's book first. Meloni's book provides a great introduction to basic plone concepts; McKay's book is great for the power user/developer. (Still another book, recently released, Cameron Cooper's Building Websites with Plone probably goes into more detail on the Python side; read a sample PDF chapter).

Perhaps I sound like a shill for the publishing industry when I say this, but it sometimes make sense to possess two or more books on a topic. The decision-making process for geeks buying books can sometimes differ radically from the general public. Geeks, for example, don't have qualms about paying full price for a new book if the content is up-to-late and relevant to the task at hand. The ordinary reader might make a purchasing decision on the basis of which book constitutes the highest information density (the $20 book with 200 pages vs. the $30 books with 500 pages). Geeks are also more inclined to view the purchasing decision in terms of time saved (i.e., how much time will reading this book save me in the long run?) From the standpoint of saving time, there's a lot to be said for reading an introductory book first and then moving to a book on more advanced topics.

Of course, Andy McKay's book is available already for free on the web (and kudos to Apress Publishing for allowing this).

** Actually, mysql/postgresql DB adaptors make it possible for Zope to fetch/send sql data; and Archetypes has a function, SQLStorage, to allow data from content objects to persist in a sql database (news to me). Other Web Resources:

• Zopezen, Andy McKay's development weblog
• Plone How-to's
• List of Plone Products and Zope Products, Sorted by Category
• Zope & Plone API's. (More here).
• Great Visual Guide to the Zope/Plone Interface
• Handouts from the Plone Conference for 2003 and 2004
• ZopeMag Weekly, an intermittent series of Zope and Plone tips and tricks.
• For general Python introductions, see the Python Tutorial, How To Think Like A Computer Scientist (Python) and Dive Into Python (also published by Apress and free online)

Robert Nagle (aka idiotprogrammer) writes fiction under various pseudonyms. He lives and works in Houston, Texas. In early 2005 he will be launching a plone-backed literary community ezine. You can purchase the Definitive Guide to Plone from bn.com; bn also carries Plone Content Management Essentials . Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Robert Nagle writes "Over the last year, Zope and Plone have gained mindshare as open source web application servers. In the last few months, two books have come out about how to use, extend and administer Plone. One is Andy McKay's Definitive Guide to Plone (available for free online), and the other is Julie Meloni's Plone Content Management Essentials." Read on for Nagle's review of both books. (See each) author (See each) pages (See each) publisher (See each) rating (See each) reviewer Robert Nagle ISBN (See each) summary McKay's book is indeed definitive; Meloni's book is a good introduction

The Zope/plone combination offers a variety of advantages to the open source developer: robust workflow capabilities, conformity to Web standards, cross-platform support and a sophisticated security model. On the other hand, it has a steep learning curve and deals with objects in an object database (instead of the usual RDBMS/LAMP data model).

First, here's 30 seconds of what Plone is all about (the Slashdot editors can provide the bunnies). Zope is a Python-backed web application server which includes a Zope Management Interface (or ZMI), a web-based interface to modify templates and interact with/administer the Zope Object Database (ZODB). Although Zope can be a standalone webserver, in fact people usually put it behind Apache for reasons of security, performance and caching. Years ago, Zope used a custom scripting language (DTML) to do its business logic, but later switched to an XML-based templating language called ZPT and let users use Python-based scripts to perform actions. Zope is the application server; CMF is the content management framework, and Plone is the standards-compliant front end that lets you manage skins, slots, styles, portlets, forms, actions, content types and installation of products. Then there's archetypes, which make it easier to create new content types and web forms. Oh, have I mentioned that we're dealing with objects here? In other words, we're not just throwing data and text into SQL); we're creating different types of content (documents, events, multimedia objects), storing them as objects (with actions, metadata, etc) and then summoning them (or parts of them) from the object database with ZPT using macros and indices.

From a design perspective, Plone is elegant although so multi-layered that it's often hard to figure out where to make changes. Also, while the Plone front end is snazzy, most users end up having to go to the ZMI to modify the template and edit actions (which, depending on how you look at it, can be an advantage or disadvantage). Finally, although the list of open source products for Plone and Zope is impressive, they don't necessarily play well together, and many products for Zope don't work in Plone and vice versa.

Definitive Guide to Plone author Andy McKay pages 584 publisher Apress rating 5 ISBN 1590593294

That is where Andy McKay's book and Julie Meloni's book come in. Of the two books, Andy's is more comprehensive and geared toward the experienced developer (and typical Slashdot reader); Julie's book does more hand-holding and provides more thorough explanations of introductory concepts.

As a lead plone developer, McKay has intimate knowledge of the good, the bad and the ugly for plone. Although his chapters fly by certain introductory tasks at record speed, he explains things well and offers lots of tips and hints throughout the book. (I can't tell you how many times I've put the book down and exclaimed, 'Aha, so that's how you ...'). The sequence of presentation is generally logical with one exception: in chapter 14 (page 459), the book mentions that you can use Zope Enterprise Objects to debug a live server without having to shut down Plone. That is valuable -- even vital-- information, and belonged in the earlier chapter on installing Zope. Although the chapters don't go into great depth, his code examples and commentary are sufficient to explain what is going on.

It's not the main focus of the book, but the sections on system administration (caching, tuning, scaling) are well done although some things are missing (like Virtual Host Monster). It's assumed that readers will be able to find this information elsewhere.

The best parts about McKay's book are how it relates Python programming to Plone. The deeper you get into Plone, the more important it is to write Python scripts and do basic Python debugging. Even basic sysadmin tasks like product management seems to require an understanding of object-oriented concepts. One initial difficulty comes with the idea of URL paths corresponding not to actual directories but objects being contained within other objects. (So that login_form in http://foobar/login_form doesn't necessarily reside within the foobar directory, but is in any directory or object acquired by the foobar object). This type of URL (called a traversal) is explained well enough in the book, but often makes it difficult to figure out where to find things within the ZMI and the file system. Who would have ever thought that the place to edit the login_form object for http://foobar/login_form is /foobar/portal_skins/plone_forms/login_form within the ZMI (which is actually /zopeinstance/products/CMFPlone/skins/plone_forms/ login_form.pt on the file system)? That's why McKay's skin example (in Chapter 7) accomplishes so many things; it provides a "guided tour" through the layers (i.e., scripts, templates, etc) contained within portal_skins; it also runs through the process of creating custom templates and forms based on existing ones. This, by the way, is one of the niftiest features of Zope/Plone; you push a Customize button in the ZMI, and voila! you've cloned an object for customizing. This is dense stuff, but after reading this chapter, I have a better sense of the beast I'm dealing with.

I particularly liked the book's chapters on archetypes and manipulating content types. If Zope/Plone is about manipulating objects, then it helps to have a variety of objects to manipulate. Archetypes lets you create new content types and new views for content types. By providing Python libraries for fields and widgets, archetypes makes it relatively easy to create web forms for data input. McKay's book covers this topic thoroughly and clearly. I also appreciated the chapter on searches and indexing (and the helpful table of indices and index types); this filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. The sections on security and workflow contained good examples, and the book also contained a section on internationalization. The programming chapters are the best parts about the book.

On the negative side, I wish there were more charts and tables in the book (perhaps as appendices). A lot of this is already found within Zope help or the Plone site, but it would have been handy to have these things as reference. Although McKay's book contains a good (though brief) introduction to Zope Page Templates, the explanation of the syntax is scattered throughout the ZPT chapter; it would have been much better to summarize all the tal tags in a single table.

Also, at many points during the ZPT chapter and other chapters, McKay refers to Plone and archetype API classes that are described nowhere else in the book. It took me a while to figure out where these things were coming from (and I would refer you to here for API descriptions). The book would have benefited from a better description of APIs, even a high level view of it (You can find some quick references here).

Because of its focus on development, McKay's book spends almost no time on third-party products or "sanctioned" products available in the plone collective. This is somewhat understandable (given the mercurial nature of product development), but the casual reader might finish the book without realizing that additional additional products even exist. (Here's a fairly comprehensive list of Plone and Zope products).

Also, I would have liked better explanation about change management. Plone has its own product installer, but I always have difficulties upgrading products. How do you test products before actually deploying them? How do you manage upgrades (and how do you upgrade Zope itself?) For such an extensible project as Plone, managing the installation, testing and upgrade of third-party products can be a disaster waiting to happen.

Plone Content Management Essentials author Julie C. Meloni pages 258 publisher SAMS rating 3 ISBN 0672326876

Julie Meloni's book takes a different approach to the subject, one geared less to Python development and more to deploying third-party products and customizing site appearances. I'm tempted to say that the typical Slashdot reader would find this book "shallow," but really that is not fair. Although Meloni's book contains a short appendix on Python, it focuses more on how Plone works out of the box and how to take advantage of core functionality. In fact, Meloni's slender book contains many useful sections probably deemed too elementary for McKay's book: how structured text works, for example.

Rather than trying to cover everything Plone-related, Meloni identifies a small number of typical tasks and explains them in detail. For example, the book documents the Plone style sheets and how to modify them in the ZMI. Too basic, you say? Well, yes, but it's still useful reference material. Rather than trying to teach you how to write your own Plone product or content type from scratch, she walks us through using that nifty Customize button to clone existing templates for customization (although to tell the truth, you still need would need to know a good bit about Python and ZPT syntax to complete the task). Although the book's section on skins focused mainly on how they relate to style sheets, I found the section on customizing slots to be particularly useful.

In contrast to McKay's book, Meloni spends a separate chapter on deploying and using several popular plone products: a discussion board, a weblog and a photo album. Given that several competing products exist for each category, and that better products are likely to come out later, this chapter will probably be the first to go out of date.

Perhaps the book could have spent less time on the products themselves and more on managing products and testing/troubleshooting them.

Of the two books, McKay's book is the more indispensable, even though I still wound up consulting external sources fairly often for clarification. On the other hand, after reading first McKay's book and then Meloni's, I wish I had read Meloni's book first. Meloni's book provides a great introduction to basic plone concepts; McKay's book is great for the power user/developer. (Still another book, recently released, Cameron Cooper's Building Websites with Plone probably goes into more detail on the Python side; read a sample PDF chapter).

Perhaps I sound like a shill for the publishing industry when I say this, but it sometimes make sense to possess two or more books on a topic. The decision-making process for geeks buying books can sometimes differ radically from the general public. Geeks, for example, don't have qualms about paying full price for a new book if the content is up-to-late and relevant to the task at hand. The ordinary reader might make a purchasing decision on the basis of which book constitutes the highest information density (the $20 book with 200 pages vs. the $30 books with 500 pages). Geeks are also more inclined to view the purchasing decision in terms of time saved (i.e., how much time will reading this book save me in the long run?) From the standpoint of saving time, there's a lot to be said for reading an introductory book first and then moving to a book on more advanced topics.

Of course, Andy McKay's book is available already for free on the web (and kudos to Apress Publishing for allowing this).

** Actually, mysql/postgresql DB adaptors make it possible for Zope to fetch/send sql data; and Archetypes has a function, SQLStorage, to allow data from content objects to persist in a sql database (news to me). Other Web Resources:

• Zopezen, Andy McKay's development weblog
• Plone How-to's
• List of Plone Products and Zope Products, Sorted by Category
• Zope & Plone API's. (More here).
• Great Visual Guide to the Zope/Plone Interface
• Handouts from the Plone Conference for 2003 and 2004
• ZopeMag Weekly, an intermittent series of Zope and Plone tips and tricks.
• For general Python introductions, see the Python Tutorial, How To Think Like A Computer Scientist (Python) and Dive Into Python (also published by Apress and free online)

Robert Nagle (aka idiotprogrammer) writes fiction under various pseudonyms. He lives and works in Houston, Texas. In early 2005 he will be launching a plone-backed literary community ezine. You can purchase the Definitive Guide to Plone from bn.com; bn also carries Plone Content Management Essentials . Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.