Product Description

This book covers the "how-tos" of creating templates for Joomla! 1.5. There is also advice about what works and what to consider when working with your Joomla! 1.5 template. Because this title is about Joomla! 1.5 templates and not about CSS or semantic XHTML, an understanding of established and current XHTML and CSS techniques for achieving compliant, semantic, and accessible designs is assumed. However, quality references and links are always given so the reader can learn more about any specific CSS or XHTML technique discussed if they are unfamiliar with it. This book is aimed at web designers who want to create their own unique templates for Joomla! 1.5. Readers should have a basic knowledge of Joomla! 1.5 (Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 by Hagen Graf from Packt Publishing will help you with this) and also basic knowledge of table-less CSS and XHTML techniques, as well as using Dreamweaver or other text/code editors for coding purposes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43710 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 284 pages

About the Author
Tessa Blakeley Silver's background is in print design and traditional illustration. She evolved over the years into web and multi-media development, where she focuses on usability and interface design. Prior to starting her consulting and development company hyper3media (pronounced hyper-cube media) http://hyper3media.com, Tessa was the VP of Interactive Technologies at eHigherEducation, an online learning and technology company developing compelling multimedia simulations, interactions, and games that met online educational requirements like 508, AICC, and SCORM. She has also worked as a consultant and freelancer for J. Walter Thompson and The Diamond Trading Company (formerly known as DeBeers) and was a Design Specialist and Senior Associate for PricewaterhouseCoopers' East Region Marketing department. Tessa authors several design and web technology blogs. Joomla! Template Design is her first book.

Customer Reviews

Joomla Templates made easy
If you want to know how to build joomla templates from scratch
then this is the book for you.

Explained in a way that requires only fundemental programming skills.
Highly Recommended

Thorough, pragmatic and easy to follow
The author clearly has a great deal of experience developing Joomla templates and has successfully encapsulated her knowledge in this 2nd edition.

It's not aimed at total beginners - you will need to have learned Joomla administration, HTML, PHP and CSS skills beforehand - but does not assume you've written a template before. I found it helpful to run through the tools of the trade (Firefox plugins, local webserver etc.) as well as the development process refined from many iterations (e.g. build a wireframe demo with CSS before showing to a client). After packaging up the developed template so it can be installed in production sites, the book then discusses more advanced topics such as suckerfish dropdown menus, AJAX and Flash.

The production of the book (typesetting, professional review, layout) are all up to Packt's usual high standards. The reference section is an extremely useful long term resource.

It could be argued that there is a missing chapter around template/site optimisation, but that's probably the topic for a separate book. There isn't very much about Joomla 1.0 templates (legacy format is in the reference section) and I would look elsewhere (online) for detailed description of migrating/adapting those templates to J1.5 format.

In summary, I would say this should provide all the knowledge required to build your own template confidently, assuming you met the pre-requisites described above. For the price, it's good value compared with similar technical publications of this nature.

Good for the absolute beginner...
... but too basic in its coverage. It will help you to create a template from a html/css based design, but useful/needed items such as breadcrumbs or menus are omitted. You can read this book quickly and use it as a base for your searches on the internet, but otherwise not recommended, unless, as stated, you are an absolute beginner at web design/development