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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
You can build any kind of web site using Joomla! The look and feel of Joomla! web sites can largely be customized using the many templates, components, modules and plug-ins available. With all these features, ease of administration, and options for customization, sometimes you may think of integrating other technologies such as Flash with it. This is because Flash provides great animation features that are otherwise not available in Joomla!
This book shows how to integrate Flash into Joomla! You will learn how to add the various functionalities provided by Flash and make your site stunning, visually rich, and interactive. The book covers topics like flash headers, menus, displaying and maintaining flash movies, slide shows, animation, interactivity, and more. Installation and use of Joomla! modules like Flash, Joomla Random Flash, Active, and Handy SWF Flash module are covered too.
The book introduces Joomla! and Flash and briefly shows the benefits of using Flash in Joomla!. It shows you how to add Flash objects in Joomla! articles and modules, build Flash-based menus, create Flash-based photo galleries, interactive maps, and charts. It also shows you how to display content in custom fonts, create a streaming media site, customize the Joomla! template to display Flash logos, headers and banners, and use Joomla! content in Flash objects. Finally the book covers troubleshooting Joomla! and its extensions. At the end of the book an appendix lists resources on Joomla!, Flash, and related extensions, to help you find more information.
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Seitenzahl: 249
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009
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Table of Contents
Joomla! with Flash
Suhreed Sarkar
Joomla! with Flash
Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: November 2009
Production Reference: 1231009
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847198-24-2
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar <[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Suhreed Sarkar
Reviewers
Jose Argudo
Sonia Muñoz
Acquisition Editor
Usha Iyer
Development Editor
Swapna Verlekar
Technical Editor
Kartik Thakkar
Copy Editor
Leonard D'Silva
Editorial Team Leader
Akshara Aware
Project Coordinator
Srimoyee Ghoshal
Indexers
Monica Ajmera
Hemangini Bari
Proofreaders
Kevin McGowan
Chris Smith
Production Coordinator
Adline Swetha Jesuthas
Cover Work
Adline Swetha Jesuthas
About the Author
Suhreed Sarkar — an IT consultant, a trainer, and a technical writer—after completing Marine engineering, he served on board a ship for two years and then started his journey into the world of IT with an MCSE in Windows NT 4.0 track. Later, he studied business administration and earned an MBA from the University of Dhaka. He has a bunch of BrainBench certifications on various topics including PHP4, Project Management, RDBMS Concepts, E-Commerce, Web Server Administration, Internet Security, Training Development, Training Delivery and Evaluation, and Technical Writing.
As a trainer, he has taught courses on system administration, web development, e-commerce, and MIS. He has consulted for several national and international organizations including the United Nations and has helped clients in building and adopting their web portals, large scale databases, and management information systems. At present, he is working on building a framework for the education sector MIS and is promoting the use of ICTs in education.
Suhreed is a renowned technical author in Bengali having dozens of books published on subjects covering web development, LAMP, networking, and system administration. He authored the Zen Cart: E-commerce Application Development, and Joomla! E-commerce with VirtueMart books. Both of them are published by Packt Publishing.
While not busy with hacking some apps, blogging on his blog (www.suhreedsarkar.com), reading the philosophy of Bertrand Russell or management thoughts of Peter F. Drucker, he likes to spend some special moments with his family. Suhreed lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Acknowledgement
Firstly, I am grateful to the Joomla! community and the developers and maintainers of the extensions discussed in this book, as without them, the book could not have been written.
I would like to thank the Packt team for their excellent professional support, and a special thanks to Usha Iyer, Swapna Verleker, Srimoyee Ghoshal, and Kartik Thakkar who have helped me throughout the whole process. I express my heartiest gratitude to the reviewers for providing their insightful comments on the first draft of this book. I thank my family and friends for being patient while I was working on this book.
About the Reviewers
Jose Argudo is a web developer from Valencia, Spain. After finishing his studies, he started working for a web designing company. After six years of working for that company and others, he decided to start working as a freelancer.
Now, after some years have passed, he thinks that it's the best decision he has ever made, a decision that lets him work with the tools he likes, such as Joomla!, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, JQuery, and other well-known open source technologies.
For the last few months, he has also been reviewing some of the books for Packt Publishing, such as Magento 1.3 Theme Design, Magento: Beginner's Guide, Magento Development with PHP, Joomla! SEO, and Symfony 1.3 Web Application Development.
If that weren't enough, he is also writing a book on CodeIgniter for Packt Publishing — a book he is putting all his efforts on.
To Silvia and Luis.
Sonia Muñoz is a web developer from Spain. She has completed the Superior Computer Systems Management course and is now willing to start with another of Superior Development's computer application courses. She has worked with tools like PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, jQuery, JavaScript, CodeIgniter, Joomla, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver.
After finishing her studies, she would like to set up her own web development business.
I dedicate this book to my father-in-law, Abul Hossain
Preface
Joomla! is an award winning Content Management System with lots of features. It is useful for almost all types of websites. It has an object-oriented, modular architecture with lots of extensibility features. You can build almost any kind of a website using Joomla!. It has a strong security, authentication, and authorization framework, a content management framework, and a templating system.
There are thousands of Joomla! components, modules, and plugins to extend the functionality of Joomla!. A component for Joomla! can be compared to an application for Joomla!. Similarly, modules are extensions to display the data on Joomla!-based websites. Plugins are also extensions for performing special tasks, such as pre- and post-filtering of content for Joomla!-based websites. With all these features of Joomla! that provide ease of administration and options for customization, sometimes you may think of integrating other technologies, such as Flash, into it. This is because Flash provides great features for animation, which is otherwise not possible using only Joomla!, HTML, or JavaScript.
Flash is unique in creating animated objects, and this adds an extra flavor to your Joomla!-based website. Besides stunning graphics, design, and layout, Flash can definitely add interactivity and value to the website. Some of the features, such as animations, small videos, and interactive games, are only possible through Flash. Considering these unique features of Flash, Joomla! developers have long been trying to use Flash content in Joomla! websites. This book shows you how to use Flash objects with Joomla! content with minimal efforts and maximum output.
What this book covers
Chapter 1: Get Started with Flash in Joomla! begins with a discussion on why one should opt for using Flash in Joomla! and what are the benefits of doing this. Next, it introduces us to the different types of Flash objects and various tools that will be useful for developing Flash and Joomla!-based sites.
Chapter 2: Enhance Your Joomla! Content with Flash teaches us how to use Flash-based image slideshows in our Joomla! website and display them at different module positions. As the chapter progresses, we learn to embed Flash animations into articles and finally learn to embed Flash movies at different module positions and within articles.
Chapter 3: Creating Attractive Menus with Flash begins with an introduction to the built-in menu system of Joomla!. It then illustrates the use of two extensions, Flash Floating Menu and Super Web Flash module for Joomla! 1.5, for embedding Flash-based menus into our Joomla! website and also lists a few other extensions.
In Chapter 4: Creating Flash Photo Galleries, we are introduced to the concept of building Flash photo galleries for our Joomla!-based website. This chapter begins with an illustration of the Expose Flash Gallery component and proceeds to the use of the Expose Scroller module and the Expose plugin. Next, we learn to embed a 3D Flash-based photo galley in our website with the help of Ozio Gallery. We also learn how to embed images from Flickr, as well as from our web server, and which of the skins available with Ozio Gallery can be used for doing so. Finally, we learn to use three simpler extensions for embedding Flash photo galleries — New Gallery, Simple Image Flash Gallery, and Dynamic Flash Gallery.
Chapter 5: Flashier than Ever: Maps, Charts, Custom Fonts, Multimedia, and More extends the use of Flash on our Joomla!-based website. Firstly, we learn to build interactive Flash-based maps and charts using the YOS amMap and amChart components respectively. Then the chapter illustrates the use of sIFR with Joomla! for displaying the contents of a Joomla! site in fonts that are not installed on users' computers. The use of the Joomla! Flash Uploader component is also illustrated. Further, the chapter takes us through how to create streaming video sites with the use of the JVideo! components and discusses various extensions for adding an MP3 player on your Joomla! website.
Chapter 6: Flash Decorations: Flashy Templates, Headers, Banners, and Tickers deals with using Flash templates for decorating our website with Flash logos, headers, banners, and tickers. In this chapter, we are introduced to the two ways of showing Flash objects in a Joomla! site, namely, by embedding the Flash object in a Joomla! template showing it permanently on a Joomla! website and by using a suitable module. Furthermore, the use of Joomla! modules like FlexHeader3 and Web Flash Joomla! for displaying Flash objects is also discussed in this chapter.
Chapter 7: Playing with Code focuses mainly on the issue of how we embed Joomla! content into a Flash site, which is exactly the opposite of what has been done in the previous chapters, using the J-AMFPHP component. In this chapter, we also take a look at some of the accessibility issues and ways to address these issues.
Chapter 8: Troubleshoot Your Applications deals with the most common problems with Joomla!, Flash, and the Joomla! extensions that have been discussed in this book. Besides pointing to the probable solution for such problems, the chapter also provides references to relevant websites and forums that can prove to be helpful in solving problems.
Appendix: Resources for Joomla! and Flash gives you a list of some more resources that can be useful for using Flash with Joomla!. Firstly, it shows some resources for Joomla!, and then it lists some Flash extension-specific resources.
What you need for this book
First of all, you will need the Apache-MySQL-PHP environment for running Joomla!. For this book, we have used Joomla! 1.5.14. All the descriptions and screenshots are based on this version of Joomla!. If you do not have access to any web-hosting service, then you still can use Joomla! and learn about it on your own computer. In that case, you need to set up the development environment by installing WAMP on your Windows machine. Further information on setting up the development environment on your Windows computer is provided in Chapter 1. To get the exact results, this book should be followed from the beginning to the end, and you should perform the tasks as described.
It is assumed that readers of this book have knowledge on Joomla! and a basic knowledge of Flash. Besides knowledge on the Apache-MySQL-PHP environment, Joomla!, and Flash, familiarity with HTML, CSS, and PHP will be an added advantage.
Who this book is for
If you are a Joomla! web developer and want to integrate Flash into your websites, then this book is for you!
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: " As you can see, the <object> </object> tag can contain child elements."
A block of code is set as follows:
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: " Once downloaded and installed, you will find the module in the Extensions | Module Manager screen."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books — maybe a mistake in the text or the code — we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration, and help us to improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the let us know link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata added to any list of existing errata. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.
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Questions
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Chapter 1. Get Started with Flash in Joomla!
We assume that you know what Joomla! and Flash are. You have taken this title because you want to build stunning websites with Joomla! and Flash. The only thing you may need to know is how to use Flash with the powerful Joomla! Content Management System (CMS) and build a Joomla!-based website with stunning Flash animations. With this assumption, we proceed to building websites with Joomla! and Flash, without delving into what Joomla! and Flash are.
Before starting with the techniques of building stunning websites with Joomla! and Flash, some of you may be interested in knowing the reasons for using Flash in Joomla!, and also may be interested in knowing how to create Flash objects. In this chapter, we will discuss about:
On the completion of this chapter, you will be able to select the appropriate tools required for working with Flash objects.
Why use Flash in Joomla!?
There is no doubt that Joomla! is a very powerful CMS. It has an object-oriented, modular architecture with lots of extensibility features. Joomla! is feature-rich and useful for almost all types of websites. You can build almost any kind of website using Joomla!. It has a strong security, authentication and authorization framework, content management framework, and templating system. The look and feel of a Joomla! website can largely be customized through its templates. There are thousands of templates available for Joomla!, many of which are very visually pleasing.
In addition to templates, there are also thousands of Joomla! components, modules, and plugins. Components, modules, and plugins are ways to extend Joomla!'s functionality. A component for Joomla! can be compared to an application for Joomla!. For example, if you want to add a photo gallery, there are several components that provide this functionality. You may choose any of the Joomla! components and extend the functionality of your Joomla! website. If you want to build an e-commerce site, then you can add an e-commerce component, such as the VirtueMart, and add that functionality to your Joomla!-based website. Similarly, modules are extensions to display the data on Joomla!-based websites. Plugins are also extensions for performing specials tasks, such as pre- and post-filtering of contents, for Joomla!-based websites.
With all these features of Joomla!, ease of administration and options for customization, sometimes you may think of integrating other technologies such as Flash into it. This is because Flash provides great features for animation, which are otherwise not possible using only Joomla!, HTML, or JavaScript. Flash is unique in creating animated objects, and this adds an extra flavor to your Joomla!-based website. For example, suppose you have to create an attractive site for kids. The site aims to provide interactive games, videos, and animations for the kids. It is an edutainment site and should be attractive enough to hold its audience. In addition to stunning graphics, design, and layout, Flash can definitely add value to the website. Some of the features such as animations, small videos, and interactive games, can only be possible through Flash.
Using Flash with Joomla! can benefit you in the following ways:
Later in this book, we will learn to add these functionalities and make our site look stunning, visually rich, and interactive.
Creating Flash objects
Adobe Flash was previously known as Macromedia Flash. Flash objects are created using Adobe Flash, a software program created by Macromedia and acquired by Adobe, Inc. The latest version of this software is Adobe Flash CS4.
Note
Nowadays, many applications can generate Flash objects. For example, there are converters that can generate a Flash animation from Microsoft PowerPoint. OpenOffice.org Impress can natively save a presentation as a Flash presentation. Therefore Flash objects are not only generated by Adobe Flash. However, for the sake of this book, we will assume that the animation and Flash objects we are talking about have been created using Adobe Flash.
By using Adobe Flash, we can create multiple types of Flash objects including animations and videos. The application generates the following types of Flash files:
Extension
Description
.fla
Files with this extension are Flash files that can be edited by the Adobe Flash application. This is not a compiled file and is not intended for embedding in to web pages.
.swf
These files are complete and compiled Flash files ready for embedding into web pages. SWF means ShockWave Flash, and this is the most, format for distributing animated vector graphics. SWF files can be generated using several products, such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, and SWiSH Max 2. There are several other small tools available for creating such animations.
.as
This is a script file generated by ActionScript. Although FLA files can contain scripts directly, for structural purposes separate script files are kept with the extension .as.
.flv
You may be using .flv files already on YouTube and other streaming video sites. FLV is a Flash Video file, ready for streaming with good compression. In fact, Flash video files are container files, which contain the videos and act as wrapper. The file itself is not a video format.
Flash video files play on most operating systems using Adobe Flash Player and other third party players including VLC Media player, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, and Media Player Classic. The file format itself is open, but the codecs for this format are proprietary, which makes this format dependent on Adobe Systems.
Note
Adobe Flash Player is available for free at http://www.adobe.com/products/Flashplayer/. It is required for playing any Flash object embedded in any website.
Some tools for working with Flash
Besides Adobe Flash, there are many other tools currently available for working with Flash objects. Some of these can create Flash objects just as Adobe Flash does. Some are used to create variants of a Flash object, such as a Flash wallpaper, a Flash screensaver, a Flash photo gallery, and so on. In this section, we are going to highlight some of the popular Flash tools that you may need to use while building a Joomla!-based web site with Flash.
SWiSH Max
SWiSH Max is the alternative to Adobe Flash for creating Flash animations, banners, and designs. It has a simpler interface and is often used by users who want a low cost solution for Flash. Many websites are now using SWiSH animations and hundreds of SWiSH templates are available online. For more information and to download a trial version of this stunning Flash designer, visit www.swishzone.com.
The following screenshot shows the designer interface of SWiSH Max:
Ajax Animator
Ajax Animator is an online interactive application for building Flash animation. It aims at creating a fully-functional alternative for creating Flash animations. It is available at http://antimatter15.110mb.com/ajaxanimator/build/. If you do not have any tool for creating Flash animations, you can use this simple online tool for creating a quick animation with images and text.
The following screenshot shows the interface for the animation builder that can be accessed only by using a web browser:
Once created, you can preview the animation and download it to your computer.
Wink
Wink is a freely available software for creating tutorials and demonstrations. The software records screen activities and voices and saves the resulting video as a Flash animation. You can directly upload the Flash animation to a web server and embed it within any web page. A Flash animation created through Wink thus provides an animated learning material with video, captions, and voice. This is best suited for creating software tutorials and presentations, especially when you want to create some teaching/learning materials to demonstrate how to use a software. You can download this software from the website http://www.debugmode.com/wink/.
The next screenshot shows the Wink interface:
Wink has some other great features too, such as saving the resulting tutorial as an Adobe Flash (SWF) file, a standalone EXE, a PDF, a postscript, and an HTML or any other web image format. It can capture screen activities or use images (BMP, JPG, PNG, TIF, GIF formats) to create a tutorial. The Flash file becomes a highly compressed animation and gives better performance compared to some of the other commercial competing applications. Wink is available for both Windows and Linux operating systems.
When creating a presentation or a tutorial using Wink, you can add callouts, buttons, navigational buttons, and texts through which the users can interact with the tutorial or the presentation.
Flash charting tools
Charting on web pages is a much sought after feature for web developers. At some point, most web developers want to visualize their data in different types of charts. Recently, the Google Visualization API has opened up the door to the use charting and graphing on web pages. However, Flash charting tools still remain popular for the stunning graphs and charts. There are many Flash charting tools that provide ways to create different types of charts. Some of the popular Flash charting tools are described in following sections.
Animated Charts
This proprietary software allows you to create different types of charts from the data you provide. The charts created by this software may have several animations. Dynamic charts can be built using its Pro version. Animated Charts is available from its website http://www.animatedchart.com/.
amCharts
amCharts provides the flexibility to generate different types of charts using both static and dynamic data. By default, there are four sets of predefined charts: Pie and Donut, Line and Area, Column and Bar, and Scatter and Bubble. It can dynamically generate 2D as well as 3D Flash charts. amCharts is available for use with Joomla!, and we will be looking at this software in Chapter 5 , Flashier than Ever: Maps, Charts, Custom Fonts, Multimedia, and More.
Open Flash Chart
Open Flash Chart is an open source free library of functions that can be used to generate different types of Flash charts. It can be used with different web-scripting languages including PHP, Java, .Net, Perl, Python, and Ruby on Rails. It is feature-rich and easy to use with web-scripting languages. Open Flash Chart is available at http://www.openflashchart.com/. The following screenshot shows a 3D bar chart created using Open Flash Chart:
FusionCharts
FusionCharts is a free Flash-charting component that can generate charts from both dynamic as well as static data and can be used with many types of web applications. It is cross-browser and cross-platform and can be used with PHP, ASP, ASP.Net, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails, and JSP. You can even use it with simple HTML pages or in PowerPoint presentations. This is a commercial component, but a free version is also available.
