I'm a big fan of reading, and also for getting books for training purposes. Look at my Kindle, and you'll find more computer books than all others combined. So when I was asked if I wanted to review the latest Joomla offering from PacktPub, I jumped at the chance. I have a vested interest in multimedia and Joomla, so it worked out well. These are my honest opinions, and the only thing I am getting is a free book. Feel free to ask questions or if you've read it leave your thoughts.

Who would benefit from the book

The book really targets site administrators, not developers who should be fairly familiar with the contents. While the book doesn't really target me, I was able to pick out some stuff. The book has a heavy focus on how to implement various features into your website, ranging from typography to video to Twitter.

If you are managing a website or consider yourself a hobby developer, this book probably has a lot of useful information. Check out the sample chapter, as they are all pretty similarly formatted for the different multimedia formats.

The best features

The book does a good job of giving some basic foundational information about the multimedia form before jumping into how to include it. If it is your first exposure to a multimedia form, chances are the information will be necessary. It does not go too far in depth, but does get a lot of the essentials.

The book isn't just a list of extensions available with some details on how to use them, it offers that of course, but also shows ways to implement most of the multimedia without extensions. This is where I think the book really stands out, as it shows the core of the multimedia in action rather than relying on an extension to handle it for you. This knowledge can really help someone decide how to best integrate the multimedia.

The weaknesses

I think the book has a lot to offer, but seems to almost try too hard to be a beginners book when I personally feel it would be enhanced by pushing a little harder. What I'd like to see would be more tips and suggestions on how to best implement things. For example, the Typography chapter does give an overview of what fonts are considered web safe, but could offer up more details on using typography appropriately (such as avoiding too many fonts, font stacks, etc).

Basically I think each chapter would have benefited greatly from a little section at the end with "Dos and Don'ts". That extra information might also give the book a wider appeal, as there are many new developers who could also take that information to heart.

Final thoughts

I enjoyed reviewing the book, and am happy to say that I think the book hits close to its target. It can be a quick read, because unless you actually need to implement a specific multimedia format, you probably won't go through and test all of the examples provided. However, once you need a podcast, a video, or additional typography options, its a handy reference of the current extensions or methods out there.