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Message from Dean - May 8th 2007
I am currently testing out a new version of the APF Bridge Component - If you notice any errors within this demo store please drop me a line.
Rating:  -
At first sight this book looks great. It is concise and gives a good introduction from the start to build Joomla extensions. It does not waste pages explaining how to program in SQL and PHP. You are supposed to have mastered that. The book has a major weak point. For the main part it just shows lots of code, but does not explain anything about the API classes and how they relate. After reading the book and trying to create your own extension, it feels like you have not understood anything really.
A second drawback is that the author seems not to bother about testing the sample code. It contains several very obvious bugs, eg using a functou JOutputFilter instead of JFilterOutput. This is annoying.
Summarized, the book may give you a small start but is insufficient for seriuous development. The sad thing is that the official Joomla documentation is in a very alpha stage of development.
Rating:  -
I think this book is an excellent start to learning about J!1.5 extensions development. It has real examples that are easy to follow and adapt to suit a variety of purposes.
Please note that the book is much thinner than you would think - about 170 pages cover to cover - so initally I was somewhat disappointed, but the book covers the topics you need to get started and I can still heartily recommend it!
Rating: -
As the publish date shows, this book was brought to market quite a while before J!1.5 was code complete. I don't know if it's that or if the developer was too used to 1.0 development (there is a dramatic difference) but either way, this book co-mingled 1.0 and 1.5 development practices too much, and just basically glanced over the entire MVC architecture that was built into the 1.5 release of J! I'm a little disappointed as I was expecting more, being a fan of Leblanc, his knowledge and helpfulness in Joomla related things.
For your money, you are much better off purchasing 'Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development' by James Kennard. It has helped me immensly in understanding the new J! framework and APIs.
Rating: -
Since you can probably count the books written for Joomla on both hands, this book is the best one because its the ONLY ONE dealing on Beginners extension development, (ergo the high price and few pages). That being said, it is a good book to have in your library if you are planning on becomming a joomla developer. For those of us who are reverse engineering hackers (learn from seeing examples), this book is a must.
Rating: -
I certainly agree with those who said this book is way too sparse, weighing in at 176 non-packed pages. For the same audience this book is intended for I would instead recommend "Professional Joomla" by Dan Rahmel. It covers the same material plus a great deal more and it costs less money. It even gives more explanation and examples of building components, modules, and plugins, things "Learning Joomla" is supposed to focus on.
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