WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook: Book Review

Posted by mrkuiper on May 18, 2010 11:22 PM EDT
Marcofolio.net; By Marco Kuiper
Mail this story
Print this story

It's always fun to see that the books from Packt start with a tagline on the cover of the book. I was wondering if the contents of this book could live up to the tagline: Over 50 simple and incredibly effective recipes to take control of dynamic Flash content in Wordpress.

The first chapter talks about how to use Flash in combination with Wordpress. This is a key feature of the book, since this is needed to dynamically control the contents of your Flash files. The book uses SWFObject to pass on parameters to the Flash files, which is great. The rest of the chapter aims at some basic Flash techniques, which I personally skipped most of since that's nothing too new for me.

The second chapter is the other side of the coin: How to configure Wordpress correctly to make it work with Flash. A strange thing is going on in this chapter. For some reason, they discuss several Wordpress pluging that have nothing to do with Flash, like the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, Breadcrumb NavXT plugin and the SEO Title Tags plugin. I understand SEO is a great factor when building websites, but that's something that belongs in a totally different book.

After that, the next couple of chapters became more interesting, since those were the chapters that actually work with the Wordpress and Flash. It covers some basic techniques on how you could create your own Flash things (like an image gallery), but it also takes a look at some pretty nifty plugins (hence the tagline of the book). Although there are loads of little goldmines discussed, some plugins just don't look really good and could have been skipped from the book. On the other hand, even the not-so-good looking ones have great features that you might want to use on your site, so it's a good thing they included it anyway.

One thing that I noticed in this book, is the use of very big code examples that sometimes span over two pages. Although I understand that code examples should be included, I'm not a huge fan of those huge code examples. It's better to split it in several parts so the reader will understand it better. Luckily, comments have been added to make some things clear.

Another thing is that the design of the book is slightly different than the other ones from Packt. Just a small modern change to show the chapters and title, very nice.

I think the book covers another strange thing that should belong in another book. The chapter (Flash Themes) starts with an introduction about CSS. It's a very short part, so a good introduction for those with no CSS experience, but in my opinion another thing that should be covered in another book.

I loved the Flash Animations chapter! More aimed at the programmers and it allows you to create some very neat transitions. Although it isn't such a big chapter, it covers all the most interesting things you need to know for (basic) Flash animations, which is good enough.

The appendices of the book are a great addition. I especially like the Shortcut Keys appendix, that you can use as a shortcut cheat sheet.

Overall, a pretty good book that aims at some basic things, but going more advanced later on. Has loads of focus in several plugins and in the end, it's the user that makes the choice which one to use. At least you know what other things there are. If you're interested in using Flash on your site (for example for videoblogging), this is a great book.

Full Story

  Nav
» Read more about: Story Type: Reviews

« Return to the newswire homepage

This topic does not have any threads posted yet!

You cannot post until you login.