Wow, I must be the first person to have bought this book! Anyway, has anyone found the spreadsheet referenced at the end of the first section on page 71? [to aid in project management] The code download just has templates from later in the book. I don't see anything else...

I'm in the same boat. Don't see the spreadsheet the author is talking about on P. 71.

30 days from your post, no replies.

Actually Jen explained the Spread Sheet very well on Lynda.com...

I have bought the book because of the 4 excellent tutorials she has put up at Lynda.com, but I was quite dissapointed by the book, I was expecting more!

Bummer, although it may be easy enough . . . it's best if I don't have to think anymore than I need to
Guess I'll have to format my own spreadsheet . . .
~Donna

My apologies for not including the spreadsheet in the files to download.

I have posted it on my website:
http://www.joomla4web.com/images/sto...preadsheet.xls

I'll also send it to Wrox for posting.

Thank you!
Jen

Jean, thank you for your feedback. I'm glad you liked the Lynda.com movies! What could I have done to improve the book?

thanks,
Jen

I guess I was expecting more about building Templates...

I love Rockettheme, Yootheme, Joomlashack, etc..

But the problem is that you end up with a website that look similar to undreds of people.

I wanted to learn how to make more advance templates, implementing a good Drop Down CSS menu (for SEO purpose).

Just bought DW JTK 3.1 for Dreamweaver, and to be honnest I think it is pricey. The thing I like about it is that you can update your XML file in one click, but I still don't think it worth the price...

Nice to hear, thanks! I haven't talked more about templates mostly because I cover a lot of material as it is. My in-class students at Marlboro are generally pretty overwhelmed by what I cover (same as the lynda.com videos and the book), so given the "glazed eye" feedback, I haven't covered more. Maybe next time!

As for dropdowns, that's really a question of writing good CSS. What you want to do is set up the menu module that will display the dropdowns to be set to "display all levels all the time" (or a setting similar to that). Then use the display property to show what should be showing or not showing.

This looks like a good resource:
http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/final_drop.html

Of course, you'll need to update the CSS they use to reflect Joomla's classes and ID's, but with a few tweaks like that it should work fine.

Good luck!
Jen

This is not a reply to any post. Just a comment or two.

I think the book is great. It does cover exactly what it says it does. From start to finish. You can definitely pick up more advanced techniques from the web and other more specific books but if you want to get going, this is by far, written better than all the other intro books. (I know, I bought them). I started other books and dreaded having to reread every page. I look forward to each page of this book very much. Very well done.

I would like another more advanced book by this author (if there isn't one already) because I don't need as much "how to build a web site with your client" type stuff. I guess that is part of the "start" portion of the program so I can't complain too much. But then, if I didn't complain, I wouldn't be an American, now, would I? ;-)

Nice job, thanks for paying attention to the posts and putting up the missing spreadsheet. Nice to have an author that cares.

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed the book.

Be sure to watch for some upcoming videos at Lynda.com for more Joomla fun.

I'm working on my 2nd book now, but this will be more basic than my first book:
http://www.amazon.com/Joomla-24-Hour...dp/0470928336/

If you have ideas for another book or a video, I would love to hear them! Do tell!

Jen