Joomla! 1.5 Template Design Table Of Contents

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Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: Getting Started as a Joomla! Template Designer
Chapter 2: Template Design and Approach
Chapter 3: Coding It Up
Chapter 4: Debugging and Validation
Chapter 5: Your Template in Action
Chapter 6: Joomla! 1.5 Template Reference
Chapter 7: Dynamic Layouts, Menus, and Interactive Elements
Chapter 8: AJAX/Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms
Chapter 9: Advanced Enhancements and Design Tips for Joomla! 1.5
Index

• Preface

• Chapter 1: Getting Started as a Joomla! Template Designer
  • Joomla! 1.5 perks
  • Pick a template or design your own?
    • Drawbacks to using a pre-made template
    • This book's approach
  • Things you'll need to know
    • Joomla! 1.5
    • CSS
    • XHTML
    • PHP
    • Not necessary, but helpful
  • Tools of the trade
    • HTML editor
    • Graphic editor
    • Firefox
      • We'll be developing for Firefox first, then IE and other browsers
  • Summary

• Chapter 2: Template Design and Approach
  • Things to consider
    • Types of sites
    • Modules, components, and plugins
  • Getting ready to design
    • We have a problem
    • It gets worse
  • The solution: Rapid design comping
  • Let's get started!
    • Think about it: Positions
    • Sketch it
      • Consider usability
    • Start with the structure
      • The DOCTYPE
      • The main body
      • Attach the basic stylesheet
      • Basic semantic XHTML structure
  • Adding text: Typography
    • Start with the text
    • A quick note about starting to style with CSS
    • Font choices
      • Get daring: Font stacks
      • sIFR
    • Cascading fonts
    • Font sizing
    • Paragraphs, blockquotes, and other text markup
    • Default links
    • Form elements
  • The layout
    • How wide to make your site?
      • CSS tables versus floating divs
    • Navigation
    • More navigation: Joomla! 1.5 specific styles
    • Color schemes
    • Two-minute color schemes
    • Color schemes with Gimp or Photoshop
    • Adding color to your CSS
    • Create the graphical elements
      • Graphic styles
      • Handling edits and changes
  • Relax and have fun designing!
  • Slice and export
  • Don't forget your favicon!
    • Make your favicon high resolution
  • Summary

• Chapter 3: Coding It Up
  • Got Joomla?
  • Understanding the Joomla! 1.5 template
    • Basic, core template files
    • Advanced template files
  • Your Joomla! 1.5 work flow
  • Let's build our template!
    • Tabula rasa
    • Including Joomla! 1.5 content
    • Congratulations!
    • General Joomla! stylesheets
    • The content component
    • Module positions
    • Jdoc tag overview
    • Updating the templateDetails.xml file
    • Placing module positions in the index.php file
      • Assign modules to your positions
    • Hello? Content is wrapped in tables. Gross!
      • Everything is better with Beez
    • Using template overrides
    • Final CSS tweaks and fixes
  • Summary

• Chapter 4: Debugging and Validation
  • Don't forget about those other browsers and platforms!
  • Introduction to debugging
    • Troubleshooting basics
      • Why validate?
      • Joomla jdoc tags and PHP
      • CSS quick fixes
    • Advanced troubleshooting
    • Fixing CSS across browsers
    • Box model issues
    • Everything is relative
    • To hack or not to hack
    • Out-of-the-box-model thinking
      • Style for IE separately with conditional comments
  • The road to validation
    • XHTML validation
    • CSS validation
    • Advanced validation
      • FireFox's JavaScript/Error Console
      • The Web Developer Toolbar
      • FireBug
    • Checking your work in Internet Explorer
      • Run multiple versions of IE
      • IE Developer Toolbar
      • Don't forget about the QorSMode bookmarklet
    • Extra credit: Optimizing for text and mobile browsers
      • What about the new Mobile Safari browser?
  • Summary

• Chapter 5: Your Template in Action
  • A picture's worth a thousand words
  • Template packaging basics
  • The templateDetails.xml file
    • Quick XML syntax overview
    • From the top
    • Descriptive tags
      • Copyright and licensing?
    • File, position, and param tags
      • What about the html directory?
      • Param tags
  • ZIP it up!
    • No way to ZIP?
  • One last test
    • Troubleshooting installations
  • Summary

• Chapter 6: Joomla! 1.5 Template Reference
  • Jdoc include tags
    • Site header information tag
      • Joomla! 1.0 to 1.5 conversion
    • The component include tag
      • Joomla! 1.0 to 1.5 conversion
    • Module position tags
      • Module position styles
      • Joomla! 1.0 to 1.5
  • Menu output options
  • Using overrides
    • Module overrides and chrome
      • How module chrome works
    • Component overrides
    • Pagination
  • Additional template information
  • Common Joomla! CSS
    • Joomla! 1.5 CSS ids
    • Joomla! 1.5 CSS classes
      • Joomla! 1.0 to 1.5 conversion
  • Template parameters
    • Define a parameter in the templateDetails.xml file
    • Retrieve a parameter in the template file
    • Useful standard parameter types
  • Summary

• Chapter 7: Dynamic Layouts, Menus, and Interactive Elements
  • DIY or extensions?
  • Dynamic layouts
    • PHP syntax
    • PHP if/else conditional statements
    • Update your CSS
  • Dynamic menus
    • Drop-down menus
    • DIY Suckerfish menus in Joomla! 1.5
      • Applying the CSS to Joomla!
      • Applying the DOM Script to Joomla!
  • Flash-ize It
    • Flash in your template
      • Pass Flash a Joomla! variable
      • The ObjectSwap method for Flash
    • Flash in Joomla! content or modules
  • Summary

• Chapter 8: AJAX/Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms
  • Preparing for dynamic content and interactive forms
  • Joomla! extensions
    • Deciding where AJAX is best used
    • Installing the Joomla! comment component
    • Installing the core design Ajax Pagebreak plugin
    • Installing the AJAX RSS Reader Version 3 with Draggable Divs module
    • AJAX: It's not just for your site's users
  • The AJAX factor
    • JavaScript component/plugin scripts
      • The problem
      • Enter jQuery lightBox
  • Summary

• Chapter 9: Advanced Enhancements and Design Tips for Joomla! 1.5
  • Giving users control
  • Editing a template override
  • Adding suffixes to modules and pages
    • Page suffixes
    • Module suffixes
    • The trick
  • Design tips and tricks
  • The cool factor essentials
    • Backgrounds
    • Lists
      • See it in action
    • Rounded corners
      • The classic: All four corners
      • The two image cheat
    • Text to image replacement
      • Extra credit: Use PHP to make graphic headers easy
      • More extra credit: Make unique fonts even easier with the sIFR technique
    • Learn all about your image editor and keep tabs on current design trends
  • Good design isn't always visual: Looking at SEO
    • Search-engine-friendly URLs
    • Keywords and descriptions
  • Summary

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