Book Reviews

Drupal 6 Site Blueprints
Author	Timi Ogunjobi
Publisher	Packt Publishing / Birmingham
First published	August 2009
Pages	272
ISBN	978-1-847199-04-1
List price	€31.49 (Ordering / Product information)

Drupal is a flexible Content Management System. So flexible, that it could be considered to be the web 2.0 equivalent of a swiss army knife. Swiss army knifes however, as versatile as they might be, can sometimes be a bit confusing to the user. The purpose of the individual tools may occasionally not be clear and the vast numbers of different models available for sale can make it hard to choose the right version for the right job.

In Drupal 6 Site Blueprints, Timi Ogunjobi sets out to provide the reader with 12 hands on examples for how the "swiss army knife" Drupal can be put to a use.

Drupal 6 Themes
Author	Ric Shreves
Publisher	Packt Publishing / Birmingham
First published	September 2008
Pages	312
ISBN	978-1-847195-66-1
List price	€30.99 (Ordering / Product information)

Drupal is a widely adopted open source Content Management System. For it's users, this wide adoption brings a number of advantages like, for example, well maintained code and ready to use solutions to many standard problems, but there is also one inherent disadvantage.
Out of the box, every Drupal installation looks the same. Being indistinguishable from other websites is a no-go in the web 2.0 world. Contributed themes may lessen this problem to a degree, but even they reach their limits, when corporate design becomes a requirement.

Learning Drupal 6 Module Development
Author	Matt Butcher
Publisher	Packt Publishing / Birmingham
First published	May 2008
Pages	328
ISBN	978-1-847194-44-2
List price	€24.99 (Ordering / Product information)

Drupal is a very powerful and feature rich content management framework with hundreds of contributed modules, extending it's core functionality. However, even with all of those third party add-ons, a lot of website owners will sooner or later find themselves in a situation, where a desired service can only be implemented by creating a custom module.

When it comes to module development, Drupal's biggest advantage is also it's biggest disadvantage.

Swing Extreme Testing
Author	Tim Lavers, Lindsay Peters
Publisher	Packt Publishing / Birmingham
First published	May 2008
Pages	306
ISBN	978-1-847194-82-4
List price	€30.99 (Ordering / Product information)

Software development is an expensive process and one of the most costly components in it is maintenance. This is an oddity, since software is not actually subject to wear and tear. It is however prone to error or malfunction and having to fix bugs in already deployed software is what can cause costs to explode.
In that respect, bugs are like aging wine. The older they get, the more expensive, they become. This makes it desirable to catch them as early as possible, by rigorously testing code before it makes it's way into a finished product.

Drupal 6 Social Networking
Author	Michael Peacock
Publisher	Packt Publishing / Birmingham
First published	February 2009
Pages	312
ISBN	978-1-847196-10-1
List price	€30.99 (Ordering / Product information)

Websites consisting entirely of static content have become out of fashion. In the Web 2.0 era, user interaction and community functions are expected features. However, such functionalities cannot be provided through plain HTML and CGI scripts in a manageable way any longer. This is where Content Management Systems come into play.

Using a CMS like Drupal to build a community website requires a lot of skill and training, both technically and in marketing. Michael Peacock's "Drupal 6 Social Networking" sets out to teach the freshman Drupalist the basic principles.

Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery
Author	Matt Butcher
Publisher	Packt Publishing / Birmingham
First published	February 2009
Pages	319
ISBN	978-1-847196-16-3
List price	€30.99 (Ordering / Product information)

When I first read the title of the book, my thoughts were "Oh great, two nested niche topics, only specialists could be interested in. Nobody without a strong technical background in the field will be able to understand it". I'm glad to say, that my first impression was utterly wrong.