New Book: Flash with Drupal

Packt Publishing is pleased to announce the release of a new Drupal book called Flash with Drupal, authored by Travis Tidwell. Catered for Drupal Developers, this book walks the reader through the evolution of many different Flash applications built around the power and flexibility of Drupal.

Packt Publishing is also pleased to offer a 15% discount to any Drupal.org user. To purchase this book with this discount, simply purchase Flash with Drupal through Packt Publishing, and provide the code FlashDru15. Also, keep in mind that Packt contributes a portion of every book sale right back to Drupal!

So what's in this book?

  • Chapter 1 sets the stage for the reader to learn how Flash and Drupal can combine to create a dynamic, content-rich experience for our users. We will learn how to embed Flash applications within Drupal, as well as learn about some important modules that make it easier to work with Flash in Drupal.
  • Chapter 2, Building a “Hello World” application in Flash: In this chapter, we will say hello to the world in Flash using Drupal-driven content. However, unlike any other "Hello World" tutorial, we will learn the important concepts of asynchronous programming and how that relates to working with Drupal content in Flash while utilizing the popular Services Module.
  • Chapter 3, Flash and CCK, covers how to add custom content to our Flash applications using the popular Content Construction Kit (CCK) module. We will illustrate this concept by building a hypothetical Recipe Flash application designed for a Drupal cooking web site.
  • Chapter 4, Drupal Images in Flash, shows us how to use Drupal managed images to give our application a little visual flare. We will build on from the previous chapter by adding an image to our Recipe Flash application. We will also explore how to utilize the ImageCache module within our Flash applications so that the image sizes are dynamically generated at run-time.
  • Chapter 5, Drupal audio in Flash, explores how to use Drupal's Audio module to provide audio content to a custom Flash application, which we will use to play and control that audio content.
  • Chapter 6, Drupal video in Flash, expands our custom media player to not only play music, but also show Flash videos managed from our Drupal web site. In addition, we will learn some important concepts of object-oriented practices while we reuse common components to build a media player for Drupal.
  • Chapter 7, The Hybrid Approach Part 1, explores a new technique where Flash and HTML can be combined using JavaScript to give a Hybrid Flash architecture. This technique works to solve the problem where an all-or-nothing approach is usually forced on the designer when integrating Flash with Drupal. In this chapter we will learn how to take an existing Flash application and break apart the components for remote communication. We achieve this by first abstracting out separate functionality into two separate components, and then laying the foundation for a JavaScript communication gateway between the two different Flash components. This is an essential first step to create a robust and easily maintained system, where Flash applications can be separated on a Drupal web site, thus implementing a hybrid Flash integration.
  • Chapter 8, The Hybrid Approach Part 2, creates the necessary components required to implement the communication between two different Flash components. This chapter focuses on creating the bridge between two different Flash applications. Once we create this bridge, we will have the ability to control our media from a remote Flash application. In other words, we will be building a remote control for our media player that can be placed anywhere on the page, separate from the media player, thus creating a Hybrid Flash-Drupal architecture.
  • Chapter 9, Flash with Views, builds a media player whose playlist is driven from the power of the Views module. Arguably, the most important aspect of any content-rich web site is its ability to build lists of each piece of content in a meaningful manner. The Drupal Views module gives the administrator the ability to manage the contents of their site in a meaningful list of content to present to the users. By combining this power within Flash, we can learn how to create a playlist of video nodes for our custom media player.
  • Chapter 10, User Management, shows how to utilize user management within a Flash application by building a User Login Flash widget. One of the most important aspects of the Drupal CMS is its ability to manage its users and protect the content of that site using a permission-based role system.
  • Chapter 11, Adding content to Drupal from Flash, shows how to add content to our Drupal web site while at the same time keep our data safe from malicious software. Not only can Flash be used to show Drupal content, but it can also be utilized to add and manipulate Drupal content from a remote Flash application.
  • Chapter 12, Building a five-star voter in Flash, will sum up all lessons learned in this book by building a five-star voting mechanism in Flash. We will learn how to build a custom Voting Service as well as create our very own Flash driven five-star voter compatible with the popular FiveStar module.

Want a sample?...

To help promote the content provided within this book, Packt is generous enough to provide sample content of what you can expect from reading this book. Below is a list of articles and chapters from this book.

About the Author

Travis Tidwell is the owner and lead developer for TMT Digital, a company that specializes in the development of Flash applications for Drupal content management system. He is also the sole developer for the Dash Media Player, which is a media player built specifically for Drupal. As well as contributing this media player, Travis is also the author and co-maintainer for the FlashVideo module which is a complete video solution for Drupal.

Travis graduated with an Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oklahoma State University and has worked as an Embedded Systems Engineer for companies specializing in automotive and agricultural GPS products. Travis then fell in love with web development and more specifically with Drupal and Flash, where he has developed numerous sites including Delicioso! for Food Networks Ingrid Hoffmann.

Travis is happily married to his beautiful wife, Erin, and is the proud parent of a feisty one-year-old named Brycen. When Travis isn’t working on the computer (which is rare these days), he enjoys the performing arts including playing guitar, singing, and tap dancing!

I personally would like to give a big thank you to the Drupal Community for their support, and I hope you enjoy this book!

Travis Tidwell

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