Building bridges like crazy

I got obsessed by simple flash game "Cargo Bridge" in last days. I really enjoyed the time with it. It shouldn't be so much difficult to beat my score as I didn't pay attention to the score at all. However I managed to finish all the 24 levels (and some of them are really tough).

• Play the "Cargo Bridge" game

Joomla! 1.5x Customization: Make Your Site Adapt to Your Needs

This is an excellent book for the newbies that would like to start a web site with Joomla!. It provides overview of tools and Joomla! setting that you should know to build up a site.



Chapters:

1. The Skills Required to Customize Joomla! - list of technologies and programming languages used by Joomla! That's only a list with short explanation to remind you about particular technology. If you want to study it more you'll have to deep dive into a different books
   


2. Setting Up Our Environment - this is very practical chapter for those who aren't webmasters or don't know what tools to use for file transfer, code management, DB management, digging into html/css code, etc. If you don't know the best practices then you can learn them. For me the Firebug overview was useful as it describes powerful tool for customizing a website (not only based on Joomla!) that I missed.
   
   
3. Planning Our Site - planning, planning, planning. This is chapter for those who mean it seriously. I'd wish to my wife to read it. It would save me a lot of time. I'd need to make some thing twice or even three times.
   In this chapter you'll find also short overview of the most used Joomla extensions.
   
   
4. Installing and Configuring Extensions - have you started to play with the Joomla! yet? If not then you'll be guided to create a new website "Buy new house in Japan". It's useful exercise before you'll create your own site.
   
   
5. Installing and Modifying Templates - this is one of the best things about Joomla! You can easily change the look of your website. How it's possible? The "data" of your website are stored in database. By the template you define how they are displayed to the visitors of your website.
   
6. Customizing Modules - there is a plenty of modules to download at the internet. But sometimes they don't fit exactly to your needs. Then you have to customize them a little bit (of course, only if the license allows it).
   
   
7. Customizing Plugins - the same as in previous chapter but now for plugins.
   
   
8. Customizing Components - the same as in previous chapters however you'll learn about the difference between the old components of Joomla 1.0 and Joomla 1.5. MVC rules.
   
   
9. Finding and Fixing Problems - what are the most common problems? Errors in PHP, server settings, conflict in libraries etc. When this information isn't enough then you can ask the Joomla! community.
   
   
10. Promoting and Tracking
    
    
11. Monetizing Our Site
    

I read this book quickly. Mainly because I've already created a website with Joomla! However it describes useful techniques and solutions. I wouldn't hack so many things and I'd save lot of time if I'd read it.


The most useful for me was the introduction to FireBug -as I'm not a web developer- and the tips and trick for the common mistakes. Enjoy the reading.

Joomla books to review

I started to create website stestiazdravi.cz in my spare time for my wife as I already reported in a previous post. And after the review of the LWUIT (j2me) book I took the chance to review other books. This time about Joomla as I use it at the web site.


Today the books arrived to my mailbox. On the first look it will be very interesting reading that I'd like to share with you. And it will hopefuly help to make the my wife's web site even better.


What's on my table?

	Joomla! 1.5x Customization: Make Your Site Adapt to Your Needs - I wish to read this book before I started to design the web site. It seems to be full of nice tricks and same basics descriptions that will help newbies and probably even more experienced Joomla users to start with Joomla.
	Joomla 1.5 template design - this is book for more experienced user that want to create their own template for Joomla. I've already hacked the ja_purity template a bi however I'd like to have it done correctly rather then hacked ;) Will this book help me. We'll see.

I wanted one more book to complete the whole story but it's still in production - Joomla! 1.5 SEO. OTOH, I have enough reading for now.

[Review] LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers

I was asked by the Packt Publishing to review new book about Lightweight Toolkit for MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.1. During those long nights when I reviewed the book I learned a lot about the LWUIT and had a lot of fun. For those who don't have any experience with LWUIT or would like to start an UI in Java ME it's recommended reading. The LWUIT gives you APIs that allows you to create nice UI. And with the Themes it is easy to change the look and feel of your application.



Table of Contents:

• Chapter 1: Introduction to LWUIT
  
• Chapter 2: Components
  
• Chapter 3: The Container Family
  
• Chapter 4: The Label Family
  
• Chapter 5: List and ComboBox
  
• Chapter 6: TextArea and TextField
  
• Chapter 7: Arranging Widgets with Layout Managers
  
• Chapter 8: Creating a Custom Component
  
• Chapter 9: Resources Class, Resource File and LWUIT Designer
  
• Chapter 10: Using Themes
  
• Chapter 11: Adding Animations and Transitions
  
• Chapter 12: Painters
  
• Chapter 13: Effects and Logging—Useful Utilities
  

Links:

• LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers from Packt Publishing
  
• LWUIT project website
  
• LWUIT features video
  
• LWUIT at general session at JavaOne 2008
  

Vacation with Joomla

My wife wants to start her own business therefore she decided that she have to have a web pages. She bought a webhosting and a domain. However you need a content for the web site. And here starts my part. My only experience with creating a web was knowledge of html.


Fortunatelly, I discovered early that what she needs aren't a static web pages because she would like to add and create new content in an easy way. I had a few recommendation about the Joomla! CMS. It was good choice. The installation and setup of the Joomla was really easy. The only thing I did was that I copied the unzipped Joomla to the server. The rest of the installation happens on the joomla web pages where you define a connection to database etc. After a while I discovered a small problem with rights. I copied the files from Windows desktop to Linux server therefore I had to change rights of some files and directories directly on the server.


When I had the Joomla installed the real work begun. My wife didn't like the templates that were available for Joomla! for free. I started to create my own template for her web site. The template is based on one of the Joomla default templates - ja_purity. However that's one of nice features of the CMS - you can change the look of you site very easily without a change of your content.


Short notes about the customization:

1. Require strict definition of the behavior. I made something but she didn't like it and I had to change it at least 3 times. It took me lot of time (and energy :))
2. The images in header of the web site change according to selected menu item. I use $tmpTools->getCurrentMenuIndex(). To get an image from a directory on the website. Of course, the images are following some pattern like headerN.jpg.
3. Template colors. This part was really painfull. If you aren't a designer I wouldn't recommend to do it. However it's quite easy as you just have to change something in the css files.
   
4. Rest of the customization was playing with the images. Thanks to GIMP.
5. And of course, you have to create sections, categories, articles, define user roles add some modules, install plugins for the Joomla! CMS to make it look as you want ;)

The website is available at http://www.stestiazdravi.cz. Kamila is changing the content still however from my point of view I'm done with it.

Who is Lukas Hasik?

Hi,
my name is Lukas Hasik. I live in Czech Republic, Prague. Or at least I live very close to Prague for a few years.

Work
I work for SUN Microsystems on various projects. I started in fall 2000 in a small group focused on testing of Transparent Persistence, a technology that silently disappeared. Then I moved to NetBeans QA team, where I spent a time leading NetBeans Mobility QA and then NetBeans Platform&Core QA team. Currently I'm team lead of QA of Sun Compute Cloud.

In 2006 I managed to get to the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. I realized that I like to present a problem to audience and I really like to move users of our product and other enthusiast at the conferences. So far I presented at folllowing conferences - JavaOne 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009; Community 2009; JavaZone 2008; JavaPolis 2007; Jazoon 2007; SFI 2009.

Personal
I'm proud father of 2 3/4 old boy with name Sebastian Krystof.
I like sports, books, and lot of other things that I unfortunately don't have time these days.