Drupal Multimedia [Paperback]

Aaron Winborn (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1847194605 | ISBN-13: 978-1847194602 | Publication Date: October 30, 2008 | Edition: 1st

Information for Drupal administrators and site developers on all aspects of multimedia in Drupal. This book will provide information for administrators and professional site developers who are required to embed multimedia into a Drupal site. The reader needs basic knowledge of Drupal operation, but no experience of how Drupal handles multimedia items is expected.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Aaron Winborn has been developing websites since the mid-90s. Beginning as a freelancer while teaching at a Sudbury school (a democratic and age-mixed model for young people), his clients demanded more and more features, until he (like everyone and their grandmother) realized he had built a full-featured content management system that required more work to develop and maintain than he was able in his spare time. He realized at some point that somewhere in the world of Open Source, someone had to have created and released something to the community. Of course, the wonderful news was Drupal. After converting the existing sites of his clients to Drupal, he continued learning and began to contribute back to the community. About this time, Advomatic, a company with similar interests and a commitment to the Drupal community, began expanding beyond the initial partners who formed it in the wake of Howard Dean's presidential campaign of 2004. Aaron realized that his own goals of creating great sites with a team would be better matched there, and he was hired as their first employee. Since that time, he has helped to develop some excellent sites, with clients such as Air America Radio, TPM Cafe, NRDC, Greenopia, Mountain News, Viacom, and Bioneers. He has also contributed several modules to Drupal, mostly stemming from his work with multimedia, including Embedded Media Field (for third-party Video, Audio, and Images), Views Slideshow (to create slide shows out of any content), and the RPG module (for online gaming, still in progress).

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing; 1st edition (October 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847194605
• ISBN-13: 978-1847194602
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,111,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provides both helpful context and practical details, November 29, 2008

By 

Richard Kassissieh "School technology directo... (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Drupal Multimedia (Paperback)

Having worked with Drupal for two years, I have reached the point where I need expert advice in order to continue to grow. Drupal is a bit like a forest with many paths running through it. You could spend all year trying each one and learning from experience, or you could get an experienced hand to point you in the right direction, especially if you cannot devote all your time to learning Drupal.

Aaron Winborn is experienced, knowledgeable, and helpful, if his writing at all reflects the man. The creator of the Embedded Media Field module, his has recognized expertise in configuring Drupal to handle multimedia content. In Drupal Multimedia, Winborn describes the state of Drupal multimedia support with one eye toward Drupal history and the other exploring the future. Context helps achieve deeper understanding.

For most of the book explains how to include images, video, and audio in Drupal sites. In these chapters, I found answers to questions I had been asking for a while. What felt right about the Image module (e.g., image galleries), and what needed fine-tuning to work better (e.g., WYSIWYG integration)? Winborn takes the reader from Image to Image Assist, Image Attach, and finally the TinyMCE DrupalImage button, the last of which had escaped me in my previous forays into online documentation and support forum discussions. I was only disappointed not to find an answer to another longstanding want: easy bulk image upload for end-users.

Winborn does not always take a single path through the forest. Often, he points out two or three different paths that might work well for your needs, while omitting mention of those that (I assume) he feels might not. After the comprehensive introduction to Image, Winborn changes approach. He describes how to use ImageField and ImageCache in conjunction with one's own custom content type. Comparing the two approaches not only helped me better understand how to structure my own approach but also provided an important insight into the Drupal ecosystem.

Winborn takes care not to blow his own horn too loudly. His creation, Embedded Media Field, plays third string behind other image solutions. The explanation is critical to integration with third-party media hosts such as Flickr and YouTube.

Winborn introduces the book as a "beginner to intermediate" Drupal resource while acknowleding the advanced nature of some examples. I thought this description was right on. A Drupal beginner would likely not be comfortable implementing some of the solutions provided, for example adding a preprocess hook to display the appropriate media player for an attached video. On the other hand, I found the emphasis on Node Reference essential for me to understand how to keep media items in their own nodes yet allow web pages to display them in the proper player.

Later in the book, Winborn takes a couple of thoughtful turns. He treats video before audio, upsetting the conventional order between them yet explicitly acknowledging the dominance of video these days. He also presents the embedded video field before addressing how to upload "local" video files. That also makes good sense to me, as I have quickly discovered how even a low-volume site benefits from hosting video at a specialized provider, such as Blip.tv.

Your perspective on the book may depend on your definition of "beginner" and "intermediate." I benefitted from both the high-level view and the relatively complex explanations. The book provided something to seek me teeth into and room for growth, which I imagine every Drupal developer needs. True beginners may quickly lose themselves in the details. Advanced users may not find the text sufficiently challenging.

Drupal Multimedia will remain an essential resource for me, due to its vertical treatment of key techniques. Yet, I also find myself wanting more almost immediately. Will DrupalImage reach production site quality for Drupal 6? How should I provide bulk image upload capability to end users? What will support and maintenance of these techniques look like a year from now? While I am glad to have added this book to my knowledge base, I have quickly followed up the read with more tinkering on a test site and surfing the discussion forums.

Richard Kassissieh is Director of Information Technology at Catlin Gabel School.
He writes on Drupal and other topics at http://kassblog.com

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars drupal can build flickr, youtube or twittv, November 16, 2008

By 

Joseph Moraca "Joe Moraca" (Sarasota, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Drupal Multimedia (Paperback)

Drupal Multimedia

Drupal has had a great run in the book publishing arena these last few months. Drupal Multimedia is the latest book on the street. I really liked Drupal 6 Themes because it had a focus on something that was very important for an aspiring drupal ninja. Well now Drupal Multimedia is my latest favorite book. Aaron Winborn is truely an expert on the subject with the added bonus of being a good writer.

This book goes through Pictures, Video and Audio and discusses the modules to use, (including CCK and views) and how to get the output to look the way you want it. I was very happy to see that this book really goes in depth with the examples, this book has more examples of using theme function over-rides than I have seen in one place - more than just "breadcrumbs"!

The only negative I find with this book is the fact that some of the modules discussed are not available for Drupal Version 6. This is made very clear in the book -- and it is a function of when the book was written. The ones I checked still are not upgraded - certainly not the authors fault and a hazard of writing a book about a fast moving target.

Another thing unique about this "very hands on" with lots of examples book is that the author uses the last chapter of the book to make predictions about the future of Drupal. I like his predictions and hope they come true. He even makes "embedded smell field" seem like something that we really need ... you have to read it because it is for real.

I give this book two thumbs up!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction for new users, May 21, 2009

By 

Ken Rickard "Drupal developer" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Drupal Multimedia (Paperback)

<em>Drupal Multimedia</em>, by Aaron Winborn, Packt Publishing, 2008

<em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Multimedia-Aaron-Winborn/dp/1847194605/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242916032&sr=8-1">Drupal Multimedia</a></em> covers the use of audio, video and image files within the popular Drupal open-source content management framework. The book is aimed at site architects, themers and Drupal developers, with an emphasis on those new to the platform.

Packt sent me a copy of the book for review, and I think that is an important statement. I would not have purchased this book otherwise, mostly because I have been using Drupal since 2004 and am familiar with the challenges and solutions discussed in this book. That said, I did learn some new tricks (jQuery Media, Dash Media Player), and I have tried to approach my final review as if I were new to Drupal.

Let me start the formal review by praising Winborn's depth of knowledge and commitment to Drupal and the issues regarding media handling. In fact, I use some of Aaron's work on every site that I build, and his contributions to hook_file() should make multimedia in Drupal 7 even stronger. This book, however, is about how we can put Drupal to work today while building sustainable web sites.

The collaboration on media has been a little contentious in the Drupal community - something Winborn deftly covers in Chapter 11, which covers the road ahead for media handling and reviews some of the challenges yet to be solved. The basic problem boils down to this: Drupal core does not have a media handling solution, and individual developers have tried to craft solutions for their specific problems. Making those solutions workable for the majority of use-cases is a great challenge. A good example of this is found in chapter 10, in the discussion of a specific solution for AirAmerica.com that leverages common solutions but still requires custom code. (An aside: the audio chapters of the book are probably the strongest section, though Winborn rightly notes that audio is often the overlooked medium in the multimedia mix.)

The book itself treats it material insightfully, with a strong organization and chapters that logically build on each other. Chapter one offers a crash course in Drupal basics and introduces some tools and concepts that are essential. It is important to note that the chapter begins with a succinct explanation of the Drupal philosophy that "the webmaster is dead"; the idea being that non-technical people should be given the tools needed to build a good web site without leaning the sometimes arcane nuances of the acronyms of the profession: HTML, LAMP, FTP, CSS and so on. Drupal and its developers strive to build a platform that can survive without them.

The problem, especially for the complex use-cases for multimedia presentation and storage, is in crafting solutions that can be configured rather than coded. Winborn does a commendable job explaining the factors that influence module selection, which is a critical topic given the state of uncertainty that revolves around file handling in Drupal.

And the rest of the book is largely given over to discussions and examples of how to select, install and configure various modules (Image, ImageField, Audio, MediaMover, Embedded Media Field, Lightbox 2) to accomplish specific tasks, like the building of a photo gallery or displaying an audio playlist. The solutions are sound and well-established best practices, and they should give the new user some firm footing to begin adapting Drupal to meet her needs. The book, rightly, makes clear that some customization through code will be likely, and there are some long passages devoted to theming the final HTML output that the new Drupaler should examine carefully (chapter 6 has a good example).

What will a new reader learn to do with this book? Here's a quick list:

<ul>
<li>Assess a site's media needs and select appropriate Drupal modules.</li>
<li>Display images within site content.</li>
<li>Create multiple image galleries.</li>
<li>Display images from Flickr or other third party hosting services.</li>
<li>Understand how to theme image display for Drupal.</li>
<li>Display video files hosted on BlipTV, Brightcove or other third-party services.</li>
<li>Display and host video from a local server.</li>
<li>Select a cross-browser media player.</li>
<li>Host media files on external services.</li>
<li>Upload and display audio files within site content.</li>
<li>Create and display audio playlists.</li>
<li>How to work with the Views module to create media galleries.</li>
<li>When and how to customize existing Drupal solutions for media display.</li>
<li>How to contribute to media handling in Drupal.</li>
</ul>

These topics are largely given equal treatment, and the style of the book is familiar and consistent, making for an easy read in as little as two hours.

There are some clunky moments in the book, such as two sections on User Images and the Taxonomy Image module that are unrelated to the rest of chapter 3 (but seem to have no home elsewhere in the book). The proofreading slips in a couple of cases (most blatantly on page 174), and the index is so thin that I was frustrated by it (security, GIMP, XSS and Zen are all missing.) On page 98, we suddenly jump back from Views 6.x.2 (used throughout the book) to Views 5.x.1 with no explanation.

There are also some implementation decisions I would argue with - especially using menu IDs (which are volatile and can be changed in the UI) as CSS class names in the CSS example on pages 120-2. And some strong concepts are missing - such as the way Embedded Media Field can be used with FeedAPI to automatically pull content from a YouTube or BlipTV RSS feed to create content on your site. The theme override tricks discussed on pages 104-5 are specific to Drupal 6 and, in my opinion, a non-standard solution to the problem at hand. That type of solution is generally handled at the theme layer without the need for hook_theme_registry_alter(). To his credit Winborn seems to be showing each of the options available to developers in the different examples - using module-based themes, template.php, preprocess theme functions, *.tpl.php files -- but this approach is not made clear and leaves me wondering why certain approaches are used at different times.

Most glaringly, I think the issue of security when dealing with files is not handled properly. The relationship between the IMG SRC tag and XSS attacks is a little arcane, and it needs a section early in the book to explain exactly why Drupal is so sensitive to user input. While the filter system (called Input Formats in the Drupal administrative interface) is covered in the book, that coverage is scattered and not grounded in a clear discussion of the security issues involved with allowing media uploads to your server and embedded media links into your content (the former issue is not discussed at all, as I recall; and the two issues are definitely not interchangeable).

Still, the coverage in the book is strong, and I would particularly encourage new developers to explore the Embedded Media Field (which is itself a secure solution to the problem of media files) and the FileField/ImageField combination when building (or testing) a Drupal site. One of the issues that the new developer will face, however, Winborn clearly states (numerous times): some solutions were only available for Drupal 5 (AcidFree Albums, MediaMover) at the time of writing, and may or may not be ready for Drupal 6. This issue is a common one in open source, and something that Drupal users will need to prepare for - most successfully by being an active member of the community, a theme that Winborn returns to continually.

How would I rate this book overall? For me, I think the book is a necessary one: it covers a topic vital to Drupal sites, and it gives a good overview of the issues and solutions available. But I don't think the book is a vital addition to my personal Drupal library. However, that statement should be qualified by the fact that, for instance, I have seen presentations and demonstrations of modules like Asset and MediaMover at DrupalCONs (annual Drupal user conferences in North America and Europe each year), and I have used many of these modules in production on sites like ForeignAffairs.com.

Given that the cost of the book easily comes under the cost of attending DrupalCON Paris (September 2009) and provides a worthy introduction to the topic, I would recommend the book for those new to Drupal, with a special note to those who may have inherited the support of a Drupal-powered web site, since the book will help you to understand why certain decisions have been made about how the site was constructed.