In a modern web site content offered often go beyond the classic text, as well as the classic images, offering visitors video, audio, podcasts and resources embedded from other services on the web.

Joomla, as an excellent CMS, enables us to achieve all this - and more. Some features are there by default, such as the Media Manager, and to handle other functions there are a lot of third party extensions.

Packt Publishing has recently published an interesting book on the subject, called "Joomla! 1.5 Multimedia".

The 350 pages of the book guide the reader through this area of creating and managing a website, while keeping an eye toward accessibility of content. Here is a brief overview of the chapters of the book.

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Joomla! Multimedia

Introduces the concept of multimedia and explains the kind of files that we can include in our project: text, images, audio, video.

Chapter 2: Managing Your Joomla! Average

It introduces the Media Manager of Joomla and outlines alternative methods for managing files: FTP, FTP via Web and extensions such as eXtplorer and Joomla Flash Uploader.

Chapter 3: Text, Characters, and Fonts in Your Joomla! Site

The typography of a website is a very important element, and this chapter covers the most used fonts on the web and explains how to modify the template to use them. Nowadays there are several techniques by which we can include in a site any font you want - on the contrary, in the past this was a very critical area.
The book explains how to use extensions like Frontend font size adjuster, JsIFR3, capDropper to handle the press.

Chapter 4: Adding and Managing Content Image

Introduces a variety of image formats you can use on the web (GIF, JPEG, PNG, SVG) and explains how to incorporate them into a Joomla site, via the button editor, Media Manager, or by inserting custom HTML code.
The book then talks about how to create collections of images, using extensions for image galleries and slideshows.

Chapter 5: Using Audio in Your Joomla! Website

Then the book talks about audio, introducing the concepts, analyzing the formats and to explore how to insert sound files into a Joomla site.
We are introuced to podcasts, collections of audio files that can be easily inserted into a player such as iTunes and automatically updated.

Chapter 6: Using Video in Your Joomla! Website

This chapter explains video. First, the book intruduces the formats and explains how to put audio-visual file on the site by manually entering the HTML code or by referring to an extension - for example, AllVideos, or RokBox Shadowbox.

Chapter 7: Collaborating with External Sources

Worthy of attention is certainly the possibility of including in your site content made available from external sources.
In case of content that takes up large amounts of bandwidth, this solution saves hosting costs and significantly speeds up the site: the technological infrastructure provided by YouTube, for example, is more than what we have on a shared hosting, so the speed of loading of content will be greater.
We learn about Twitter, Facebook, integration of video, integration with TV and radio, Flickr, sites dealing with weather, SlideShare, RSS and more.

Chapter 8: Joomla! Templates and Multimedia

This chapter briefly introduces the concept of templates and functions, then analyzes some commercial templates and their features, mainly carried out through heavy use of JavaScript.
We're also introduced to the mobile topic, explaining how to build and test a mobile version of its website.

Chapter 9: Joomla! Multimedia Project

The last chapter of the book deals with a case study of implementation of a site, the choice of content structure and the extensions that are better suited to achieve the desired functionality.

Ultimately I think this book is very useful to anyone who wants to create a site using the CMS Joomla. Essential for non-adherents, given the variety of topics it will not be boring even to the most compassed creator of web sites.