Although PHP is not a real Multimedia Programming language, the articles in this issue proved that it can be used fine to handle Multimedia problems. This book also focuses on Multimedia, and more specifically on PDF, Flash and Image manipulation. Most PHP books starts with an introductionary chapter on PHP’s syntax, but not this one. Instead of that the first chapter deals with installing the different libraries and configuring PHP to work with them, which is definitely a welcome addition as getting it all to work can be quite a hassle.

The second chapter then deals with PHP’s syntax to fresh up the memory of the readers, including OO syntax, which is used a lot in the Flash chapter. The next two chapters deal with generating Flash from PHP, in chapter 3 the fundamentals of the Ming extension, and Flash in general, are dealt with, illustrated with examples. Building on this chapter the next one deals with more advanced Flash including building and using Action Script with PHP. After the two Flash chapters the book goes on with two chapters on image manipulation. The first of these deals with GD (version 2.01) and covers creating new images, adding shapes and text to images and resizing and cutting of images. In chapter 6 a class is build to use the command line tools Convert, Mogrify and Identify, all part of the ImageMagick image manipulation package. It doesn’t deal with the ImageMagick extension, which exists now too, but still handles most of the manipulation function available in these three tools.

The book continues with two chapters dealing with Adobe’s PDF format. In chapter 7 creating PDF documents are covered in an extensive way. Not only does it deal with the PDF extension in PHP, it also talks about the theory behind PDF, which gives the reader an excellent understanding how to deal with PDF and PHP efficiently. Chapter 8 then deals with FDF, which is the HTTP POST datatype for sending form info from PDFs to a webserver.

The last four chapters of the book are case studies in which several of the techniques mentioned in the book are used. With those four case studies (Ming headline grabber, using GD on WAP sites, an image gallery and a PDF template system) the readers get to know some of the cooler things you can do with PHP and Multimedia.