J!Dump is the single best extension you need to make your Joomla coding experience more fun. Instead of using print_r() or var_dump(), you can now use dump() to see what's inside a variable, an array or object. This will open a popup window with a nice expandable DHTML tree, showing the contents of the variable. It will even show the list of the available methods of each object. You can use dump() in your extensions, in the core, in libraries or even in templates.

JMatrix component released today and soon will be available on JED. It falls under the "Article Listing" category providing a Section/Category table view of your articles. I would be glad if you could give it a spin and let me know of any bugs or additional features you may like to see. You can download it here.

Packt Publishing has been flexible and focused on releasing quickly specialized books on various technologies. Especially for the web, they basically cover every hot topic so, if you are in the need of a book, have a look at their website.

Packt has gained wide acceptance by being a good promoter and supporter of successful open source projects. They donate back to the community and they cultivate the ground for more people to jump in.

I think SQL and CSS have something in common, on the first look they appear to be dead easy to learn and then, as you move on, you realize that things can get tough. This is because both CSS and SQL trying to resemble ordinary language, they remain syntactically loose. This is good and bad. You can get to the same result by following different paths, the compiler will not be extremely strict with you but, when you try to build something, you may stare at you monitor for a really long time before you start writing a single word.

Now, as long as Joomla stores all its data in a MySQL database, you definitely need a fundamental knowledge of SQL to get to the next level. SQL is useful for looking behind the scenes, for generating reports or for changing data on the fly. Not to say that it is vital if you look forward to creating your own Joomla extensions. In this article I will give you some basic SQL SELECT examples attempting to build difficulty gradually. All examples should work if run against a standard Joomla database so, go ahead and test them.

If you‘ve been playing with Joomla templates, either trying to build your own or customize an existing one, you’ve most likely come across the following issue: You need to conditionally load stuff on your webpage. A few examples follow to give you the basic idea:

• You may fancy loading various style sheets conditionally throughout your entire website. This is either for spicing it up or for maintaining multiple layouts. For example, you could use a different style sheet to eliminate a side column or to change the background.
• You may need to change on the fly the position of a module. A good candidate for this is the login module which does not need to occupy much space for logged in users.
• Also, think about these hefty mootools files (or any other Javascript framework), do you need them to be loaded on the front page or is it better to load them later on, where most layout components are already cached in the browser?