PRObooks
Ajax in Action
AJAX is currently one of the hottest programming technologies, and is becoming more popular every day. Many developers are using it to provide an improved user interface for their applications. I have been looking for resources to learn this new technology, so I picked up a copy of Ajax in Action.
The book is divided into four parts and three appendices. The first part examines the fundamentals of AJAX. The second chapter of this part is of great importance as it will help you learn the main concepts of this technology. The second part examines some of the core techniques, such as Model View Controller, W3C event models, and the role of the server in processing the scripts. The authors have provided diagrams to illustrate the relevant topics in each chapter. The third part deals with security and performance issues, and also devotes a chapter to some of the experiences you will likely face while working with AJAX. The fourth part delves deep into some of real-world examples, such as Dynamic double combo, Type-ahead suggest, LiveSearch using XSLT, and building a standalone application with AJAX. These projects will surely be of great help for advanced developers as they ll be able to directly implement the techniques during the development of their projects.
The first appendix examines the text editors and provides information about debugging and DOM inspectors. Toward the end, the authors also provide a list of resources along with relevant URLs. The second appendix is basically a JavaScript primer which will be useful for developers who don t have much experience with the scripting language. The final appendix provides a comprehensive list of the various AJAX framework libraries, along with a short description of each one. The authors have marked the code samples with circled numbers and corresponding notes. This will surely help readers figure out the relevant code while going through the analysis.
From my point of view, the writing style of this book is very difficult and novice programmers will find it difficult to follow the concepts. Even though the book contains comprehensive explanations, with code samples, the authors haven t provided enough information about how to run AJAX applications. Hence, if you are a programmer wanting to learn the basics of AJAX, I suggest you purchase a beginner-level book and then explore this book so you ll be able to follow the concepts without any difficulty. Otherwise, you ll not find much use for this book; although I m sure advanced developers will keep a copy of this book on their shelves for future reference. I hope the authors will include a separate chapter about the ATLAS framework in the next edition of the book.
Anand Narayanaswamy
Rating:
Title: Ajax in Action
Authors: Dave Crane, Eric Pascarello, Darren James
Publisher: Manning Publications
ISBN: 1-932394-61-3
Web Site: http://www.manning.com/crane/
Price: US$44.95
Page Count: 680
