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:ééé
Title:Ajax in Action
Authors: Dave
Crane, Eric Pascarello, Darren James
