Customer Reviews

AJAX: Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ajax has hit the bookstores hard the past 6 months and there a lot of books on the market. To try and differentiate them is difficult since it is still a fairly new technology (or implementation of existing technologies actually) and people are trying to understand how to use it and use it properly.

The Ajax: Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a little different than the rest and that is a good thing.

Here's why...

1) It doesn't just go right into showing you how to use the XMLHttpRequest object in the usual "Hello World" examples. Its goes into detail how normal scripting works with web pages and shows the differences in using an Ajax implementation and what it can do it for you.
2) It doesn't try to sell you that using Ajax is always better. It explains how other techniques (better or worse) can be used to do similar results: HTML frames and IFRAMES.
3) It teaches you the technologies that are used in Ajax in case you are just starting out. It gives a great primer to XHTML tags,JavaScript basic syntax, the DOM and XML.
4) The examples on Ajax use open source technologies (PHP and MySQL) and really explain how to use these server-side technologies so if you're unfamiliar with them you won't get lost. Was great because myself am a ASP.NET developer, but I had no problem following the examples using PHP code.
5) A very detailed explanation of the XMLHttpRequest object (chapter 7 and 8). Other books I have read on Ajax briefly go into this very important object but this book really explains it methods and properties and how to use it correctly with XML DOM, RSS, and Web Services.
6) Covers XSLT, which many books do not.

Those are just a few points why this book is a great, complete introduction to Ajax and why it should be in your bookshelf. I highly recommend it.

As an aside, the author embeds humourous throwaway remarks in this text, that are often well worth hunting for and reading for your own amusement.

The book goes through the syntax of Ajax. Which essentially is the syntax of JavaScript itself. Ajax does not really invent a new language. Its innovation comes in how it lets you combine existing approaches in a novel manner. This means that you might consider this book as an advanced text on JavaScript, and how to combine it with using HTML and XML. External to this book, there is a feeling on the Web that Ajax is really a clever marketing of JavaScript.

In any event, the methods described in the book should be easy to an experienced programmer. Especially if you have had any background in even minimally using JavaScript and HTML. The most intricate parts of the book relate to using XPath and XSLT. These have been around for several years. But prior to Ajax, their uptake seems to have been minimal. Perhaps due to their complexity. With Ajax, there is now a prospect that XPath and XSLT might actually see greater use. The author has correctly included them in the book, for completeness. However, if you are new to Ajax, I'd suggest avoiding these chapters on a first pass.

There is some good technical content here but the fluffy writing style is extremely irritating. Consider the following paragraph:

"Regardless of the name they call it by, people either love or hate JavaScript, which is probably why opinions range from it being either the greatest thing since sliced bread or the tool of the devil. Personally, I believe that cheeseburgers are the greatest thing since sliced bread and that the tool of the devil is cellphones. Nothing worse than enjoying a good cheeseburger, with onion rings on the side, and the damn phone starts playing 'The Monster Mash.' But I digress."

If you enjoy reading drivel like this, buy the book--you'll get your fill.

And then there's the occasional piece of dangerous thinking, for example:

"Nevertheless, it works, which is all that really matters when developing an application."

Really?

The source examples are poorly formatted, making the code unnecessarily difficult to read.

I found the book to be an easy read because the author wrote in a conversational, and often humorous manner. However, what I found disturbing and difficult to learn from was that, even though the author included a lot of code in the book, there were almost no screen shots of what should be expected of the code. It made understanding what was being explained difficult because there was no visual side to the code. Also, he talked about the ability to hide pages and using a method to unhide those pages for debugging purposes, but, again, should have included screen shots to demonstrate his techniques. Unfortunately, I will have to find another source to help me learn this topic.

I read AJAX: Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML by Edmond Woychowsky while on vacation. As it turned out, this was a good book to read on vacation. The author touches on many subjects at a very introductory level, including Javascript, XML, XSLT etc. If you know these subjects at an introductory level, I would suggest another book that is more geared toward AJAX and its uses and less geared toward these building blocks. I think most readers know Javascript has conditional statements and looping capability and so don't need to waste time reading several pages about this.

In fact, who the book is geared toward seems to be part of this book's problem. At some points, I thought the author was writing for an audience fresh out of their first day of Programming 101. At others, I felt he was writing for seasoned professionals.

The book reads well if one is on vacation, but if one is working and wants to know the intermediate or advanced details behind AJAX, this is not that book. In the beginning, I found the SG-1 and Star Trek, etc. analogies and asides amusing, but by page 40 I had had enough of these. The book would be significantly shorter without them, and in the end if I had wanted to be entertained I wouldn't have been reading a book on this subject.

I found the reference material formatted in tables to be useful, and I may well come back to this book for that.

One final point... Where are the electronic versions of the code samples? No CD, no website I can find. I guess my only alternative is to go to Safari and cut n paste. The author really doesn't expect his readers to type by hand his multipage code examples, does he? It is 2006 afterall.

The book is an unfortunate failure, given the popularity and importance of the topic. It is filled with geeky humor, but far too much so, such that this fluff adds almost a third to the length of the book. There is plenty of code, but much of it is detached and not useful at all to someone trying to learn these concepts from scratch. The book is of little use to either the expert or the complete beginner. The expert will be puzzled by extremely repetitive explanations of the absolute basics of XML and Javascript, while the beginner will be bewildered by the fact that it contains such introductory passages even as they are overwhelmed by pages of PHP, C#, advanced XML, and countless short-cuts in the code which feel like unnecessary showing off when you are trying to teach users how to use AJAX.

with the reviewer that mentioned the fact that this book is filled with an unbelievable amount of nonsense. If you were to take the good parts of this primer and remove all the other tree pulp waste, it would be a 30-35 page book. The parts that are informative are so, but fall short in depth and sometimes the author just goes on another of his drivel rampages in media res and confuses the bjeezus out of the reader.

One of those computer books that makes you be glad there are lenient return policies for books.

AJAX: CREATING WEB PAGES WITH ASYNCHRONOUS JAVASCRIPT AND XML by Edmond Woychowsky is for web programmers who want to make the most of Ajax's processing powers. From understanding and using back-end code to developing Ajax libraries for code re-use and reference and linking elements with attributes and descriptions, here's an easily-understood, basic guide to not just Ajax, but other open source technologies and how they interact, from Firefox to MySQL.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book was far more informative than I imagined it would be, and I very highly recommend this to anyone who wants to get into Ajax.

Also lots of good humor throughout the book.

Great!

AJAX: Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML by Edmond Woychowsky is one of those book that's entertaining to read, but it's structured somewhat differently that most Ajax books I've read and reviewed.

Contents: Types of Web Pages; Introducing Ajax; HTML/XHTML; JavaScript; Ajax Using HTML and JavaScript; XML; XMLHttpRequest; Ajax Using XML and XMLHttpRequest; XPath; XSLT; Ajax Using XSLT; Better Living Through Code Reuse; Traveling with Ruby on Rails; Traveling Farther with Ruby; The Essential Cross-Browser HTML DOM; Other Items of Interest; Index

Most Ajax books dive into the XMLHttpRequest object pretty quickly, since that's the key element that makes for the unique client/server interaction. From there, the HTML, DOM, and JavaScript elements are filled in. This book takes nearly the opposite tack. The HTML, XML, and JavaScript elements of Ajax are presented first, and you don't get the XMLHttpRequest until you're pretty deep into the material. As such, I almost felt like I was reading a book on web development that just happened to cover Ajax as part of the material. One thing that this book *does* do that's not seen in most Ajax books is build the example application using a substantial amount of relational database access. If you're looking to use Ajax in that type of programming environment or application, this book will help you tie it together a bit better than others. From a pure readability viewpoint, it's pretty entertaining. There's a number of literary and cinematic references that make the material light and conversational.

I'm not sure this would be a title I'd recommend for someone's first exposure to Ajax. It's not as focused as many other offerings out there. But if you're looking for an additional Ajax title or one that talks more about relational database usage, this would fit the bill.