AJAX, Rich Internet Applications, and Web Development for Programmers [Paperback]

Paul J. Deitel (Author), Harvey M. Deitel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0131587382 | ISBN-13: 978-0131587380 | Publication Date: February 8, 2008 | Edition: 1

The practicing programmer's DEITEL^® guide to AJAX, Rich Internet Applications, and web-application development

This book applies the Deitel signature live-code approach to teaching Web 2.0 application development. The book presents concepts in the context of more than 180 fully tested programs (18,000+ lines of code), complete with syntax shading, detailed descriptions, and sample outputs. It features hundreds of tips that will help you build robust applications.

Start with a concise introduction to XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript before rapidly moving on to more advanced client-side development with DOM, XML, AJAX, JSON, and other RIA technologies. Then proceed to server-side development with web servers, databases, PHP, Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET, JavaServer Faces, and web services. When you're finished, you'll have everything you need to build Web 2.0 applications.

The DEITEL Developer Series is designed for practicing programmers. The series presents focused treatments of emerging technologies, including .NET, Java^TM, web services, Internet and web development, and more.

Practical, example-rich coverage of:

• Web 2.0
• XHTML, CSS, JavaScript
• DOM, XML, RSS
• AJAX-Enabled Rich Internet Applications
• JSON, Dojo, Script.aculo.us
• Adobe^® Flash CS3 and Flex
• Web Servers (IIS and Apache)
• Database (SQL, MySQL, ADO.NET and Java DB)
• PHP, Ruby on Rails
• ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX
• JavaServer Faces (JSF)
• SOAP-Based Web Services in Java
• REST-Based Web Services in ASP.NET
• Mashups
• And more...

Visit www.deitel.com to:

• Download code examples
• Check out the growing list of programming, Web 2.0, and software-related Resource Centers
• To receive updates on this book, subscribe to the free DEITEL^® BUZZ ONLINE e-mail newsletter at www.deitel.com/newsletter/subscribe.html
• Read archived Issues of the DEITEL BUZZ ONLINE
• Contact [e-mail] for information on corporate training courses delivered on-site worldwide

Pre-Publication Reviewer Testimonials

"This book is easily the most comprehensive resource of its kind I've seen yet."
--Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path

"A one-stop shop for learning the essentials of web programming."
--Anand Narayanaswamy, ASPAlliance.com

"Excellent for learning to develop standards-compliant web applications...takes you from the browser to the server and the database, covering web development across many programming languages."
--Paul Vencill, MITRE, Inc.

"Cements the browser as a first-class development platform."
--Johnvey Hwang, Splunk, Inc.

"Congratulations on this excellent work. The [Dive Into Web 2.0] chapter is simply astonishing! It's one of the better--if not the best--references on Web 2.0."
--José Antonio González Seco, Parlamento de Andalucia

"The CSS chapter is compact, concise, and full of useful info!"
--Billy B. L. Lim, Illinois State University

"One of the best introductions to JavaScript."
--Raymond Wisman, Indiana University Southeast

"A good introduction to the DOM; doesn't trip over cross-browser incompatibilities."
--Eric Lawrence, Microsoft

"Exceptionally clear Ajax tutorial; best I've reviewed! Great solutions for the very cool type-ahead and edit-in-place AJAX features. 'Libraries to Help Eliminate Cross-Browser Compatibility Issues' is fantastic. This book and your web sites will be often-visited resources (if not best practices in themselves)."
--John Peterson, Insync and V.I.O. Inc.

"Great chapter [on building Flash games]."
--Jennifer Powers, University of Albany

"A solid introduction to Adobe Flex with some very cool applications."
--Matt Chotin, Adobe

"A solid introduction to the capabilities and flexibilities of PHP. Inspired me to tighten up my own code! Easy to follow JSF development with database, Virtual Forms, and Google Maps."
--John Peterson, Insync and V.I.O. Inc.

"Excellent coverage of developing ASP.NET applications, with plenty of sample code."
--Peter Bromberg, VOIP, Inc.

"The web services chapter concludes a comprehensive education on Web 2.0. The examples go a long way to support the Web 2.0 mission of this book."
--George Semeczko, Independent Consultant

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul J. Deitel and Dr. Harvey M. Deitel are the founders of Deitel & Associates, Inc., the internationally recognized programming languages content-creation, corporate-training and Internet business development organization. The Deitels have written many international best-selling programming languages textbooks that millions of people worldwide have used to master C, C++, Java^™, C#, XML, Visual Basic^®, Perl, Python, and Internet and web programming.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

...the challenges are for the designers of these applications: to forget what we think we know about the limitations of the Web, and begin to imagine a wider, richer range of possibilities. It's going to be fun.
--Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path
"Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications"
(adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000385.php)

Introduction

Welcome to Internet and web programming andWeb 2.0! And welcome to a walkthrough of the Web 2.0 phenomenon from the technical, business and social perspectives. We've worked hard to create what we hope you'll find to be an informative, entertaining and challenging learning experience. At Deitel & Associates, we write programming language professional books and textbooks for Prentice Hall, deliver corporate training worldwide and developWeb 2.0 Internet businesses. This book reflects today's Web 2.0, Ajax-based, Rich Internet Application-development methodologies.

The technologies you'll learn here are appropriate for experienced professionals who build substantial information systems. You'll find "industrial-strength" code examples. We have attempted to write in a clear and straightforward manner using best practices. Perhaps most important, the book presents hundreds of working code examples and shows the outputs produced when these examples are rendered in browsers or run on computers. We present all concepts in the context of complete working programs.We call this the "live-code approach." All of the source code is available for download from

www.deitel.com/books/ajaxfp/

under the heading "Download Code Examples and Other Premium Content for Registered Users," once you've registered and logged on to our site.

The early chapters present a carefully paced introduction to "client-side" web programming, using the popular JavaScript language and the closely related technologies of XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and the DOM (Document Object Model). The material in the JavaScript chapters presents a solid foundation for the deeper treatment of scripting in the Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, PHP and Ruby on Rails chapters later in the book. Experienced programmers will read the early chapters quickly and find the treatment of scripting in the later chapters to be rigorous and challenging.

Today's users are accustomed to desktop applications with rich graphical user interfaces (GUIs), such as those used on Apple's Mac OS X systems, Microsoft Windows systems, various Linux systems and more. Users want applications that employ the multimedia capabilities of graphics, images, animation, audio and video. They want applications that can run on the Internet and the web and communicate with other applications.

Users want to apply database technologies for storing and manipulating their business and personal data. They want applications that are not limited to the desktop or even to some local computer network, but that can integrate Internet and web components, and remote databases. Programmers want to use all these capabilities in a truly portable manner so that applications will run without modification on a variety of platforms.

In this book, we present a number of powerful software technologies that will enable you to build these kinds of systems. Early in the book we focus on building the portions of web-based applications that reside on the client side (i.e., the portions of applications that typically run in web browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox or Microsoft's Internet Explorer), using technologies such as the XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, Flash, Flex and Extensible Markup Language (XML). Later in the book we concentrate on using technologies such as web servers, databases, PHP, Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET, ASP.NET Ajax and JavaServer Faces (JSF) to build the server side of web-based applications. These portions of applications typically run on "heavy-duty" computer systems on which organizations' business-critical websites reside. By mastering the technologies in this book, you'll be able to build substantial web-based, client/server, database-intensive, "multitier" applications.

If you have questions as you read this book, send an e-mail to [e-mail]--we'll respond promptly. For updates on the book and the status of all supporting software, and for the latest news on Deitel publications and services, visit www.deitel.com. Sign up at www.deitel.com/newsletter/subscribe.html for the free Deitel^® Buzz Online e-mail newsletter and check out www.deitel.com/ResourceCenters.html for our growing list of Internet and web programming, Internet business, Web 2.0 and related Resource Centers. Each week we announce our latest Resource Centers in the newsletter.

Key Features

Here's some of the key features of Ajax, Rich Internet Applications and Web Development for Programmers:

• Reflects today's Web 2.0, Ajax-based, Rich Internet Application-development methodologies.
• Coverage of the two leading web browsers--Internet Explorer and Firefox. All client-side applications in the book run correctly on both browsers.
• Focus on Web 2.0 technologies and concepts.
• Chapter on Web 2.0 and Internet Business (reviewed by leaders in the Web 2.0 community).
• Focus on building Rich Internet Applications with the interactivity of desktop applications.
• Chapter on building Ajax-enabled web applications with "raw" Ajax and with the Dojo JavaScript libraries. Applications in this chapter demonstrate partial-page updates and type-ahead capabilities.
• Chapter on Adobe Flex--a Rich Internet Application framework for creating scalable, cross-platform, multimedia-rich applications for delivery within the enterprise or across the Internet.
• Chapter on rapid applications development of database-driven web applications with Ruby on Rails; also discusses developing Ajax applications with the Prototype and Script.aculo.us libraries.
• Two chapters on Adobe Flash CS3, including building a computer game.
• Significant treatment of client-side scripting with JavaScript.
• Significant treatments of XHTML DOM manipulation and JavaScript events.
• Significant treatment of XML DOM manipulation with JavaScript.
• Chapter on building SOAP-based web services with Java and REST-based web services with ASP.NET (using Visual Basic).
• Chapter on PHP 5.
• Coverage of ASP.NET, featuring ASP.NET Ajax.
• JavaServer Faces (JSF) coverage emphasizing building Ajax-enabled JSF applications.
• Client-side case studies that enable you to interact with preimplemented serverside applications and web services that we host at test.deitel.com.
• Case studies including Deitel Cover Viewer (JavaScript/DOM), Address Book
• (Ajax), Cannon Game (Flash), Weather/Yahoo! Maps Mashup (Flex), Mailing List (PHP/MySQL), Message Forum and Flickr Photo Viewer (Ruby on Rails), Guest Book and Secure Books Database (ASP.NET), Address Book with Google Maps (JavaServer Faces) and Blackjack (JAX-WS web services).

All of this has been carefully reviewed by a team of 38 distinguished industry developers and academics.

AJAX, Rich Internet Applications and Web Development for Programmers Architecture

This book focuses on Web 2.0 and Rich Internet Application (RIA) development. Our goal is to develop webtop applications that have the responsiveness, look and feel of traditional desktop applications. Deitel & Associates, Inc. has evolved into a development organization, while continuing its focus on programming languages textbook and professional book authoring, and corporate training. We're building the infrastructure for the Internet businesses we're designing and developing as part of our Web 2.0 Internet Business Initiative. This book includes discussions of many practical issues we've encountered in developing that infrastructure.

The book is divided into several parts. Chapter 1 introduces Web 2.0 from the technical, business and social perspectives, and provides a foundation for understanding Rich Internet Application development. If you are a serious web developer, you'll want to test your web applications across many browsers and platforms. The examples for the book execute correctly on both Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Mozilla's Firefox 2 (FF2) browsers. Most of the examples will also work in other browsers such as Opera and Safari, but may not work on earlier browsers. Microsoft Windows users should upgrade to IE7 and install Firefox; readers with other operating systems should install Firefox.

The second part of the book, Chapters 2–13, presents a detailed treatment of Ajax component technologies, including a comprehensive treatment of JavaScript that spans nine chapters and concludes with Chapter 13's treatment of Ajax development. Ajax is not a new technology--we've been writing about all but one of its component technologies since 1999, and many of the technologies existed before that. However, Ajax is one of the key technologies of Web 2.0 and RIAs. Chapters 2–13 cover "raw" Ajax programming, where you'll handle the details yourself--several later chapters in the book demonstrate technologies that encapsulate Ajax functionality to help you easily build Ajax-based applications that operate across a wide variety of browsers and browser versions without your having to be concerned with the low-level details.

The th...

Product Details

• Paperback: 1040 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (February 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131587382
• ISBN-13: 978-0131587380
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #752,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Ajax

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tip of the iceberg, March 4, 2008

By 

Tanskanen Tuomo (Finland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: AJAX, Rich Internet Applications, and Web Development for Programmers (Paperback)

The book covers only tip of the iceberg on all the subjects it advertises to cover. The list is over 20 subjects, and most are really quick and dirty introductions, but nothing that can really be used. The book probably rules if you are a total newbie to all of the subjects and need a quick intro to things, but beyond that, nothing new here. Googling the titles serves at least as good.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not What I Expected, August 5, 2008

By 

Brian (IL USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: AJAX, Rich Internet Applications, and Web Development for Programmers (Paperback)

Overall, this is a good overview book. I thought it would be more detailed regarding tying Ajax with server-side technologies. It's more for the beginner type who's curious about how Web 2.0 works. This book does a pretty good job of showing a high-level view of client-side javascript and CSS interaction to manipulate the DOM, but the examples are very basic in nature. I would recommend this book for the curious non-technical person. I would not recommend this book for the professional.