Customer Reviews

Ajax in Action

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Let me first preface this review by saying this is the first technical book that I've read cover to cover TWICE prior to posting a review. I had to make sure the stuff stuck, because the material covered in Manning's very excellent "Ajax in Action" is really deep. But bringing the next evolution of user experience, giving your web applications a rich client feel, isn't completely easy. This won't scare you away from using Ajax in your existing applications, but make you aware of exactly what to expect.

The book first starts out by presenting a healthy discussion of the key components of remote scripting - CSS, the DOM, JavaScript's XmlHttpRequest object and client callbacks - and how they interact within the scope of your project. Before diving into full-on Ajax development, authors Dave Crane and Eric Pascarello discuss the need for object-oriented JavaScript programing, which will be foreign and awkward to most developers, even those coming from procedural backgrounds like Java and C++. The authors familiarize you with the various ways of composing the unconventional constructs available (JSON-RPC, prototypes) for optimizing remote scripting.

Best practices are encouraged throughout the chapters and enforced in all code snippets. The use of patterns like Observer, Command and MVC and refactoring and module-based programming (mainly .NET assemblies and Java servlets) permeate the entire work. The actual meat of the book doesn't get started until Chapter 9, which the authors clearly state, dealing with the aforementioned discussion of raw JavaScript programming that'll be completely new to most people. But for those not wanting to engage in the massive task of writing syntax by hand, the major libraries available are thankfully referenced.

The book also isn't a "copyist's" title, one that can provide working code right out of the gate. Also, the audience for this work should be fairly sopisticated and experienced with modern-day web programming, as the book assumes a certain level of competency and doesn't waste time with rudimentary concepts or examples. Crane and Pascarello take a platform-agnostic look at incorporating Ajax-style programming into web applications, citing examples in PHP, Java and .NET, and accordingly the examples are all partial and abstracted, to be implemented in whatever platform the developer/reader is familiar with.

This is also one of the few books that I've ever recommended people read the appendices in addition to the chapters. Most titles have supplementary info that doesn't match the flow of the chapters, or exclusionary stuff you can skip, but this book is really a tome of good reading. Appendix B is an outstanding discussion on JavaScript OOP, providing an introduction to and examples in JSON.

Ajax programming is a lot more complex than it lets on, but not as daunting as you might think. This book is critical in your understanding of how to make the next big thing in web development to work for you. A must-have.

Ajax is a Web programming technique that lets you develop rich, dynamic, interactive interfaces using nothing but JavaScript, HTML and CSS on the desktop. It's changing the landscape of the Web, and this book will help you gear up to be part of the revolution. Renaissance men David Crane and Eric Pascarello show you how to weave together the many pieces that make up an Ajax application: JavaScript, server-side components, HTML, CSS, and XML. More importantly, they teach you the tools and techniques you'll need to develop industrial-strength applications using JavaScript, a language that doesn't always get as much respect as it deserves.

This is really two books in one: first, it's a look at the Ajax technologies and prescriptions for their effective use. There are detailed discussions of relevant design patterns and of strategies for designing usable and secure applications. There are substantial discussions of a number of Ajax frameworks, libraries, and development tools, as well as developer features of Web browsers that you've probably never learned about but can't live without.

The second half of the book is a cookbook, a compendium of detailed blueprints for concocting your own versions of a trifecta of Ajax showcases: dynamic double combo boxes, typeahead select boxes, and Web portals with selectable, draggable portlets. There are even recipes for assembling standalone Ajax applications that use existing third-party Web services as a back-end. I liked that the cookbook built on the earlier parts of the book by deliberately applying the design patterns and refactoring techniques therein described.

If you're serious about helping to revolutionize the Web, you need this book.

"Ajax in Action" is not only an excellent book on Ajax, but the best JavaScript book I have ever read. The authors note early on that Ajax is a process, not a technology. This theme permeates the book. There is an emphasis on requirements, design, implementation, testing and maintenance. So the book shows how to do a real project, not just how to code.

Keeping with the real project theme, there is information throughout on refactoring and design patterns. The authors present low level coding idioms as well. All this creates a language for coding Ajax applications. The second half of the book walks you through the entire development process for five sample applications.

The book targets a wide audience range, from enterprise developers to self-taught scripters. Basic concepts are explained concisely for newcomers and experienced developers may skim certain sections. However these sections are a very small part of the 600+ page book.

An appendix covers an introduction to JavaScript. While you would want to supplement it with materials from the web, it clearly covers the advanced topics that are hard to find elsewhere. There are also introductions and tips on CSS and DOM. In short, I learned a ton about non-Ajax development and page manipulations too.

And the book even has a screenshot of JavaRanch! I was expecting a good book when I saw Bear and Ernest's comments on the back. But it still managed to exceed my expections!

If you are an experienced programmer and already familiar with design patterns, refactoring, and application architecture, then you will probably find this book to be very frustrating.

The author seems to be on a crusade to rid the world of bad coding practices, and though I fully salute his efforts, I think this book is horribly mis-titled. A more appropriate title would have been "Principles of Web architecture and design... and a few words about Ajax".

All I wanted was to learn the mechanics of ajax, and after reading the first 100 pages and getting nothing (new) out of it, I felt like my time had been robbed.

Huh? Kind of a weird title! What I mean by it though is that this is an excellent book that covers so many things that even if you aren't especially interested in Ajax but are interested in client-side coding, this book would be a valuable addition to your bookshelf.

There is a good bit of "professional" Javascript coding here... Javascript, and client-side coding in general, has historically had a bad rap against it because it's so easy to throw together a ton of spaghetti code that is difficult to debug, extend and maintain. This book will show you how to avoid those pitfalls.

Things like properly applying patterns, implenting clean separation of concerns, advanced debugging techniques and reusing all the good OOP techniques you use on the back-end are covered very well.

Of course, Ajax is covered fantastically well too... while I would say this isn't a book for beginners (it dives in almost immediately with some code that would probably spin a beginners' head), if you already have a good grasp of Javascript, HTTP and web development in general then this will be the absolute perfect introduction to Ajax. The book starts by giving a solid description of what Ajax is, and more importantly, why it can represent such a paradigm shift for so many people.

From there they dive into the theory behind it, how it works, how it differs from what you probably have done before, and also how to do the same thing without Ajax.

After that it's example city! Plenty of demonstrations of the techniques being talked about, and all the while they continue to explain it from a theoretical standpoint too so that you not only can copy the code as-is and use it, you understand why it is done how it is, so you can apply that knowledge on your own later.

One thing very much worth mentioning is that there are examples in .Net, Java and PHP, and if I remember correctly there is an equal number of examples in each. I think this is a wonderful decision on the authors' part. Everyone should find something here. And of course most of it is actually client-side anyway, so even if you aren't a PHP guy for instance, you should have little difficulty following the PHP examples along too.

To summarize, if you are in the market for a book on Ajax, or indeed just a book on how to code Javascript on the client in a "good" way, you need not look any further than this book in my opinion. It's sitting on my bookshelf, and I'm sure I'll be referring to it as time goes on without question. Highly recommended!

I just stumbled across a book called Ajax in Action and it is wonderful. I had no idea this book was even out. It provides a more comprehensive overview of Ajax technologies than any book on the market (or even in beta) including a great section on Ajax Design Patterns.

The coverage is nice and varied. They show you how to write Ajax from scratch first, including lots of details about how it works and how to use it well in your application. They then go on to detail the many libraries and frameworks available, and show you how to refactor your code with these libraries. Finally, there are plenty of examples of Ajax applications toward the end of the book.

Highly recommended for anyone developing what you might call a Web 2.0 application. The only Ajax book I would keep on my shelf.

I have to say, I've been extremely impressed with all the Manning books I've read. These books remind me of O'reilly books back in the day. Ajax in Action is no exception, although it was not what I was expecting. To be honest, I didn't know what I was looking for in an Ajax book, but I looked through many of the latest crop of books and chose this one based on the reviews I've seen people give it and the strength of the imprint.

This book, and more books like it, are exactly the sort of books that are so hard to find for scripting languages, it isn't primarily a book about language or syntax, but a book about programming. They spend the first half of the book discussing techniques, referencing heavily Model-View-Controller and the Gang of Four's design patterns (which is also must read!). If they mentioned and showed their process of refactoring one more time in the book, I would have had to put it down to wipe away the tears of joy.

The second half of the book walks through several examples of application building. The examples are clear and useful. Their thought processes are well explained and even when you don't agree with the way they are doing something, it is really beneficial to learn why they do things the way they did. And their process of starting broadly and then refining and refactoring each example is extremely helpful to see how one can actually put into practice these techniques in javascript.

This book is for someone who already has a decent familiarity with javascript as well as with basic AJAX principles. They cover, broadly, http requests, working with the DOM and CSS, and the event model. But they cover it more as a refresher as well as with an eye towards the best ways to implement them in your programming. They also talk throughout the book and extensively in the very interesting appendices, different toolkits and development tools that one can use with javascript.

There were some downsides, to this book however. I think because of the way they were structuring the book they often introduce a code snippet with some complex logic and hand wave around the complexity until several pages afterwards when they get to the section where it becomes the topic of discussion. If one isn't immersed in javascript it can become a bit difficult to separate what should be obvious and what they will be talking about later.

They also spend a lot of time and space on the server side of things, giving examples in a several languages (although they give very short shrift to perl). I'm not sure that that is overly helpful, I think they should have assumed that you knew the server side language and simply referenced what the server side should be returning. The scope of the book simply didn't allow them to go into depth with these languages and if you can program the language already the examples were uneccessary and if you don't know the language it wasn't enough for you to usefully do anything with them.

But those two problems are far outweighed by all the other goodness they've packed into this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone doing any javascript development.

As a whole the authors do an excellent job of covering AJAX. Their stance of treating AJAX as a fully fledged application framework on it own and that structured, patterned development techniques are required for successful projects is realistic and welcomed. The examples are "real-world" and relevant, such as "live search" and "web portals". As is expected, each successive part of the book builds on the previous content. Often examples in the book are presented as a first edition that functions well, but then the examples are refactored to make them more scalable and re-useable. This "get something that works and then make it better" style is refreshing to see as it is how most of us actually code in the real life.
If you are looking for a "cookbook" style text with example after example hurled at you, this book may not be for you but for those of you looking for a new approach to web application design, you've come to the right place. As many of the "In Action" books in the past, I feel Ajax In Action is destined to be added to the standard reading list for anyone interested in serious AJAX development.

If you're managing your career as an IT professional, you probably keep a watch on new technologies that might interest or affect you. Sometimes that means learning a whole new batch of skills. Occasionally you can get lucky and find that you only need to learn how to combine existing skills in a new way. That rare situation now exists with a "new" technology called Ajax. There's significant buzz around it right now, and it's definitely worth checking out. To help you get a handle on Ajax, Manning Publications has just released a book titled Ajax In Action by Dave Crane, Eric Pascarello, and Darren James. It's one of the first books out on the subject, and it's worth some consideration as your next book purchase.

Ajax In Action doesn't try and teach you Javascript and CSS from scratch. The assumption is that you're already generally familiar with those parts. Being comfortable with the DOM is also helpful as you start to work your way through the material. But even if you're not at the point you'd like to be with those things, the examples and explanations are clear enough to follow and understand. The authors have done an excellent job in providing copious code samples, too. Between their samples and your ideas, you should be able to get some basic examples of your own up and running in short order. I also appreciate how the authors treat Ajax as a programming discipline, complete with patterns and architectural information. The end result is that you'll end up being a much better programmer on all fronts by the time you finish.

Rather than play catch-up with yet another technology, try catching the front part of this wave. Buy a copy of Ajax In Action and blow some users away with what you can do.

First couple of chapters are ok.
Thereafter, the book has a nice discussion on oo patterns for javascript. Along the way, the book tries to give many ideas on how to design application framework. Yet I would expect to have learned all of this somewhere else! IMHO, a good book on AJAX would introduce the subject and show how AJAX changes the old ways of app design. Who needs the explanation of old concepts again.

I found this book annoying to read. It is not going straight to the point.