10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
New to Ajax? You may want to look elsewhere ..., December 13, 2006
This review is from: Ajax for Web Application Developers (Paperback)
I've been working on the Web for a handful+ of years, but save for a brief stunt back in the late 90s, I haven't had much use for JavaScript (with the exception of a few one/two-liners). As such, I came to this book as a new-comer to Ajax.
I also like to learn by way of example, instead of explanation, so code examples are a big plus, if not a requirement.
Unfortunately, from this background, my expectations for this book appear to have been set too high. Granted, it may be because of the lack of full examples in the book (and that they are not available online - more on this momentarily). In fact, that's probably the only thing holding me back.
There's minor errors in code in the book as well, but that's to be expected, and a second edition/printing will fix most of these. By itself, this shouldn't hold you back.
But as a beginner's resource, I'm not sure that this is the book you'd want to pick up. I actually recommend that you take a look elsewhere, particularly online, for how to start with Ajax.
Once you've got the basics down, then you can take a look at this book, as it does provide from very good tips as far as keeping your code standardized.
Had I been the first reviewer, I would have given this book four stars. Since I was not, I have decided to give it three. This is because I feel it's a good book, but not for as large an audience as you may think, based upon reading the description. Again, I feel that this book is more for if you've worked with Ajax, but not in a standard/formal way.
Regarding the code I mentioned above, while it's true that there is a zip file of the code files, I don't feel that it truly contains all of the necessary code. Again, keep in mind that I like to work with full code examples, especially when we're talking about JavaScript (since code is sometimes required in the HEAD, and sometimes not).
I have another Developer's Library book, PHP and MySQL Web Development (the Third Edition), so that's part of why my expectations may have been so high. But, I wasn't expecting the amount of full code that the ColdFusion MX 7 'blue books' provides. ;)
Even if you don't have a working application, let me see where you, the author, are at the end of a section or chapter, even if we're just creating one new file and/or adding code to an existing/new file. This goes for whether you write online or not. If there's code in a chapter, and it's not a snippet, than I'd like to see how the full document's code looks.
I don't care that it's not a complete application, I just may want to have your code on screen while I read through the chapter.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
No customer service, March 26, 2007
This review is from: Ajax for Web Application Developers (Paperback)
Bought the book, liked the author's intent but I ran into one big problem. No source code for the book. I emailed the publisher last week and heard zero back from them.
Note to publishers: Take care of your readers.
I'm afraid customer service is dead. Maybe it has been outsourced.
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