Customer Reviews

Ajax Bible

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is way bigger than it needs to be. The code examples take up enormous amounts of space. When stepping through an example, the entire example code is (usually) repeated with the new line under discussion added. Even the simplest example takes up pages of text. Every new example gets the cross-browser code for obtaining an XMLhttprequest object. Do we really need that repeated for each example?

The examples are mostly very simple, usually replacing one line of text with another. Then there's the screenshots. How informative is it to see two entire Internet Explorer windows, complete with toolbars, and a tiny speck of text that changes to before the Ajax call to an after Ajax call? The coverage of client and server-side libraries is so minimal and the examples so simple that the author could have just listed what libraries are available.

Most of the book has nothing to do with Ajax. There are chapters on DOM, javascript, CSS but I can't understand who their target audience is. For instance, if you don't know anything about DOM, you won't learn enough to be useful. If you do know some (even a little), you won't learn anything at all.

The last five chapters are the advanced Ajax section. The first three are an introduction to PHP. Really. How to declare a variable. How to make a comment. No Ajax at all. Again, if you don't know PHP, you're better off getting a better book. If you think the last two chapters might build on this tutorial of PHP, you're mistaken. No more PHP. On to java server pages, javabeans, and an odd little ending with two page discussion of Model-View-Controller. Again, if you don't know JSP, you won't understand what's going on. If you do, you won't learn anything.

The book is a nice introduction to Ajax, it just contains way to much filler and never does anything in any depth.

Finding a book on Ajax isn't too hard any more. Finding one that covers beginning to advanced Ajax (and does it well) is another story. Steve Holzner has put his entry into the field with Ajax Bible. This is one of the better titles out there, and there's something to appeal to all levels of developers.

Contents:
Part 1 - Fundamental Ajax: Essential Ajax; Know Your JavaScript; Creating Ajax Applications; Serious Ajax Programming
Part 2 - Ajax In Depth: Introducing Ajax Frameworks; More Advanced Ajax Frameworks; Using Server-Side Ajax Frameworks
Part 3 - Ajax and the DOM, XML, CSS, and Dynamic HTML: The DOM and Event Handling; XML and Ajax; Cascading Style Sheets and Ajax; Dynamic HTML and Ajax
Part 4 - Advanced Ajax: Introducing Ajax and PHP; PHP - Functions and HTML Controls; Handling User Input in PHP; Ajax and Security; Filters, MVC, and Ajax
Index

Holzner's written over 100 technology books, so I've come to expect a high level of writing from him. He definitely delivers here. Part 1 gives you all the information you need to start writing an Ajax-enabled application. The JavaScript chapter is designed to give you enough background if you've never worked with Ajax before, but not so lengthy as to dominate the entire book. The Serious Ajax Programming chapter will appeal to readers who have done some Ajax coding already, covering such subjects as multiple XMLHttpRequest objects and calling other domains. Part 2 gets into the whole topic of frameworks and how they can save you time and effort in your coding projects. No need to reinvent the wheel if someone else already has done that. Part 3 covers more of how you can take the returned data from the Ajax call and format your web page to display and use that data. And finally, Part 4 goes into some fairly advanced topics that won't mean much to the beginner, but might be exactly what the advanced developer needs.

What I especially liked are Holzner's code examples. In many books, you get a code example all at once. The following writing then tries to explain whatever was just shown. That's usually OK, but sometimes longer code snippets can get confusing. Holzner "builds" the code alongside the writing. So you first get the start and end of the function along with the explanation. Then you get that code along with a new bold section that explains the next step. This pattern is repeated until the entire code snippet is built. While some might feel that it pads the book with redundant pages of code, I prefer it as you see the specific part of the code being discussed without getting confused about additional lines you don't yet understand.

If there was a need for me to recommend a book on Ajax to someone without knowing their background, this would be a very safe bet. Beginners will get exactly what they need, and intermediate/advanced readers will find stuff that they don't know. Nice job...

This book is perfect for learning AJAX from the ground up. It goes into perfect detail with a lot of example code and great explanations. Considering how important AJAX is to web developers today, I consider this to be a must have in my reference books. The one thing I would say is that this book is more of a tutorial than a quick reference, and I would highly recommend getting the JavaScript Bible to go with it as an excellent reference book for everything javascript, including all the AJAX material.

I just made it to chapter five and I am understanding the topic of AJAX pretty well. I have other AJAX books but they failed to explain a few imporant topics or they did it poorly.

This book is pretty easy to follow. I recommend it!

This book convers very well a lot of subjects on Ajax, and a lot it doesn't.

There are two chapters focused on PHP. These are on the Parte IV, named Advanced Ajax. But in this two chapters, if you try to find Ajax, you won't get Anything!!!

This book is not aimed for advanced or experts of Ajax, it's just for the beginner and maybe intermediate.

If your're searching a book for some advanced Ajax techniques. GET ANOTHER BOOK!!

If you're alive and into computer books, you've got to know the name Holzner. The fellow has got a talent for putting together a book that is always (at least the ones I read) at the top of the heap in terms of readability and content. He does it again in this book. This book is an enhanced version of his Ajax For Dummies, a very good and lower level book. There's more in it.
AJAX for the un-initiated (are they out there ?) is the name given to the technique of using a bunch of already true and tried components, Javascript, XML, dynamic HTML, and CSS and the XMLHttpRequest object to obtain some rather dramatic effects toward creating websites that perform in a crisp way.
As in snap, crackle and pop. AJAX is not a language, it is not a new technology. It is a novel way of using the above mentioned already existing stuff in a very clever way. As such, you need to learn an awful lot of stuff and to learn how it all hangs together. And this is where the author excels. He has already written other books where this stuff is described. He brings it into this book from scratch and does a very good job of tying it all up into a nice neat package. The book is self-contained. It is a very good book for the beginner and the more advanced reader will find some interesting reading too.

This book explains the basics of Ajax very well in the first 4 chapters, better than some other beginning Ajax books I've read. I had my first taste of the author's excellent teaching style in his famous "Inside XML" book, and the same style continues in this book. Holzner is good at explaining novel concepts step by step without jumping the gun, so that the asynchronous nature of the Ajax request is understood well by readers who are not familiar with the concept. For that I'd give the book 4 to 5 stars.

However, after understanding the fundamental, I decided to give the code a try. I downloaded the code from the publisher's web site. Tried a few in chapters 2 and 3 and they all worked, until the "inner.html" example in chapter 4. It simply does not work. I wondered why. I spent some time looking through every line of the code, including the menus.php file, which is part of the example. Finally, I found the reason why: the beginning of the php file contains a typo: The "<?" in the beginning of the file should be changed to "<?php" and everything would work. That is a simple but silly typo which would frustrate a beginner reader, as it is not obvious to someone new to Ajax and PHP!

Another typo from chapter 4: in the section titled "Returning JavaScript Objects", the author first uses this snippet:

var text = "{function: 'multiplier', operand1: 2, operand2: 3};";

But then, in the actual complete code that follows immediately, the same line is changed to:

var text = "{method: 'multiplier', operand1: 2, operand2: 3};";

Note the property name "function" is changed to "method". While the complete code runs fine, the name change without explanation would confuse a beginner user who is still new to JavasSript.

I decided that due to the lack of errata from the publisher's site for the book, and the two typos found so far in the first 4 chapters, the book deserves only 3 stars. I think of books as products, and products should provide some support to customers after they are purchased. The book lacks that customer support.