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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book on JavaScript Professional Developmen, June 26, 2009
This review is from: Pro Javascript RIA Techniques: Best Practices, Performance and Presentation (Paperback)
Over the bast couple year, the JavaScript language has come of age for web developers. As soon as the AJAX boom hit a few years ago, there has been a real resurgence of web developers using JavaScript. Of course that means more books on the topic especially for high end development for AKAX widgets and components.
The recent books in the past year or two that have come out have primarily been focused on using JavaScript libraries to create AJAX components but really havent really explained throughly how and AJAX enabled website should be developed. This book is the exception and really covers everything you would need to know to create RIA (Rich Internet Applications) which basically means AJAX enabled components using JavaScript and possibly a server-side langauge as well.
The author first explains the foundations of building an HTML/XHTML web site, starting with best practices and CSS tips and tricks. This chapter is a great foundation for anyone needing a refresher on the best way to create scable web pages/sites. Because even with the most sophisticated JavaScript code, you always need a good foundation for your site which will always be XHTML and CSS.
The next chapter is a great chapter on Object Oriented development with JavaScript. Although JavaScript is a little limited in creating class-based code, you still can work around most of the limitations in the JavaScript langauge with some smart coding or hacking). This chapter covers everything you need to know and is a very important chapter to start your work in creating RIA using JavaScript.
The author does an excellent job in explaining these complex techniques to the reader. His examples are very concise, easy to understand and explained very well. The expected readership of this book would be anybody who has a basic understanding of web development using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript.
The 3rd chapter is one of my favorites because it covers everything about how different web browsers execute JavaScript and what areas can affect performance and bottle-necking. The athor does a great job in reviewing ever browser available with lots of benchmarking statistics that are current (covers IE 8, FF3, Opera 10, etc) and saves you hours of time researching these stats on the web.
The rest of book has some really valuable information such as: Additional Performance tweaking, the best way for visual responsiveness to the user, image replacement techniques, multimedia playback, widget control creation, and even off-line storage.
The book isnt huge (only 400 pages) but cover ALOT of information that will take you awhile to review and fully implement. This book will be a very valuable resource for any web developer looking to understand how to create RIA or the web.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid reference. Covers select standards and HTML 5 topics relevant to RIA Development, May 28, 2009
This review is from: Pro Javascript RIA Techniques: Best Practices, Performance and Presentation (Paperback)
This book opens with an overview of best practices and principles (e.g., progressive enhancement, graceful degradation) to adhere to when building professional-quality RIAs that deliver the best possible accessibility and user experience. It then provides tips on how to leverage caching and file compression to enhance RIA download experience and how to make effective use of CSS not just for layouts but also for managing user feedback (e.g., perception of work getting started, time elapsed, etc.). By far, however, concerns impacting RIA development the most revolve around browsers' lack of native or incompatible support for certain features, which some in the industry have attempted to address by publishing cross-browser Javascript frameworks, libraries, or components. This book discusses, demos with code samples, and evaluates some of these reusable libraries and components, including those used for: dynamically rendering text requiring custom fonts, audio and video playbacks, custom control or widget rendering (e.g., calendar, sliders), offline data storage and management, and dynamic graph building or visualizations. For those who might have a need or just want to learn how to develop such libraries or components from scratch, the author also obliges with several well-commented code samples. As added bonus, the author's discussion of WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative: Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and current states of browser support for HTML 5 tags such as <audio>, <video>, <canvas> (native support for vector graphics), and offline data storage and management APIs are pretty good and helpful. Overall, a very well-written and really solid reference book, in my opinion.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review by Didier Mouronval, August 3, 2009
This review is from: Pro Javascript RIA Techniques: Best Practices, Performance and Presentation (Paperback)
This book has really been a good surprise for me. Not only it tackles the best techniques for nice and understandable coding, but also it treats how to manage a whole RIA project and gives you useful examples clearly explained.
The first part of the book is devoted to generic HTML, CSS and JavaScript best practices.
We can see how to build what the author calls "solid foundation" based upon good syntax and well presentated code.
Then, we are explained plenty of very usefull details and tips to build a functionnal and maintenable RIA.
All these advices come along with pieces of functionnal code, showing examples of how to carry this out.
Finally, we gather all that have been seen to build our own JavaScript library, with every chunk of the code explained very clearly. Then, a focus is given on a full project creation, meaning how to elaborate it and how to make it easily maintenable.
This part of the book should be mainly reminders, yet the level is increasing gradually to reach advanced concepts.
In the second part, the author points all the improvements we should give to our code in terms of performance.
Performance is seen in a global way, that's to say from the server optimizations all the way to the user's interaction.
Every single part of a complete Internet application is detailed (server-side, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images etc.) to allow your visitors to take the best advantage of your application, including warning them of actions being made.
The last part of the book takes up all that have been explained to show powerfull and original examples of what can be done following all the points given. All the examples are very strongly commented and explained so that the functions can be fully understood.
As a conclusion, I would say that this book should become a must have for all RIA programmers who want to increase their knowledge and have solid understanding of all the different points in play in such applications.
JavaScript is always present, but the range of the book is much wider than strict JavaScript.
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