Customer Reviews

Professional Ajax (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book does a good job academically of showing how Ajax has evolved (itself a debatable topic) and how it is used in modern-day applications. The book doesn't marry the reader to any one particular web development framework, effectively citing examples in PHP, .NET, and JavaServer Pages. Practically, the authors exhibit a proper mix of (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Dynamic HTML and XmlHttpRequests, showing how the technologies are blended for developing next-gen UIs.

There are great discussions of advanced concepts like JSON, REST, and SOAP-based web services and how Ajax is incorporated into them. Also, coding to allow cross-browser compatibility is stressed throughout the book, particularly in instantiating an XMLHTTP object across IE, Firefox, Mozilla and Safari. The authors' zXml and XParser are cited as two of several third-party libraries to seamlessly pull this off.

Some gems that I found within the book include Chapter 8 - "Web Site Widgets", which is very helpful, giving practical demonstrations and usable code for several Ajax-driven mini-applications we could all use in our web projects. Chapter 7's case study of a Google Suggest-style autocomplete text box was very elegant, using JSON as an alternative to XML's typically verbose payload. Chapter 2 - "Ajax Patterns" also abstracts many of the features common to apps using Ajax (i.e., polling, autosave, incremental updating). All are well done and greatly appreciated.

Syntactically, the authors' programming style is very clever. While not exhaustively described, the book shows how to feign object-oriented programming in client-side JavaScript, making liberal use of such time-saving coding tricks like faux classes, inline function definitions and prototypes.

In criticism, the one chapter I found to be a letdown was Chapter 5 - "RSS/Atom", mainly because I'm very involved with work in that space. A terse description of content syndication is presented, but then followed exclusively by an analysis the FooReader.NET web-based RSS aggregator app. It's nice, but doesn't take a more holistic view of how Ajax is being used elsewhere. I would have also liked to see examples in emerging platforms, specifically Ruby on Rails and the Ajax support built directly into that web framework.

But overall this is a very good introductory read for experienced programmers wanting to get up to speed on the next big thing in advanced web UI development. I'm a better, more aware, more prepared developer for having read it.

As a newcomer to Ajax, I cant comment on the coverage but it seemed reasonably comprehensive.

But the code walkthroughs were terrific - completely readable, easy to follow and sometimes even quite fun to read. I cant remember reading better code runthroughs ever.

I found this book to be extremely informative. It is written in a clear, engaging style that makes it a pleasure to read. The examples are well constructed, relevant to real world applications, and thoroughly explained. The essential bits of code are highlighted for quick reading. The most irritating thing about web development is cross-browser support, and authors do a great job to making this less intimidating and point readers to libraries to abstract away the differences. Also covered are related JavaScript XML, XPath, XSLT support, web services, RSS/Atom.

PHP is the primary server side language used, though they chose .NET/C# for creating a web service. Microsoft's .NET web service tools are excellent, but I would have liked it if the authors had rounded this out with giving the basics of creating a web service using open source solutions.

If you want to learn Ajax techniques and related technologies, this book is well worth your time and money.

This book is very well done. It is a good introduction to AJAX and gets you up to speed quick.

CONS:
1. Not enough treatment on the server side of things in the beginning chapters. Needed a little more on serializing XML, but then how do you do that in a platform-agnostic way. I was a little disappointed that there were little or no examples in java/jsp/servlet during the Basics, Patterns and XML chapters. Could have used that. Assumes knowledge of PHP.

2. Need a little more treatment of XML/XPath/XSLT. Gets a little bit confusing when the technologies are all combined.

3. I feel like the patterns chapter could have followed the XML/XPath/XSLT chapter.

4. Maybe JSON could be left for the back of the book since the X in AJAX stands for XML. Just a thought.

5. About 65 pages of the book are just on AjaxMail, which has numerous examples, but was a lot of reading to go through on one application.

PROS:

1. Not a beginner's book. Assumes knowledge of many things, like PHP, network protocols, HTTP, etc. I'm glad a lot of those details were left out and AJAX was focused on.

2. Gets you up and running with good, working examples.

3. The patterns chapter is very helpful in deciding how to use the stuff.

4. Good chapter on widgets.

5. Bang for the buck when talking about the AJAX frameworks that are out there. Fairly good treatment of JPSpan, DWR and AJAX.NET.

Professional Ajax will enable you to get up to speed with Ajax, the problems that Ajax solves, and common patters for Ajax use. The authors also introduce you to a cross-platform library to ease your own script development. The writing style is clear and no-nonsense.

I was happy to see their approach in explaining scripting techniques. Once to address IE, once to address Mozilla, and once to address the combined approach. I found this to be very helpful, as most sources jumble it all together. I was not happy to see that Opera and Safari were entirely ignored. The world doesn't need another Ajax app that fails in these browsers!

I was also surprised to see that the book is most definitely not platform-agnostic. At least not to the extent that I was led to believe by the description and comments. Examples are C# and PHP.

Too much time was spent focused on the server side. For example, the web servcies section spent more time showing you how to setup a web service in .Net than it did showing you how to consume it with Ajax. The server side could have been abstracted -- in a book about Ajax, the server side is a black box -- all that matters is what is sent out, and what is returned. I couldn't care less about the algorithms used to create the return.

All-in-all, it was a good read. Fast, to the point, concise. I'd also recommend Ajax in Action for a more thorough review of patterns, a look at elegantly creating reusable Ajax components, and coverage of other Ajax-related topics like usage of frameworks.

I'm a senior ASP.NET/Web developer with no Ajax experience. This is my first Ajax book. I wanted to learn Ajax from the ground up, not just the Microsoft controls. Our ecommerce site is very highly trafficed and there's no forgiveness for inefficiencies. This book certainly fulfilled my expectations, but it also introduced me to some new worlds of concepts that I did not expect. For instance, the chapter on Ajax Patterns: It's a new way of thinking about Web Development. I'm very impressed with its content. The book is clearly written, the examples are excellent. I am learning a great deal from this book. Nice job guys!

Last year (2006), I plowed through practically every available book on Ajax. This one really stands out for its excellent historical overview of how Ajax grew to exist. It also is one of the few that covers the use of hidden frames and Iframes as an Ajax technique (it has been around longer but is still used widely). The writing is outstanding. If you can only buy one Ajax book, this one should be it.

A free copy of chapter 1, "What is Ajax?" is available online at [...]

AJAX is the we technology everybody is talking abot now and its something that you should know if you are a web developer/designer now or want to be.

This book starts with a great chapter explaing how AJAX started and what it really is and how it works. Explaining how AJAX really works can be dificult for the beginner and the authors do it wonderfully. The next chapter goes into the basics of AJAX and how to create a very simple example(s) to give the user a solid foundation of how this new technology works (old technology but new way of using it actally).

The next chapter goes into Patterns which describes the programming techniques used by AJAX applications. This is a crucial chapter because it is this technique that allows developers to reall understand how to develop dynamic applications with AJAX. Lots of keywords are thrown around (throttling, periodic refreshing, multi-stage downloads, pending requests, etc) and each are excplained in detailed in a very concise manner that does not confuse the reader.

The next chapter focuses on the data format that is used to transfer this data (XML, XPath, XSLT) between each other using AJAX. Various techniques with the different browsers are discussed as well as workarounds if needed for the browser differences.

The rest of the book covers web services, JSON, widgets, andhte different frameworks that are available to use.

A very complete AJAX book that will get any reader ready to se AJAX in their web development work. A must by...

A concise and informative introduction to AJAX technologies. A lot of great examples, including famous ones like Google maps and Gmail make learning about AJAX relevant and fun. A short history of AJAX and how it evolved into what it is today was also nice. I was hoping for more of a reference guide, but other than that, no real complaints here.

Last month, I was contacted by Wrox Press asking me to review of this book, Professional Ajax. I of course jumped at the opportunity, and have found this to be a very well rounded guide to Ajax technologies. It serves not only a comprehensive overview of all the various methods for handing complex asynchronous information exchange, but is also a handy reference guide for creating highly sought after effects for integration in your own site projects.

In case you didn't already know, Ajax itself was a term coined by Jesse James Garrett in an article he wrote for Adaptive Path in February of 2005. It simply stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. A little over a year later, and the entire web is abuzz with the new terminology. I was even able to attend a panel at SXSW on Ajax, led by Jesse himself. People just can't seem to get enough!

Aside from JavaScript, it is important to realize that this mantra is less about a specific language and more about a method of user experience enhancement. The authors of this book, Nicholas C. Zakas, Jeremy McPeak and Joe Fawcett do a good job of staying platform neutral and language agnostic. They cover a myriad of examples with PHP, Java and the Microsoft .NET platform.

They start out with a brief history, and show how the logic behind Ajax has evolved from framesets to iframes, and now the popular XMLHttpRequest. Since this is not an official W3C standard, a small bit of code forking is necessary. Most modern browsers handle it the same way, but Internet Explorer still treats it as an ActiveXObject. However, this change is slated with the release of IE7.

Since I'm already pretty familiar with the theories behind Ajax, the chapters that stood out to me the most were 6, 7 and 8. Chapter six was devoted to web services, covering SOAP, WSDL and REST. It also shows how to make a rudimentary browser calculator, and a spell checker using the Google API.

Chapter seven focused pretty exclusively on JSON, a lightweight alternative to using XML for asynchrounous data transmission. XML is argued to be more human readable, but since this information is created to be parsed and not read, the proponents of JSON prefer the lighter file size and ease of use.

The drawbacks of using JSON over XML are that there is not native support for it in any languages other than JavaScript, as it's a code variant and not a markup language. So, some content transformation is involved in making use of it. An additional benefit of XML is that Flash can parse it natively more easily, as of version 8. It's really just based on preference.

Using JSON, they teach how to recreate Google's popular auto-suggest feature, which completes possible search terms as you type. Chapter eight is where things really start to get fun though, because they teach you how to make even more web-based widgets. These include an animated news ticker, a weather checker, and a localized website search engine using a few external API's.

The whole of chapter nine is devoted to constructing a web-based POP3 email application that mimicks the functionality of Gmail, including the courtesy of keeping the browser's Back and Forward buttons working normally. Chapter ten finishes off the book nicely by covering some popular Ajax frameworks, such as JPSpan for PHP, DWR for Java SDK and Ajax.NET for the .NET platform. Bascially, if you want to really delve into Ajax concepts, this book is ideal.