Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself AJAX in 10 Minutes

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

 

 

Who is the author?

Phil Ballard is behind themousewhisperer and crackajax.

Description

The small book of some 220 pages has four parts.

The first part resumes what you need to know before doing any AJAX: HTML, HTTP, JavaScript, PHP, XML. Explains javascript-access to XML DOM.

The second part introduces AJAX. AJAX is motivated by a better user experience that is more like a desktop application and by saving bandwidth. Phil goes on to introduce the central part of AJAX, the XMLHttpRequest Object, with simple examples returning html-snippets as text.

The third part show how to use the XMLHttpRequest object with text and with XML, asynchronously, with SOAP, and lists some gotchas. The SOAP example constructs the SOAP requests directly in javascript and takes the SOAP response apart in the same way.

The fourth part briefly recommends three toolkits for AJAX programming:
prototype.js, by Sam Stephenson, which provides useful DHTML functions and ajax-encapsulation.
Rico, which goes on top of prototype.js, which lets you register page elements for manipulation from an AJAX-response. Also gives drag & drop, which is not AJAX, but often will be followed by an AJAX communication of the user action to the server.
XOAD, PHP server side AJAX support, by Stanimir Angeloff. It makes PHP classes callable from Javascript, and can change page elements from PHP.

Opinion

The book is generally well written, although sometimes I would have preferred to be told more clearly what the problem and the main idea of the proposed solution are, before being shown the details of the solution.
The book really starts from first principles. It may seem a little slow sometimes, but that is good. An example for slowness is that there are several repitions of browser-independent XMLHttpRequest creation.
It is not tied to any framework or library and lets you understand what is behind the libraries by experimenting directly with the XMLHttpRequest object. There is a little use of PHP on the server.
In the explanations, I feel that UML sequence diagrams would have helped, for example on page 79. With AJAX, it is important to understand what methods are called, when they are called, and where they are.

I like that the authour seems in favour of using AJAX for returning html text, and of using the simple REST philosophy, when these simple techniques are sufficient for a particular design. Too often people get tempted into using more complex technologies without being clear about whether they are really necessary.

The SOAP example constructs the SOAP envelope manually and takes the SOAP response apart manually. Of course, SOAP is a lot of work if you do it that way! Realistically, must use a library that encapsulates the SOAP protocol and lets you communicate in terms of objects. SOAP is remote procedure call. It is only advisable to use SOAP if you really need the generality of remote procedure call and if you do, SOAP is a better option than making your own protocol.

For who is the book?

The book is for web programmers that already know HTML, HTTP, JavaScript and want to start using AJAX. The book recaps the important points of these topics as far as they will be used in the book.

In a perfect world, you could pick up any new technology in 10 minute chunks. But the world isn't perfect, and some technologies don't even come close to this 10 minute standard. This could be a case in point... Teach Yourself AJAX in 10 Minutes by Phil Ballard.

Contents:
Part 1 - A Refresher on Web Technologies: Anatomy of a Website; Writing Web Pages in HTML; Sending Requests Using HTTP; Client-Side Coding Using JavaScript; Server-Side Programming in PHP; A Brief Introduction to XML
Part 2 - Introducing Ajax: Anatomy of an Ajax Application; The XMLHTTPRequest Object; Talking with the Server; Using the Returned Data; Our First Ajax Application
Part 3 - More Complex Ajax Technologies: Returning Data as Text; AHAH - Asynchronous HTML and HTTP; Returning Data as XML; Web Services and the REST Protocol; Web Services Using SOAP; A JavaScript Library for Ajax; Ajax "Gotchas"
Part 4 - Commercial and Open Source Ajax Resources: the prototype.js Toolkit; Using Rico; Using XOAD
Index

I don't think that this is a bad book... It's just that it tries to cover a whole lot of material in a short format, and as such ends up with a muddled target audience. Ajax is a combination of technologies, so you just can't cover a single subject and be done with it. The first part of the book attempts to be a refresher for HTML, JavaScript, and numerous other subjects that can be large books unto themselves. But if you need this refresher, it's likely that you're not at a point where you could effectively use Ajax anyway. Part 2 is solid information, albeit constrained by the 10 minute format. Parts 3 and 4 build on the Part 2 information, so if you didn't get grounded there, you could be in trouble. I imagine that the target audience (web developers without a significant programming background) would end up confused in the coding sections, and the designers with coding experience would be looking for more in-depth information...

I found the book most helpful if I viewed each chapter on its own merits based on my interest level. For instance, the "gotchas" chapter is good if you're trying to avoid common issues that Ajax applications encounter. But I'm not sure if there's enough "single chapter" material here to make it an attractive recommendation to someone who already is dabbling in Ajax and has other reference material. And I definitely wouldn't recommend it as a first exposure to Ajax for a newbie...

I was looking for some basic information on AJAX, such as the XMLHttpRequest object. I was not aware that simple HTM (or any other text) could be passed back from the web server, now I know and that's very useful to know, since those are more useful to me that XML. This book gave me the general basic info I needed. Now that I've got a working knowledge of AJAX, I can find another book with more detail for more advanced uses of the capability.

I think the book wasted space with it's attempt at an intro to html and intro to javascript. I'm not sure that anyone unfamiliar with these aspects of web development needs to be tackling AJAX, because they're probably not the least bit knowledgeable of server-side technology.

I would have appreciated the server-side scripting to be ASP instead of PHP (with which I'm not familiar), but that's a minor issue since the scrips are small and easy enough to grasp what they're doing.

I had been developing websites and web applications in ASP, VBA, PHP, JavaScript and HTML. I was getting pretty good at it. But, I had no way of grabbing refreshed data from the server and presenting it on the client side without rewriting everything on the client. Then, along came this book ... just what I needed!

I also bought the companion, AJAX for Dummies. By working through the simple examples, I developed an understanding of AJAX and how to apply it. Now, I can grab data from mySQL, msAccess or other data stores and update just the significant portion of the client page.

The book gave me the basic concepts and understanding. The creativity to apply it was in my hands. Great purchase!

I have programmed in PHP, and done a lot of work with HTML and CSS (seeing as they go together well with PHP) - but have been really curious about this new Ajax stuff. I have poked at JavaScript before, but mostly just copying and pasting code from code snippet sites. I understand the concept of XML, but not too much about it.

So, I sent for this book to see what the hub-bub was about, and now I have a good understanding on how to use this programming language, if you want to call it that, for more impressive websites!

The book does not give you extensive background on PHP, but rather a brief intro, and the code you need to put on your web server to interact with the rest of the system. JavaScript is explained a bit more, as this is the heart of Ajax, and XML is explained pretty well too. You are not going to master any of these languages from this book, but rather learn enough about them to get you started and building some working Ajax programs.

Ajax is not really a language, but is a method of using JavaScript and a Server-Side language like PHP with the possibility to use XML for more database type data, if you need it, and constructing dynamic content for your web page to load. Without having to load a new page, and have PHP build all the changes.

This book guides you through building a clock that is updates when you click a button, an RSS news reader, and a few other simple programs that might not seem like a huge accomplishment, but are meant to give you an understanding of how it works so you can make something out of it. It hands you a wrench, and shows you how to bolt and unbolt things, but it is up to you as to what you go build, or destroy.

The book is not meant to be finished in it's entirety in 10 minutes. It is broken up into sections meant to take only about 10 minutes to read. Instead of having to dedicate a good hour or two to reading, I could easily read parts of this book here and there, between tasks at work, and in those times where I have a bit of time free, but not enough to do anything major. That was really a benefit for me. Learning, cut up into smaller bits, for people on the go!

I found this book to be exactly what I needed to step into the world of Ajax, and if you have experience with some PHP, and some JavaScript, and want to ad a little pizazz to your web pages, then I would really recommend this book to get you started!

This book sums up the fundamentals of AJAX and its methodology in a clear concise manner, following the principles of the Sam's series. Although the 'refresher material' in the beginning chapters is dummied down a little to much it delivers a solid foundation of what you need to understand to grasp AJAX. Unfortunately the author does not cover AJAX pitfalls with as much vigor. A great start for the beginner but maybe a little to low on the totem pole for developers concerned with real world problems like using the back button or fall back techniques if users have JavaScript disabled.

A good beginner book that will get you started on Ajax but a bit weak in a couple of areas. The demonstration code in the book is advertised as downloadable but it isn't... at least as far as I can determine after three tries (the publisher apprears to have outsourced it and does not respond to e-mails on the problem). And to make matters worse there are some typos in the illustrating code so watch out. If you read the code closely (and you will since you have to type it all) you will probably find them.

Does not spend enough time on transfer of plain text between the server and the client in my opinion. Took several test runs to figure out that some of the code, although working for mozilla browsers wasn't going to hack it for IE and its activeX requirements. For the discounted price, well worth it.

I grabbed the book at a recent computer store and thought it would be a nice little read. The first half of the book baby-stepped thru too much material. When I finally got to some actual 'AJAX' code I was disappointed that only the simplest examples worked as written. I thought maybe I was just not 'seeing' my own typing errors so I downloaded the code samples from the website and found that they deviated from the book. Which is right? I could'nt get the more complicated interesting code samples to work, (the ones I bought the book for!). If you are an expert programmer (not me) you could probably easily see the syntax errors and correct them. But then again if you are an expert you wouldn't NEED the book.

This book is a very good basic introduction to the AJAX programming method. Good for people who know nothing about AJAX and want to get started with the method.

This book provides a brief introduction to Ajax. It is quite light on detail but did fulfil my requirements of a quick insight into Ajax. I suggest this book is suited to someone reasonably comfortable with other web technologies who wishes to enhance their server side applications with a client side technology.