Professional Ajax (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

by Nicholas C. Zakas (Author), Jeremy McPeak (Author), Joe Fawcett (Author) "From 2001 to 2005, the World Wide Web went through a tremendous growth spurt in terms of the technologies and methodologies being used to bring..." (more)
Key Phrases: hidden frame technique, autosuggest functionality, float opt, Internet Explorer, Professional Ajax, Joe Smith (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Written for experienced web developers, Professional Ajax shows how to combine tried-and-true CSS, XML, and JavaScript technologies into Ajax. This provides web developers with the ability to create more sophisticated and responsive user interfaces and break free from the "click-and-wait" standard that has dominated the web since its introduction.

Professional Ajax discusses the range of request brokers (including the hidden frame technique, iframes, and XMLHttp) and explains when one should be used over another. You will also learn different Ajax techniques and patterns for executing client-server communication on your web site and in web applications. By the end of the book, you will have gained the practical knowledge necessary to implement your own Ajax solutions. In addition to a full chapter case study showing how to combine the book's Ajax techniques into an AjaxMail application, Professional Ajax uses many other examples to build hands-on Ajax experience. Some of the other examples include:

• web site widgets for a news ticker, weather information, web search, and site search
• preloading pages in online articles
• incremental form validation
• using Google Web APIs in Ajax
• creating an autosuggest text box

Professional Ajax readers should be familiar with CSS, XML, JavaScript, and HTML so you can jump right in with the book and begin learning Ajax patterns, XPath and XSLT support in browsers, syndication, web services, JSON, and the Ajax Frameworks, JPSpan, DWR, and Ajax.NET.

From the Back Cover
Combining tried-and-true CSS, XML, and JavaScript™ technologies, Ajax provides web developers with the ability to create more sophisticated and responsive user interfaces and break free from the "click-and-wait" standard that has dominated the web since its introduction.

This book discusses the range of request brokers (including the hidden frame technique, iframes, and XMLHttp) and explains when one should be used over another. You will also learn different Ajax techniques and patterns for executing client-server communication on your web site and in web applications. Each chapter builds on information in the previous chapters so that by the end of the book, you will have gained the practical knowledge necessary to implement your own Ajax solutions.

What you will learn from this book

• Different methods for achieving Ajax communication and when to use each
• A variety of Ajax design patterns to use in specific data retrieval circumstances
• Techniques for using Ajax with RSS and Atom to produce a web-based news aggregator
• How to use JavaScript Object Notation as an alternate data transmission format for Ajax communications
• How to create Ajax widgets, such as a weather display and news ticker, that can be included in your web site

Who this book is for

This book is for web developers who want to enhance the usability of their sites and applications. Familiarity with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS is necessary, as is experience with a server-side language such as PHP or a .NET language.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Wrox (February 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471777781
• ISBN-13: 978-8126507351
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #374,885 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding platform-agnostic look at Ajax programming, February 17, 2006

By	Jason A. Salas (Dededo, Guam Guam) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ajax made fun, May 10, 2006

By	M. Sanford (San Francisco, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best code explanations ever, September 4, 2006

By	L. Israel "Nerdy female" (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.