Foundations of Ajax

If you are an experienced web developer ready for a concise yet quality introduction to Ajax, then you have found your book. Written in a friendly conversational tone by experienced web developers for experienced web developers, it would be hard to imagine a better introduction to XMLHttpRequest and the related technologies needed to leverage its benefits. A rare, for me at least, five-star recommendation.

I'd been playing with ajax for a few weeks when I saw this book at my local B & N's. I'd been experimenting with the idea of creating a set of xml tags that would contain an xhtml fragment and describe an action to perform against a target element. The xml could be parsed either on the server or on the client to automatically produce the javascript code to be executed on the client. I'd never seen anything like that, but I bought this book hoping that it might give me some ideas about how to implement it. If you understand the basic concept behind ajax, you can safely skip chapter one. That is, unless you're especially sentimental about web technologies. But chapters two three and four do a wonderful job of explaining the techniques of ajax. They concentrate on the client side, and that's cool because that's where all the action is. They assume that you're a web developer, and if you're considering using ajax, you probably are. You won't have any problem envisioning what to do on the server. I almost skipped chapters five, six and seven because they weren't really about ajax, but were more about javascript development. I'm glad I read them. They almost turned out to be my favorite part of the book. I learned about many javascript tools that I wasn't aware of. And armed with these new tools, I actually feel like a real programmer again when I write javascript, complete with a real debugger, a documentation tool, and a unit testing framework. But as much as I loved chapters five, six and seven, they turned out not to be my favorite. Imagine my surprise when I got to chapter eight. Not only did the authors already think of the idea that I described earlier, but they'd already implemented it!!! It's an open source project called Taconite! It's hosted on sourceforge, and it Rocks!! If you want to learn about ajax, then you need to read this book. Really.

The technologies that are coined in term AJAX are not quite new, but the term AJAX is new, you can compare the same with the quote "OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLE". AJAX is becoming hot day by day, as the companies are using this term to sell their products and obviously by using the Ajax one can design the better web based applications. As per my knowledge the book "Foundations of Ajax" is the first book published on this hot Topic. The authors of the book Ryan and Schutta have done a great job. In my opinion this book will help two kind of developers. First to those who want to start understanding the basics of Ajax and in turn help them in implementing the AJAX in better way. This book explains the concept with good crystal clear examples. Secondly to the advanced developers who want to enhance their skills, I would say that especially the chapters 5,6,7,8 are more useful for them. It would be better if the authors have added one chapter in this book to discuss the available frameworks on Ajax. In nutshell I can say that this book is good book for developers and will help them in enhancing the skills on Ajax. -:) Kavita Founder ajaxgoals.com

Ajax is an unusual beast. It's not a product. It's not a standard. It's not a tool. It's not proprietary. And it's not a proper noun -- it's an acronym (although it's usually spelled as if it were a proper noun). Instead, Ajax is a collection of techniques for building highly interactive Web based applications using industrial-strength JavaScript and asynchronous communications, and it's taking the Web development world by storm. This is one of the first books to appear on this very hot topic, and I have to say it's a very good one. "Foundations of Ajax" takes you through the whys and wherefores of Ajax, as well as the meat and potatoes, at a brisk pace. The examples are crystal clear. One difficulty in describing Ajax applications is that they're inherently multi-language -- part is always JavaScript, and the rest is always written in a server-side language of your choice. Choosing a particular server language might have alienated some readers unfamiliar with it. This book neatly sidesteps the problem by using fixed XML files for the server component for most examples, which leads to startlingly simple descriptions. As someone who has already learned the basics of Ajax, however, I found the second half of the book even more valuable. The last few chapters talk about tools and techniques for building real-life professional-grade applications. There is excellent, detailed information about documenting, unit testing and debugging for JavaScript, debugging Ajax communications, and using some of the newfangled Ajax frameworks that have begun to appear. These chapters credibly demonstrate that it's possible to treat JavaScript as a Serious Programming Language. In sum, I think that "Foundations of Ajax" is an excellent piece of work which belongs on every Web developer's bookshelf.