ajax in action
Back with a review of another Ajax book, Ajax in Action. This book is split into 4 parts: Parts 1 through 3 describe what Ajax is and how to work with it on both the client and server side, and Part 4 covers some real life examples.
When introducing Ajax, the book goes over two key client elements that make up the technology: CSS and DOM. These pieces aren't meant to be a definitive guide to the topics, but more of a refresher course. During the actual parts that teach Ajax, emphasis is placed on organization and reuse. These ideas are supported through the discussion of Patterns -- namely the MVC Pattern, both on the client and server side.
Once the reader is familiar with how to build an Ajax-enabled application, a few advanced topics are covered to help refine the work. These include better user interfaces, security, and performance tweaking.
Finally, after all concepts have been covered, we're greeted with five working examples. This was the part of the book I was most impressed with. Most of the examples used are what developers would choose to use Ajax for in the first place: Updating lists in real time, type-ahead methods, and searching. Even more, all examples were written in different programming languages. This shows the reader that they're not tied down to using one language when implementing Ajax and that, if done correctly, any language can perform just as well as the next.
Ajax in Action covers a wide array of topics geared toward the seasoned developer. If you're new to any of the concepts outlined above, you might have a hard time following along with this book. However, if you're already familiar with the idea of Patterns and have worked on larger web applications previously, you should be able to get a lot of good information out of this book. Overall, I give it an 8/10.
