Product Description

Build interactive Web applications with Ajax

Create live searches and online spreadsheets

Discover programming mistakes to avoid!

Create blazing-fast Web applications with powerful Ajax

If you think that mastering Ajax is too difficult, guess again. You can create Web applications that look and feel like desktop apps in less time than you think with the comprehensive Ajax instruction in this in-depth book. You'll find easy-to-follow tutorials, hundreds of tips and tricks, and so much practical information that even skilled developers will reach for this book first. Let this Bible be your guide as you jump into the hottest Web programming technology in years.

* Master the fundamentals--JavaScript(r), XML, dynamic HTML, and CSS
*

Tie Ajax into Google with the Google(r) API
*

Handle simultaneous XMLHttpRequest objects in Ajax
*

Use Ajax frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, AjaxTags, and others
*

Understand the Document Object Model (DOM)
*

Create floating menus and effects with CSS
*

Encrypt data over plain HTTP using JavaScript
*

Adapt real-world examples to your own programs

Companion Web site

Find all the code used throughout the book at www.wiley.com/go/ajaxbible

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #162445 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 695 pages

From the Back Cover
Build interactive Web applications with Ajax

Create live searches and online spreadsheets

Discover programming mistakes to avoid!

Create blazing-fast Web applications with powerful Ajax

If you think that mastering Ajax is too difficult, guess again. You can create Web applications that look and feel like desktop apps in less time than you think with the comprehensive Ajax instruction in this in-depth book. You'll find easy-to-follow tutorials, hundreds of tips and tricks, and so much practical information that even skilled developers will reach for this book first. Let this Bible be your guide as you jump into the hottest Web programming technology in years.

• Master the fundamentals—JavaScript®, XML, dynamic HTML, and CSS

• Tie Ajax into Google with the Google® API

• Handle simultaneous XMLHttpRequest objects in Ajax

• Use Ajax frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, AjaxTags, and others

• Understand the Document Object Model (DOM)

• Create floating menus and effects with CSS

• Encrypt data over plain HTTP using JavaScript

• Adapt real-world examples to your own programs

Companion Web site

Find all the code used throughout the book at www.wiley.com/go/ajaxbible

About the Author
Steven Holzner, PhD,is the author of nearly 100 technology books including Ajax For Dummies and the Ajax Visual Blueprint. He specializes in writing about online applications, and has authored popular books on the components of Ajax including JavaScript, XML, browser objects, and Web services. He teaches classes to programmers around the country on the central skill in Ajax—using XML online and in-depth. He has been a contributing editor to PC Magazine, and was on the faculty at Cornell University and MIT.

Customer Reviews

Pretty Good Book
I just made it to chapter five and I am understanding the topic of AJAX pretty well. I have other AJAX books but they failed to explain a few imporant topics or they did it poorly.

This book is pretty easy to follow. I recommend it!

I expected more
This book convers very well a lot of subjects on Ajax, and a lot it doesn't.

There are two chapters focused on PHP. These are on the Parte IV, named Advanced Ajax. But in this two chapters, if you try to find Ajax, you won't get Anything!!!

This book is not aimed for advanced or experts of Ajax, it's just for the beginner and maybe intermediate.

If your're searching a book for some advanced Ajax techniques. GET ANOTHER BOOK!!

A Bible in Size Only
This book is way bigger than it needs to be. The code examples take up enormous amounts of space. When stepping through an example, the entire example code is (usually) repeated with the new line under discussion added. Even the simplest example takes up pages of text. Every new example gets the cross-browser code for obtaining an XMLhttprequest object. Do we really need that repeated for each example?

The examples are mostly very simple, usually replacing one line of text with another. Then there's the screenshots. How informative is it to see two entire Internet Explorer windows, complete with toolbars, and a tiny speck of text that changes to before the Ajax call to an after Ajax call? The coverage of client and server-side libraries is so minimal and the examples so simple that the author could have just listed what libraries are available.

Most of the book has nothing to do with Ajax. There are chapters on DOM, javascript, CSS but I can't understand who their target audience is. For instance, if you don't know anything about DOM, you won't learn enough to be useful. If you do know some (even a little), you won't learn anything at all.

The last five chapters are the advanced Ajax section. The first three are an introduction to PHP. Really. How to declare a variable. How to make a comment. No Ajax at all. Again, if you don't know PHP, you're better off getting a better book. If you think the last two chapters might build on this tutorial of PHP, you're mistaken. No more PHP. On to java server pages, javabeans, and an odd little ending with two page discussion of Model-View-Controller. Again, if you don't know JSP, you won't understand what's going on. If you do, you won't learn anything.

The book is a nice introduction to Ajax, it just contains way to much filler and never does anything in any depth.