Product Description

This practical guide shows you how to make your Java web applications more responsive and dynamic by incorporating new Ajaxian features, including suggestion lists, drag-and-drop, and more. Java developers can choose between many different ways of incorporating Ajax, from building JavaScript into your applications "by hand" to using the new Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

Ajax on Java starts with an introduction to Ajax, showing you how to write some basic applications that use client-side JavaScript to request information from a Java servlet and display it without doing a full page reload. It also presents several strategies for communicating between the client and the server, including sending raw data, and using XML or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) for sending more complex collections of data.

The book then branches out into different approaches for incorporating Ajax, which include:

• The Prototype and script.aculo.us Javascript libraries, the Dojo and Rico libraries, and DWR
• Integrating Ajax into Java ServerPages (JSP) applications
• Using Ajax with Struts
• Integrating Ajax into Java ServerFaces (JSF) applications
• Using Google's GWT, which offers a pure Java approach to developing web applications: your client-side components are written in Java, and compiled into HTML and JavaScript

Ajax gives web developers the ability to build applications that are more interactive, more dynamic, more exciting and enjoyable for your users. If you're a Java developer and haven't tried Ajax, but would like to get started, this book is essential. Your users will be grateful.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #214729 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-22
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 228 pages

About the Author
Steven Olson has been a software developer for 20 years, starting in 1984 with ForTran, Pascal, Basic, and, later, C at a company called Signetics. In 1991, he went to work for Novell, writing C. He began dabbling in Java, and in 1995 was one of the first to join the Java development group at Novell. Since then, he has consulted or worked directly for eight other companies writing primarily in Java. Currently, he works for logoworks.com, where his programming adventures continue.

Customer Reviews

Great Ajax Introduction but not advanced topics
This book is great for Ajax newbies who are confused with all the frameworks available out there. Provides a quick overview of a lot of them with working examples. I would have prefered if it included more advanced scenarios.

Superficial and bug-ridden
I was looking for a book on to explain the underpinnings of Ajax technology. What I purchased was little more than an advertisement for several Ajax development projects. Additionally, the author covers, in equally superficial detail, many side technologies which do not drive the subject matter forward; cascading style sheets (CSS) and Ant, for example.

The code examples have many bugs and references code/methods that have yet to be presented in the book. Meanwhile, the text explaining the examples discusses the actual methods that should have been in the code examples. The author does not take the time to discuss good object-oriented programming techniques or why this would be important.

All in all, this is a very disappointing offering.

A pick for any library strong in web programming topics
Web programmers working with Java will appreciate this guide, which tells how to make a Java web application more responsive and dynamic by incorporating new Ajaxian features, from suggestion lists and drag-and-drop modes to producing third-party tag libraries and using Ajax with Struts. The idea is to streamline operations and use Java developer backgrounds to understand Ajax's strengths: AJAX ON JAVA is the place to begin the process, and is a pick for any library strong in web programming topics in general and Java in particular.