Mini-review And Competition Of Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

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Using Ajax, you can build Web applications with the sophistication and usability of traditional desktop applications and you can do it using standards and open source software. Now, for the first time, there's an easy, example-driven guide to Ajax for every Web and open source developer, regardless of experience.

Edmond Woychowsky begins with simple techniques involving only HTML and basic JavaScript. Then, one step at a time, he introduces techniques for building increasingly rich applications. Don't worry if you're not an expert on Ajax's underlying technologies; Woychowsky offers refreshers on them, from JavaScript to the XMLHttpRequest object. You'll also find multiple open source technologies and open standards throughout, ranging from Firefox to Ruby and MySQL.

Overview

You'll not only learn how to write "functional" code, but also master design patterns for writing rocksolid, high-performance Ajax applications. You'll also learn how to use frameworks such as Ruby on Rails to get the job done fast.

Learn how Ajax works, how it evolved, and what it's good for
Understand the flow of processing in Ajax applications
Build Ajax applications with XML and the XMLHttpRequest object
Integrate back-end code, from PHP to C#
Use XSLT and XPath, including XPath Axis
Develop client-side Ajax libraries to support code reuse
Streamline development with Ruby on Rails and the Ruby programming language
Use the cross-browser HTML DOM to update parts of a page
Discover the best Ajax Web resources, including Ajax-capable JavaScript libraries

Who is this book for?

This book is for web developers who want to get the most out of AJAX and more basic web development technologies such as CSS and HTML. The book is best suite for beginning and intermediate web developers as it includes a lot of the basics behind AJAX and related web development techniques.

Conclusion

The book is entertaining to read and assumes that you only have a very basic understanding of web development. The structure of the book is quite different from other AJAX books, which can be refreshing as it dives in techniques like HTML, XML, and JavaScript first (these are the building blocks of AJAX) before starting with the XMLHttpRequest like most other books do. The book can be a bit elaborate sometimes, which is good if you're a beginner but it is not suited for advanced users as a quick reference for looking up specific topics fast. Although the book is not as focused on AJAX as other books it offers a broader view on AJAX and related technologies as a whole. All things considered this book is very refreshing as it sets itself apart from the many other AJAX books.

Competition

We've got a brand new mini-review and competition of the Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML book. The friendly people of Prentice Hall are giving away 5 books!

All you need to do, to enter the competition is, download the sample PDF and answer the following question:

"What is the description of the constructor of the mysqli library?"

Send your answer to this e-mail address, before Thursday the 23rd of November 2006. Don't forget to include your post address and phone number (required for international shipping) in the e-mail.