Mini-review and competition of Ajax in Action

Web users are getting tired of the traditional web experience. They get frustrated losing their scroll position; they get annoyed waiting for refresh; they struggle to reorient themselves on every new page. And the list goes on. With asynchronous JavaScript and XML, know as "Ajax, you can give them a better solution. Once users have experienced an AJAX interface, they hate to go back. Ajax is a new way of thinking that can result in a flowing and intuitive interaction for the user.

Ajax in Action helps you to implement that thinking - it explains how to distribute the application between the client and the server (HINT: use a "nested MVC" design) while retaining the integrity of the system. You will learn how to ensure your app is flexible and maintainable, and how good, structured design can help avoid problems like browser incompatibilities. Along the way it helps you unlearn many old coding habits. Above all, it opens your mind to the many advantages gained by placing much of the processing in the browser. If you are a web developer who has prior experience with web technologies, this book is for you.

Overview

Who is this book for?

This book is for intermediate and advanced developers and interaction designers as it assumes you have at least a basic knowledge of the most common web language such as JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Knowledge of server side languages such as PHP, Java and .NET are needed for some chapters as well.

Conclusion

The book does what it says on the back cover. However, don't be misled by the title "AJAX in Action", the books really starts with AJAX examples from Chapter 9, the chapters beforehand concentrate on explaining how to use AJAX and related technologies. That being said this book is a great reference and guide for all developers and designers that want to learn how to get the most out of AJAX. The examples that are used go further then many other books so if you are an experienced web developer and you want to learn more about AJAX this book is for you!

Competition

We've got a brand new mini-review and competition of the AJAX in Action book. The friendly people of Manning are giving away 5 books and two t-shirts!

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

"How can you create DHTML without JavaScript?"

Send your answer to this e-mail address, before Thursday the 12th of October 2006. Don't forget to include your post address and phone number (required for international shipping) in the e-mail.

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