Ajax, one of the hottest technologies, works with major
server side technologies, such as PHP and ASP.NET. Moreover, many developers
are coming forward to learn Ajax and implement it in their applications. Many vendors
have already employed the technology to their software applications. Several
publishers have released books for learning Ajax. Many of them are bulky and
readers will find it difficult to master the subject in a short amount of time.
Sams Publishing has recently released a pocket size book titled Sams
Teach Yourself Ajax in 10 Minutes. The book is written by Phil Ballard and
contains several lessons that are divided into 4 parts.
The first part begins with a lesson about the evolution of the
World Wide Web. The remaining lessons in this part examine various web
technologies, such as HTML, HTTP, JavaScript, PHP and XML. The second part,
spanning from Lessons 7 to 11, provides an introduction about Ajax. Lesson 7
examines the concept and the need behind building an Ajax application. While Lesson
8 demonstrates the usage of XMLHTTPRequest object, Lessons 9 and 10 examines
some of the important aspects behind the role of server in building Ajax applications. Lesson 9 examines the usage of Callback function with the help of a relevant
example. Lesson 10 provides a basic overview of the methods in DOM property. The
final lesson of this part demonstrates the creation of a simple Ajax application with the help of an example.
I would like to point out that the organization of the Table
of Contents is a little bit inappropriate. This is because the book has been
titled as "10 Minutes," but the topics have
been classified into Lessons rather than minutes. In my opinion, I hope the
publisher and the author will look into this aspect during the release of the
next edition of the book.
The third part, covering Lessons 12 to 18, examines some of
the advanced Ajax technologies, such as AHAH, Web Services and the REST
protocol, as well as Web Services using SOAP. This part also demonstrates how
to return data as Text and as XML with the help of an RSS Headline Reader
project. Towards the end of this part, the author explores the creation and
implementation of a JavaScript library for Ajax and also some of the "Gotchas"
associated with Ajax. The final part of the book contains three chapters and
it provides an overview of some of the commercial and open source Ajax resources, such as prototype.js Toolkit and the role and usage of RICO and XOAD in
the development of Ajax applications.
An important feature of this book is that each chapter
includes complete code listings along with supported screenshots. I must say
that this book will be a big boon for beginners as they cannot only learn Ajax, but also all the important concepts regarding various web technologies easily and in
a quick span of time.
The book makes use of PHP as the server side language and
therefore, if you plan to build Ajax applications with ASP.NET, then you will
find this book disappointing. However, you can still learn lot of common
interesting concepts with the help of this book and I feel that for $14.99 you
have nothing to lose. I cannot say however, that you can really learn Ajax within 10 minutes. It solely depends upon your learning abilities and ability to
grasp the concepts. I hope the publisher will release an Ajax book oriented
for ASP.NET soon.
