Written for experienced web developers, Professional Ajax shows how to combine tried and true CSS, XML, and JavaScript technologies into Ajax. This provides web developers with the ability to create more sophisticated and responsive user interfaces and break free from the "click and wait" standard that has dominated the web since its introduction.

Professional Ajax discusses the range of request brokers (including the hidden frame technique, iframes, and XMLHttp) and explains when one should be used over another. You will also learn different Ajax techniques and patterns for executing client server communication on your web site and in web applications. By the end of the book, you will have gained the practical knowledge necessary to implement your own Ajax solutions. In addition to a full chapter case study showing how to combine the book s Ajax techniques into an AjaxMail application, Professional Ajax uses many other examples to build hands on Ajax experience. Some of the other examples include:

• web site widgets for a news ticker, weather information, web search, and site search
• preloading pages in online articles
• incremental form validation
• using Google Web APIs in Ajax
• creating an autosuggest text box

Professional Ajax readers should be familiar with CSS, XML, JavaScript, and HTML so you can jump right in with the book and begin learning Ajax patterns, XPath and XSLT support in browsers, syndication, web services, JSON, and the Ajax Frameworks, JPSpan, DWR, and Ajax.NET.

Written for experienced web developers, Professional Ajax shows how to combine tried?and?true CSS, XML, and JavaScript technologies into Ajax. This provides web developers with the ability to create more sophisticated and responsive user interfaces and break free from the "click?and?wait" standard that has dominated the web since its introduction.

Professional Ajax discusses the range of request brokers (including the hidden frame technique, iframes, and XMLHttp) and explains when one should be used over another. You will also learn different Ajax techniques and patterns for executing client?server communication on your web site and in web applications. By the end of the book, you will have gained the practical knowledge necessary to implement your own Ajax solutions. In addition to a full chapter case study showing how to combine the book?s Ajax techniques into an AjaxMail application, Professional Ajax uses many other examples to build hands?on Ajax experience. Some of the other examples include:

• web site widgets for a news ticker, weather information, web search, and site search
• preloading pages in online articles
• incremental form validation
• using Google Web APIs in Ajax
• creating an autosuggest text box

Professional Ajax readers should be familiar with CSS, XML, JavaScript, and HTML so you can jump right in with the book and begin learning Ajax patterns, XPath and XSLT support in browsers, syndication, web services, JSON, and the Ajax Frameworks, JPSpan, DWR, and Ajax.NET.

Ajax is the term used to describe the combination of three hot technology topics CSS, XML, and JavaScript providing faster, more sophisticated Web user interfaces. This work explores the technologies behind Ajax, its various usage models and communication methods, and why the Ajax model is better than the traditional Web model. It discusses Ajax and its practical implementation in a professional Web site/application environment, and examines a variety of server-side languages (such as PHP and .NET), so that readers can get an overview of development issues prior to implementing their own Ajax solutions. It also covers building a Web-based Ajax RSS reader and calling Web services from JavaScript.

Combining tried?and?true CSS, XML, and JavaScript? technologies, Ajax provides web developers with the ability to create more sophisticated and responsive user interfaces and break free from the "click?and?wait" standard that has dominated the web since its introduction.

This book discusses the range of request brokers (including the hidden frame technique, iframes, and XMLHttp) and explains when one should be used over another. You will also learn different Ajax techniques and patterns for executing client?server communication on your web site and in web applications. Each chapter builds on information in the previous chapters so that by the end of the book, you will have gained the practical knowledge necessary to implement your own Ajax solutions.

What you will learn from this book

• Different methods for achieving Ajax communication and when to use each
• A variety of Ajax design patterns to use in specific data retrieval circumstances
• Techniques for using Ajax with RSS and Atom to produce a web?based news aggregator
• How to use JavaScript Object Notation as an alternate data transmission format for Ajax communications
• How to create Ajax widgets, such as a weather display and news ticker, that can be included in your web site

Who this book is for

This book is for web developers who want to enhance the usability of their sites and applications. Familiarity with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS is necessary, as is experience with a server?side language such as PHP or a .NET language.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real?world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

Nicholas C. Zakas has a BS degree in Computer Science from Merrimack College and an MBA degree from Endicott College. He is the author of Professional JavaScript for Web Developers as well as several online articles. Nicholas has worked in web development for more than five years and has helped develop web solutions in use at some of the largest companies in the world. Nicholas can be reached through his web site at www.nczonline.net.

Jeremy McPeak began tinkering with web development as a hobby in 1998. Currently working in the IT department of a school district, Jeremy has experience developing web solutions with JavaScript, PHP, and C#. He has written several online articles covering topics such as XSLT, WebForms, and C#.

Joe Fawcett started programming in the 1970s and worked briefly in IT after leaving full?time education. He then pursued a more checkered career before returning to software development in 1994. In 2003, he was awarded the title Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in XML for community contributions and technical expertise. Joe currently works in London as a developer for The Financial Training Company, which provides professional certifications and business training.

Written for experienced web developers, Professional Ajax shows how to combine tried-and-true CSS, XML, and JavaScript technologies into Ajax. This provides web developers with the ability to create more sophisticated and responsive user interfaces and break free from the "click-and-wait" standard that has dominated the web since its introduction.

Professional Ajax discusses the range of request brokers (including the hidden frame technique, iframes, and XMLHttp) and explains when one should be used over another. You will also learn different Ajax techniques and patterns for executing client-server communication on your web site and in web applications. By the end of the book, you will have gained the practical knowledge necessary to implement your own Ajax solutions. In addition to a full chapter case study showing how to combine the book’s Ajax techniques into an AjaxMail application, Professional Ajax uses many other examples to build hands-on Ajax experience. Some of the other examples include:

• web site widgets for a news ticker, weather information, web search, and site search
• preloading pages in online articles
• incremental form validation
• using Google Web APIs in Ajax
• creating an autosuggest text box

Professional Ajax readers should be familiar with CSS, XML, JavaScript, and HTML so you can jump right in with the book and begin learning Ajax patterns, XPath and XSLT support in browsers, syndication, web services, JSON, and the Ajax Frameworks, JPSpan, DWR, and Ajax.NET.

* Ajax is the term used to describe the combination of three hot technology topics-CSS, XML, and JavaScript-providing faster, more sophisticated Web user interfaces * Explores the technologies behind Ajax, its various usage models and communication methods, and why the Ajax model is better than the traditional Web model * Discusses Ajax and its practical implementation in a professional Web site/application environment * Examines a variety of server-side languages (such as PHP and .NET) so that readers can get an overview of development issues prior to implementing their own Ajax solutions * Also covers building a Web-based Ajax RSS reader and calling Web services from JavaScript

• Ajax is the term used to describe the combination of three hot technology topics–CSS, XML, and JavaScript–providing faster, more sophisticated Web user interfaces
• Explores the technologies behind Ajax, its various usage models and communication methods, and why the Ajax model is better than the traditional Web model
• Discusses Ajax and its practical implementation in a professional Web site/application environment
• Examines a variety of server-side languages (such as PHP and .NET) so that readers can get an overview of development issues prior to implementing their own Ajax solutions
• Also covers building a Web-based Ajax RSS reader and calling Web services from JavaScript

A closely held hand, whilst the wind blows...
A teensy long winded, but holds your hand firmly. Also a bit dated - but kinda interesting from a look-in-your-rear-view perspective (internet years huh! don’t they fly by). I’m a cut-to-the-code-geek, so I preferred Advanced Ajax by Lauriat (better code, not so well explained).

Detailed code hand-holding for an Ajax debut. Code examples, explained in detail.

Another good AJAX book for your bookshelf
This book was very helpful to me when I was creating an executive-level presentation on AJAX because of the AJAX architecture diagram in chapter 1. More importantly, this book helped me research how to parse an RSS news feed with Atom.

But this book has much more than introductory material - it has valuable information on AJAX Principles, Who’s Using AJAX, AJAX Patterns, AJAX Libraries (such as Prototype and jQuery), XML, JSON, RSS with AJAX, and AJAX Debugging Tools.

In addition, this book covers something near-and-dear to me: real-world case studies at the end of the book.

The authors’ back-end-agnostic approach was very helpful because of the many platforms (JavaEE, .NET, Ruby, PHP, and so on) that people are using.

Do not waste your time
This is a great book but entirely irrelevant in todays world. The libraries and methods outlined here are outdated. With modern javascript frameworks like jQuery and Prototype there is, in my humble opinion, certainly no need to delve into the techniques of this book.

Nice intro to AJAX
A concise and informative introduction to AJAX technologies. A lot of great examples, including famous ones like Google maps and Gmail make learning about AJAX relevant and fun. A short history of AJAX and how it evolved into what it is today was also nice. I was hoping for more of a reference guide, but other than that, no real complaints here.

Not Happy
Wed 10/03/2007 5:15 pm. I’m not sure who writes these positive reviews, but an early example in the book ("The Hidden Frame Technique", starting on page 21) is obviously broken. The book shows "HiddenFrameExample1.htm" in an illustration but there is no such file in the ProAjax2ePHP.zip file downloaded from wrox. Judging by quotes on the internet probably from the first edition, I’d guess the actual file is probably GetCustomerData.php (?) but whether it is or not, that file has an obvious syntax error, missing paren in line 12 "if (is_numeric($sID) {". Of course if I were a php/ajax expert all this would be blindingly obvious; but I’m not, that’s why I bought the book. I can’t say I’m optimistic about the remainder of the text.

Very well written. Excellent resource.
I’m a senior ASP.NET/Web developer with no Ajax experience. This is my first Ajax book. I wanted to learn Ajax from the ground up, not just the Microsoft controls. Our ecommerce site is very highly trafficed and there’s no forgiveness for inefficiencies. This book certainly fulfilled my expectations, but it also introduced me to some new worlds of concepts that I did not expect. For instance, the chapter on Ajax Patterns: It’s a new way of thinking about Web Development. I’m very impressed with its content. The book is clearly written, the examples are excellent. I am learning a great deal from this book. Nice job guys!

powerful handbook
I really like this powerful handbook whick gives me detail tutorials in the field of AJAX practice.

Usefulness
It is good if the book is in asp and with a complete project source code that covers all chapter to make easy understanding for some chapters.

excellent in several respects
Last year (2006), I plowed through practically every available book on Ajax. This one really stands out for its excellent historical overview of how Ajax grew to exist. It also is one of the few that covers the use of hidden frames and Iframes as an Ajax technique (it has been around longer but is still used widely). The writing is outstanding. If you can only buy one Ajax book, this one should be it.

A free copy of chapter 1, "What is Ajax?" is available online at [...]

Surprisingly easy to read for a programming book
The information you need to get started on ajax programming happens very quickly in this book. The way it is presented also helps a great deal. While it still has it’s dry parts, this book was actually surprisingly easy to read(meaning I wasn’t falling asleep after 5 minutes of reading)

No PHP/MySQL stuff
I just bought this book to see PHP/MySQL communication through Ajax. But i was really disappointed when i found that in whole PHP/MySQL chapter or even in the whole book, MySQL never appear, not even a single statement.

I am feeling bad that i spent my money and get nothing, which i needed. Personally i really like Wrox books. But i found better example on the net about what was my need than this book.

Rest everyone has his/her own view. Please guys be focus what you mention in the "Table of Contents".

Best wishes
Abid Hussain

Brief review
I haven’t got a chance to go through all details yet, but looks pretty good so far.

Best code explanations ever
As a newcomer to Ajax, I cant comment on the coverage but it seemed reasonably comprehensive.

But the code walkthroughs were terrific - completely readable, easy to follow and sometimes even quite fun to read. I cant remember reading better code runthroughs ever.

Very well done
This book is very well done. It is a good introduction to AJAX and gets you up to speed quick.

CONS:
1. Not enough treatment on the server side of things in the beginning chapters. Needed a little more on serializing XML, but then how do you do that in a platform-agnostic way. I was a little disappointed that there were little or no examples in java/jsp/servlet during the Basics, Patterns and XML chapters. Could have used that. Assumes knowledge of PHP.

2. Need a little more treatment of XML/XPath/XSLT. Gets a little bit confusing when the technologies are all combined.

3. I feel like the patterns chapter could have followed the XML/XPath/XSLT chapter.

4. Maybe JSON could be left for the back of the book since the X in AJAX stands for XML. Just a thought.

5. About 65 pages of the book are just on AjaxMail, which has numerous examples, but was a lot of reading to go through on one application.

PROS:

1. Not a beginner’s book. Assumes knowledge of many things, like PHP, network protocols, HTTP, etc. I’m glad a lot of those details were left out and AJAX was focused on.

2. Gets you up and running with good, working examples.

3. The patterns chapter is very helpful in deciding how to use the stuff.

4. Good chapter on widgets.

5. Bang for the buck when talking about the AJAX frameworks that are out there. Fairly good treatment of JPSpan, DWR and AJAX.NET.

Ajax made fun
I found this book to be extremely informative. It is written in a clear, engaging style that makes it a pleasure to read. The examples are well constructed, relevant to real world applications, and thoroughly explained. The essential bits of code are highlighted for quick reading. The most irritating thing about web development is cross-browser support, and authors do a great job to making this less intimidating and point readers to libraries to abstract away the differences. Also covered are related JavaScript XML, XPath, XSLT support, web services, RSS/Atom.

PHP is the primary server side language used, though they chose .NET/C# for creating a web service. Microsoft’s .NET web service tools are excellent, but I would have liked it if the authors had rounded this out with giving the basics of creating a web service using open source solutions.

If you want to learn Ajax techniques and related technologies, this book is well worth your time and money.

Only AJAX book you should buy!
AJAX is the we technology everybody is talking abot now and its something that you should know if you are a web developer/designer now or want to be.

This book starts with a great chapter explaing how AJAX started and what it really is and how it works. Explaining how AJAX really works can be dificult for the beginner and the authors do it wonderfully. The next chapter goes into the basics of AJAX and how to create a very simple example(s) to give the user a solid foundation of how this new technology works (old technology but new way of using it actally).

The next chapter goes into Patterns which describes the programming techniques used by AJAX applications. This is a crucial chapter because it is this technique that allows developers to reall understand how to develop dynamic applications with AJAX. Lots of keywords are thrown around (throttling, periodic refreshing, multi-stage downloads, pending requests, etc) and each are excplained in detailed in a very concise manner that does not confuse the reader.

The next chapter focuses on the data format that is used to transfer this data (XML, XPath, XSLT) between each other using AJAX. Various techniques with the different browsers are discussed as well as workarounds if needed for the browser differences.

The rest of the book covers web services, JSON, widgets, andhte different frameworks that are available to use.

A very complete AJAX book that will get any reader ready to se AJAX in their web development work. A must by...

Best Ajax Book Yet
Last month, I was contacted by Wrox Press asking me to review of this book, Professional Ajax. I of course jumped at the opportunity, and have found this to be a very well rounded guide to Ajax technologies. It serves not only a comprehensive overview of all the various methods for handing complex asynchronous information exchange, but is also a handy reference guide for creating highly sought after effects for integration in your own site projects.

In case you didn’t already know, Ajax itself was a term coined by Jesse James Garrett in an article he wrote for Adaptive Path in February of 2005. It simply stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. A little over a year later, and the entire web is abuzz with the new terminology. I was even able to attend a panel at SXSW on Ajax, led by Jesse himself. People just can’t seem to get enough!

Aside from JavaScript, it is important to realize that this mantra is less about a specific language and more about a method of user experience enhancement. The authors of this book, Nicholas C. Zakas, Jeremy McPeak and Joe Fawcett do a good job of staying platform neutral and language agnostic. They cover a myriad of examples with PHP, Java and the Microsoft .NET platform.

They start out with a brief history, and show how the logic behind Ajax has evolved from framesets to iframes, and now the popular XMLHttpRequest. Since this is not an official W3C standard, a small bit of code forking is necessary. Most modern browsers handle it the same way, but Internet Explorer still treats it as an ActiveXObject. However, this change is slated with the release of IE7.

Since I’m already pretty familiar with the theories behind Ajax, the chapters that stood out to me the most were 6, 7 and 8. Chapter six was devoted to web services, covering SOAP, WSDL and REST. It also shows how to make a rudimentary browser calculator, and a spell checker using the Google API.

Chapter seven focused pretty exclusively on JSON, a lightweight alternative to using XML for asynchrounous data transmission. XML is argued to be more human readable, but since this information is created to be parsed and not read, the proponents of JSON prefer the lighter file size and ease of use.

The drawbacks of using JSON over XML are that there is not native support for it in any languages other than JavaScript, as it’s a code variant and not a markup language. So, some content transformation is involved in making use of it. An additional benefit of XML is that Flash can parse it natively more easily, as of version 8. It’s really just based on preference.

Using JSON, they teach how to recreate Google’s popular auto-suggest feature, which completes possible search terms as you type. Chapter eight is where things really start to get fun though, because they teach you how to make even more web-based widgets. These include an animated news ticker, a weather checker, and a localized website search engine using a few external API’s.

The whole of chapter nine is devoted to constructing a web-based POP3 email application that mimicks the functionality of Gmail, including the courtesy of keeping the browser’s Back and Forward buttons working normally. Chapter ten finishes off the book nicely by covering some popular Ajax frameworks, such as JPSpan for PHP, DWR for Java SDK and Ajax.NET for the .NET platform. Bascially, if you want to really delve into Ajax concepts, this book is ideal.

Concise and Simple Introduction to Ajax
Professional Ajax will enable you to get up to speed with Ajax, the problems that Ajax solves, and common patters for Ajax use. The authors also introduce you to a cross-platform library to ease your own script development. The writing style is clear and no-nonsense.

I was happy to see their approach in explaining scripting techniques. Once to address IE, once to address Mozilla, and once to address the combined approach. I found this to be very helpful, as most sources jumble it all together. I was not happy to see that Opera and Safari were entirely ignored. The world doesn’t need another Ajax app that fails in these browsers!

I was also surprised to see that the book is most definitely not platform-agnostic. At least not to the extent that I was led to believe by the description and comments. Examples are C# and PHP.

Too much time was spent focused on the server side. For example, the web servcies section spent more time showing you how to setup a web service in .Net than it did showing you how to consume it with Ajax. The server side could have been abstracted -- in a book about Ajax, the server side is a black box -- all that matters is what is sent out, and what is returned. I couldn’t care less about the algorithms used to create the return.

All-in-all, it was a good read. Fast, to the point, concise. I’d also recommend Ajax in Action for a more thorough review of patterns, a look at elegantly creating reusable Ajax components, and coverage of other Ajax-related topics like usage of frameworks.

Detailed and practical
"Professional Ajax" shoots from the hip. Go ahead, scour the web. Find every forum, article, or review about Ajax that allows users to post comments. You’ll find a common complaint: "We’ve been doing that for years, we don’t need a fancy new name." These guys understand this comment. They know what they’re doing here, and they’ve got the battle scars to prove it. Call it what you want: Ajax, Web 2.0, or just business as usual, these authors know how to get the job done.

You won’t find oversimplifications here: the authors don’t skimp on details as they describe what goes into Ajax applications and show you how to build your own. The book concludes with a large and lovely guide through the process of developing a realistic Ajax-based email client similar to Gmail.

This is a nice pragmatic guide to coming up to speed with what’s happening in interactive Web application development. You won’t go wrong with this book.

Nice book with working examples
This is a nice book with working examples. Although it uses php, it is easy to understand. This book requires setting up a database MySQL, which is easy for any developer. And it has a good balance between the theory and examples. If you don’t know PHP, learn it in a couple of days (PHP is elegant and simple). I tried to run some programs in java after rewrite the examples, and porting is not too bad. After I finish the porting, I would establish a public link for examples at www.usanalyst.com as well (Now the links for another ajax book examples are there).

John the Builder, www.usanalyst.com

Outstanding platform-agnostic look at Ajax programming
The book does a good job academically of showing how Ajax has evolved (itself a debatable topic) and how it is used in modern-day applications. The book doesn’t marry the reader to any one particular web development framework, effectively citing examples in PHP, .NET, and JavaServer Pages. Practically, the authors exhibit a proper mix of (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Dynamic HTML and XmlHttpRequests, showing how the technologies are blended for developing next-gen UIs.

There are great discussions of advanced concepts like JSON, REST, and SOAP-based web services and how Ajax is incorporated into them. Also, coding to allow cross-browser compatibility is stressed throughout the book, particularly in instantiating an XMLHTTP object across IE, Firefox, Mozilla and Safari. The authors’ zXml and XParser are cited as two of several third-party libraries to seamlessly pull this off.

Some gems that I found within the book include Chapter 8 - "Web Site Widgets", which is very helpful, giving practical demonstrations and usable code for several Ajax-driven mini-applications we could all use in our web projects. Chapter 7’s case study of a Google Suggest-style autocomplete text box was very elegant, using JSON as an alternative to XML’s typically verbose payload. Chapter 2 - "Ajax Patterns" also abstracts many of the features common to apps using Ajax (i.e., polling, autosave, incremental updating). All are well done and greatly appreciated.

Syntactically, the authors’ programming style is very clever. While not exhaustively described, the book shows how to feign object-oriented programming in client-side JavaScript, making liberal use of such time-saving coding tricks like faux classes, inline function definitions and prototypes.

In criticism, the one chapter I found to be a letdown was Chapter 5 - "RSS/Atom", mainly because I’m very involved with work in that space. A terse description of content syndication is presented, but then followed exclusively by an analysis the FooReader.NET web-based RSS aggregator app. It’s nice, but doesn’t take a more holistic view of how Ajax is being used elsewhere. I would have also liked to see examples in emerging platforms, specifically Ruby on Rails and the Ajax support built directly into that web framework.

But overall this is a very good introductory read for experienced programmers wanting to get up to speed on the next big thing in advanced web UI development. I’m a better, more aware, more prepared developer for having read it.

The best AJAX book so far...
There are only a handful of books out there, and this book is the best one so far. I know, because I have browsed through them all. Where as other books talk a lot in detail about the browser level AJAX process, most of them fail to explain [in detail] how to make AJAX technologies work with server-side scripts. That’s where this book is different; there’s plenty of PHP code with most AJAX examples to show readers how the whole process works.

The first few chapters have enough information to get a novice started with AJAX. And if you know your html and web development already, you’d be AJAXifying your sites within hours. I highly recommend this book.