Ajax is no longer an experimental approach to website development, but the key to building browser-based applications that form the cornerstone of Web 2.0.
Head First Ajax gives you an up-to-date perspective that lets you see exactly what you can do -- and has been done -- with Ajax. With it, you get a highly practical, in-depth, and mature view of what is now a mature development approach.
Using the unique and highly effective visual format that has turned Head First titles into runaway bestsellers, this book offers a big picture overview to introduce Ajax, and then explores the use of individual Ajax components -- including the JavaScript event model, DOM, XML, JSON, and more -- as it progresses. You'll find plenty of sample applications that illustrate the concepts, along with exercises, quizzes, and other interactive features to help you retain what you've learned.
Head First Ajax covers:
- The JavaScript event model
- Making Ajax requests with XMLHTTPREQUEST objects
- The asynchronous application model
- The Document Object Model (DOM)
- Manipulating the DOM in JavaScript
- Controlling the browser with the Browser Object Model
- XHTML Forms
- POST Requests
- XML Syntax and the XML DOM tree
- XML Requests & Responses
- JSON -- an alternative to XML
- Ajax architecture & patterns
- The Prototype Library
The book also discusses the server-side implications of building Ajax applications, and uses a "black box" approach to server-side components.
Head First Ajax is the ideal guide for experienced web developers comfortable with scripting -- particularly those who have completed the exercises in
Head First JavaScript -- and for experienced programmers in Java, PHP, and C# who want to learn client-side programming.
Customer Reviews & Comments
This book is for people who already know HTML very well and are familiar - but not necessarily experts - with CSS and Javascript. If you are not in that category you should probably check out "Head First HTML and CSS" first. This is not a reference book, but a book for understanding and, more importantly remembering Ajax via an unusual presentation style. That unusual presentation style includes fake interviews, lots of illustrations, and question and answer sessions. You are also presented several designs and shown the right and wrong ways to approach problems. Ajax requires a non-traditional approach to web application design, and head first books are always good at adjusting your thought process as painlessly as possible.
The topics covered include designing Ajax applications, Javascript events, multiple event handlers, asynchronous applications, the document object model and its manipulation, frameworks and toolkits, XML requests and responses, Javascript Standard Object Notation, forms and validations, post requests, leftovers, and utility functions.
I liked this book not only for its casual and fun presentation style, but because it starts explaining Ajax at the beginning and does not get confusing as you go forward. The author knows how to ramp up the difficulty level without you really noticing. Plus, you don't feel like you need half a dozen other books to understand what's going on. The author is clear in her explanation of what the book's limitations are.
