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Bulletproof Ajax
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by Jeremy Keith and Aaron Gustafson
Sales Rank: 11405
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Discount: 34 %
List Price: $39.99
$26.39
At Amazon
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Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: New Riders; First Edition edition February 19, 2007
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0321472667
ISBN-13: 978-0321472663
Product Dimensions:
8.8 x 7.4 x 0.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
Book Description
Step-by-step guide reveals best practices for enhancing Web sites with Ajax - A step-by-step guide to enhancing Web sites with Ajax.
- Uses progressive enhancement techniques to ensure graceful degradation (which makes sites usable in all browsers).
- Shows readers how to write their own Ajax scripts instead of relying on third-party libraries.
Web site designers love the idea of Ajax--of creating Web pages in which information can be updated without refreshing the entire page. But for those who aren't hard-core programmers, enhancing pages using Ajax can be a challenge. Even more of a challenge is making sure those pages work for all users. In Bulletproof Ajax, author Jeremy Keith demonstrates how developers comfortable with CSS and (X)HTML can build Ajax functionality without frameworks, using the ideas of graceful degradation and progressive enhancement to ensure that the pages work for all users. Throughout this step-by-step guide, his emphasis is on best practices with an approach to building Ajax pages called Hijax, which improves flexibility and avoids worst-case scenarios.
About The Author
Working with the Web consultancy firm, Clearleft, Jeremy Keith creates elegant, usable Web sites using the troika of Web standards: CSS, (X)HTML, and the Document Object Model. He is a member of the Web Standards Project and joint lead of the DOM Scripting Task Force. He teaches hands-on Ajax and DOM Scripting in full-day workshops and is the author of DOM Scripting: JavaScript Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model.
Customer Reviews & Comments
Jeremy Keith has been on forefront of upcoming web practices for quite awhile now. He is a member of the Web Standards Project, joint lead of the DOM Scripting Task Force, stresses web standards and accessibly in web design. His website addaciao.com is a great resource of material on the subject and you can pretty much find him at almost any web conference in the world nowadays. This is his second book (Dom Scripting), and it pretty much continues his relentless pursuits of accessibility and unobtrusiveness wherever JavaScript is involved. This book focuses on the creating well structured Ajax web applications but making sure the reader does not forget the most important thing about web sites: their content. If all this fancy-shaky, bells and whistles Ajax stuff prevents a disabled user using a screen reader to be able to view your website content, what is the point? The book is aimed (like his first) at web designers as opposed to programmers. Jeremy does not use fancy techo-bable when regular simple English will suffice. He wants to make sure that anybody can understands the concepts of Ajax and its components (JavaScript, XML, XMLHTTPRequest) can be used properly by anybody who is willing to read it. Not too many books are written like this (unfortunately) and it is a joy to read. Though when you actually see it and how short it is (barely 200 pages with index), you may thing..."this is too short for me to get anything out of this". But you would be so wrong. There are around 10 or so Ajax books out there now (more on the way I'm sure), and I probably have at least half them. I would put this as probably I the top 2 of all the Ajax books out there. IF you are really going to immerse yourself in learning and using Ajax, I would suggest getting one more "BIG" reference type book on it and that would all you would need. This is a must-buy for anybody wanting to learn Ajax with standards, accessibility in mind. Ok, enough about how much I like this book, on with some details about the book: Chapter 1: A nicely illustrated introduction of what Ajax is what pieces comprise it, who started using it, how it is used and why it is so "hype" right now. Chapter 2: A very nice introduction to JavaScript and DOM basics. Honestly, this chapters takes about the best of Jeremy's DOM Scripting Book and condenses it into about 10 pages. Of course it is just a overview of the DOM methods and a brief explanation of each, but it is all you really need to get started. You should buy his DOM Scripting book if you want to get some hands-on experience with the DOM. Or get the JavaScript Reference book from oreilly which is a JavaScript encyclopedia of everything there is to know about it. Chapter 3: XMLHttpRequest - The "meat-and-potatoes" of how Ajax works. Jeremy does a great job of explaning the history of how this object got first developed (IE 5 - XMLRequest) and is used with proper object detection. Chapter 4: Jeremy discusses the good and bad of using XML and JSON to transport data. Very helpful. Chapter 5: Hijax: Jeremys own creating of progressive enhancement and Ajax. He continues his "unobtrusive JavaScript" techniques with DOM Scripting and goes into the Ajax arena. No other book that I have seen talks about this topic when dealing with Ajax. All I see in other books is using fancy APIs and Patterns, but what if JavaScript is unavailable? Now what will your web app do? Obviously not much unless you read this chapter. Chapter 6: Tough obstacles when developing Ajax apps such as: Bookmarking, Back button, user feedback are discusses to make sure the user experience continues to be a good one. Chapter 7: Screen readers and Ajax - A tough sell. Chapter 8: Putting it all together - A nice complete Ajax web app (Book Shopping Cart) that takes everything Jeremy has talked about up till now Chapter: The Future? A discussion of the different frameworks available: Dojo, prototype, script.aculo.us, Y! UI, JQuery and mochikit. As I've said before even though this book is short, the bang for the buck is more than any other Ajax book on the market today, hands down. Go out and buy it!
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Bulletproof Ajax
List Price: $39.99
Discount: 34 %
Available from Amazon
Price: $26.39
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