Pragmatic Ajax: A Web 2.0 Primer

by Justin Gehtland, Ben Galbraith, Dion Almaer

It's not just another book on Ajax. It's "Pragmatic Ajax" a concise, complete look at a new way of envisioning and implementing browser-based applications.Ajax turns static web pages into interactive... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976694085
• ISBN13: 9780976694083
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.6" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent explanation with great examples

This book is everything one can want form such a book. Before I read this book, I knew nothing about AJAX, although I read few articles on the internet, I couldn't find such nice explanations and examples. Now I use AJAX wherever I can, and I can't immagine my life without it. Buy this book and you won't be sorry.

Excellent no bull

Well written and excellent, great info in the first 50 pages. Much better than the Ajax on Java for the nutshell which seems to worm around. This book tells it like it is. Just my opinion. I think anyone who is being inundated with Ajax boasting should read this and see what its all about.

Solid Ajax Book!!!

'Pragmatic Ajax: A Web 2.0 Primer' by Justin Gehtland is a very nice, solid Ajax book for any and all web developers using/learning the new way to develop web sites for the next generation. Rounding out around 300 pages, this has the brevity that I desire and the content to match! Discussing the origins of Ajax, what Ajax is and how it can be used, the author provides solid examples, writing, and shows off his solid teaching abilities in this nice book, another nice hit from this publishing house. There are a bunch of Ajax books out on the market and no doubt a lot more to come, but this goes near the top of my list for desirables in the genre. Not bloated at all, a nice layout, solid writing all makes for a wonderful text to have on your desk by your side while you used the coolest web technology to ever be born!! ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Great title... heavy on practicality...

The Pragmatic Programmers publishing group does a great job coming up with books that cut right to the real-world aspects of technology. Pragmatic Ajax: A Web 2.0 Primer by Justin Gehtland, Ben Galbraith, and Dion Almaer is another title that follows in that tradition... Contents: Building Rich Internet Applications with Ajax; Creating Google Maps; Ajax in Action; Ajax Explained; Ajax Frameworks; Ajax UI - Part 1; Ajax UI - Part 2; Debugging Ajax Applications; Degradable Ajax; JSON and JSON-RPC; Server-side Framework Integration; Ajax with PHP; Ajax with Rails; Proxy-Based Ajax with DWR; ASP.NET and Atlas; Ajax in the Future and Beyond; Index Rather than start you out with a simple Hello World example of an Ajax application, they dive right into a application they call Ajaxian Maps (a play on Google Maps). While you don't get all the hand-holding instruction of what each Ajax component is along the way, you quickly get a sense of what power can be unleashed with these techniques. Once you've seen it all in action (complete with code), then you start to get the nitty-gritty of what and how it all works. That's more the tutorial section you're used to seeing in other books on the subject. I really appreciate how they then go to the different Ajax frameworks that are out there, and that you can use to hide some of the plumbing that is part and parcel of every Ajax application. While a number are mentioned, they spend most of their time on Dojo and Prototype. And I also appreciated the chapter on debugging your Ajax application. Web apps can be a bit tricky to debug, but the information in here gives you a solid foundation to move forward in that area. Overall, one of the best "practical" books on Ajax that I've had the pleasure to review. Everything is rooted in and tied back to real examples in use today, so it's not one of these "I took the tutorial, now what can I use it for?" books... Very much recommended...

This book demystifies the Ajax revolution. Highly recommended.

This book is so much more than a technical reference for Ajaxian techniques. It will help you understand how the whole Ajax revolution came about, and where it's going. After providing a foundation of Ajax background, the authors quickly jump in to the mother of all Ajax applications: Google Maps. Not only do they describe what made Google Maps so important, they discuss in detail how the UI side can be implemented. And the most exciting thing? After reading it, you'll feel like you could go out and create that kind of UI. It's very empowering! After the initial excitement of understanding the techniques used in Google Maps, the authors show you a very simple customer entry form and walk you through the process of implementing an Ajax lookup to populate city and state based on zipcode. Then, after teaching the reader how to write the Ajax code from scratch, they discussed Ajax frameworks and walked the reader through implementing the same functionality using the Dojo framework. I thought this progression was very effective. It really showed off the value of learning these frameworks rather than handcoding everything. There was plenty of great discussions of UI possibilities, validation techniques, and other things Ajax can help us with. Not only did the Authors do a great job of teaching the reader what to do, they also invested significant time helping the reader avoid common pitfalls. The book covers so much more: debugging, graceful degradation. JSON, server-side frameworks and Ajax with various server platforms. It finishes with a nice discussion of the future of Ajax. I plan to re-read this book and share it with my colleagues. The authors really did a great job putting this book together. Not only is this a valuable reference, it's also a great cover-to-cover read.