The second section about core techniques, after you learned what AJAX is all about, you can start working on the visual concepts of RIA and considering the page as an application. Starting by organizing complex user interface code, then using MVC with Javascript and separating presentation from code for maintainable code, and creating flexible event-handling mode, and finally creating the user interface directly from your business objects. The techniques used are very well explained and organized in a simple and logic way to give a clear overview of creating AJAX applications. The section finished with a summary and resources very interesting to see more further with real applications.

Then you'll be interested to learn the role of the server, and making AJAX application robust and scalable by working with the server side, seeing the different architectures and designs, exchanging data with the server as content, script or data, Communicating updates to the server and finally binding multiple requests and replies into a single http call.

The third section about professional AJAX with advanced topics concerning the user experience, security and performance. In the first sections the book introduced many technologies and techniques to create AJAX applications, and this section will give you the necessary tools and techniques to create quality applications for the real world beginning with the key features of usable code, the common notification features, introducing a reusable framework for notifications and highlighting updated data in situ.

The security is certainly an important issue which have been covered also in this section with the javascript security model, remote web services, protecting user's data on the internet and protecting your AJAX data stream. The different issues are explained with examples showing the different security issues that could be faced with AJAX and the solutions and techniques to solve these issues.

Finally, a performant chapter about the performance of AJAX applications with the different techniques and tools for profiling, and optimizing the Javascript code. Then managing javascript memory footprints, how to design for perfomance, design patterns, and handling browser-specific performance issues.

The section four resume all the previous sections and demonstrate the full process of building compelling interactive elements for your web applications. Examples are variant and cover many experiences of what you can do with AJAX using PHP, Java, VB.NET, C#. So whatever the scripting language you use you may find a large variety of applications very well explained step by step with downloadable code from the website.

The applications available in this book are Dynamic double combo, Type-ahead suggest, the enhanced AJAX web portal, Live search using XSLT, Building stand-alone applications with AJAX. And a final look at the the Appendix where you may find toolkits, frameworks and libraries … and excellent list of external AJAX resources.

Conclusion

AJAX in Action is not only an excellent reading about the tendence in web development but also an excellent reference for AJAX application development. This book will take you from the very first steps introducing AJAX until the very complex and advanced topics about scaling, security and performance of professional AJAX applications.