Head First Ajax Book Reviewed
To welcome the new year, I wanted to share with you something I don't know if I can call it a book, or an interactive book, or a book 2.0 ?! It's a brain friendly guide titled "Head first Ajax". Written by Rebecca M. Riordan and published by O'Reilly (September 2, 2008), Head first Ajax is definitely an amazing new Ajax learning experience written in "Head-First" style in a very clear visual format. In about 500 pages, 12 chapters and 2 appendixes, the author covered all the necessary to master Ajax web application development starting from XHTML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript, then to more detailed components Json, XMLHttpRequest, using different techniques JS frameworks, forms validations ... etc.
The book is interesting for beginners, intermediate and even Ajax Experts to refresh their knowledge understanding of different Ajax concepts, or simply to learn about a new visual learning experience. After understanding the basics of Ajax, the book start with an introduction into designing Ajax applications with a registration page sample. Then JavaScript Events and Multiple Events Handler, to fully understand interaction between user and page and get full control on user actions.
In chapter five the author introduced asynchronous applications, and test it with the user registration page. This evoke working on different issues such usability, Asynchronous Vs synchronous, multi-threading ... etc. Then in chapter six you will learn how to play puzzle but with DOM ! A good understanding of DOM and how to manipulate different objects in the page is important to create good Ajax-based web interfaces. The concept is very well illustrated, that your kids might easily use it to learn DOM. Chapter seven goes more deeply into DOM manipulation and how to add an element, substitute a node for another, remove a node ...
From chapter eight, topics goes more advanced starting from Frameworks and toolkits, even that I don't think that you have to "trust no one" of them as mentioned in the book. Chapter nine introduce to XML requests and responses - the very basics things about XML formatting, how to send data and get response, then how you can access XML response data and apply it to your page.
Chapter ten about JSON alternative to exchange data between client and server, the encode and decode process, then how to evaluate JSON response into JavaScript objects. Chapter eleven is the cherry on the cake of First Head Ajax book where you can find response to Ajax-based validation for all of your forms. Final chapter, twelve, explain how to send your Ajax request using POST instead of GET.
Overall you will get all the basics of Ajaxians web applications and thanks to the illustrated explanations I find it a really great learning experience, especially if you are new into Ajax and RIA. It's not at all a reference book that covers everything, but I it is really a must have !
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