Book Recommendations :: AJAX

[Elizabeth]

Can you all give me your best recommendation(s) for books on AJAX ?

Thanks ...

- E -

[Jim Carlock]

"Elizabeth" <el*******@nospam.com> wrote:

Can you all give me your best recommendation(s) for books
on AJAX ?

The following site has some great information to get started with
JavaScript. They provide some great examples and then offer a
way to test different javascripts out there. Click upon one of the
examples you run across.

http://w3schools.com/js/

Hope this helps.

Jim Carlock
Post replies to the newsgroup.

[Elizabeth]

"Jim Carlock" <an*******@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:MM****************@tornado.tampabay.rr.com...

"Elizabeth" <el*******@nospam.com> wrote:

Can you all give me your best recommendation(s) for books
on AJAX ?
The following site has some great information to get started with
JavaScript. They provide some great examples and then offer a
way to test different javascripts out there. Click upon one of the
examples you run across.

http://w3schools.com/js/

that seems to be a dead link, Jim ... I'm well-acquainted with Javascript
and looking for a quick primer on AJAX; I understand it conceptually and
really need a few good code samples to pick up the formal implementation and
idiom of real-world apps ... thanks

Elizabeth
Hope this helps.

Jim Carlock
Post replies to the newsgroup.

[Zif]

Elizabeth wrote:

"Jim Carlock" <an*******@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:MM****************@tornado.tampabay.rr.com...

"Elizabeth" <el*******@nospam.com> wrote:

Can you all give me your best recommendation(s) for books
on AJAX ?

Search the CLJ archives, web references:

<URL:http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html>
<URL:http://www.ajaxtoolbox.com/>

[...]

http://w3schools.com/js/

that seems to be a dead link, Jim

<URL:http://www.w3schools.com/js/>

[...]

--
Zif

[Jim Carlock]

Elizabeth wrote:

http://w3schools.com/js/

that seems to be a dead link, Jim

Oh, wow. I tested it out and it worked inside of firefox. I didn't
realize firefox automatically prepended "www." onto it. That's
a bad mark against firefox for doing automatic address-bar
conversions. :-) My apologies... Zif posted the proper link...

http://www.w3schools.com/js/

Thanks for catching that, Elizabeth.

One thing I'll add in addition to the link above, is that an older
version of the FireFox webbrowser seems to be helpful in
debugging javascript applications. It also provides a great way
to get at least one other browser to test against. There's a few
useful things inside of the FireFox browser, such as a Javascript
console which helps in debugging.

Hope that helps.

Jim Carlock
Post replies to the group.

[Rémi Bastide]

Elizabeth wrote:

Can you all give me your best recommendation(s) for books on AJAX ?

Thanks ...

- E -

DHTML utopia : modern web design using javascript and DOM, Stuart
Langgridge, SitePoint, free sample chapters available.
--
Rémi Bastide
http://liihs.irit.fr/bastide

[Elizabeth]

"Rémi Bastide" <Fi****************@irit.fr> wrote in message
news:ds**********@news.cict.fr...

Elizabeth wrote:

Can you all give me your best recommendation(s) for books on AJAX ?

Thanks ...

- E -

DHTML utopia : modern web design using javascript and DOM, Stuart
Langgridge, SitePoint, free sample chapters available.
--
Rémi Bastide
http://liihs.irit.fr/bastide

Remi .. this book supposedly has only one chapter on AJAX ... where is it
that you can see the sample chapters ? Amazon does not have them ..

thanks ...

E

[Elizabeth]

Thanks, Jim ... and thanks, Zif ...

Some of this information is handy; are references around for JS, DOM, DHTML
in help-file format ? I have some older ones from MS but I'd like to find
something newer and more complete

E

"Jim Carlock" <an*******@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:ZY******************@tornado.tampabay.rr.com. ..

Elizabeth wrote:

http://w3schools.com/js/

that seems to be a dead link, Jim

Oh, wow. I tested it out and it worked inside of firefox. I didn't
realize firefox automatically prepended "www." onto it. That's
a bad mark against firefox for doing automatic address-bar
conversions. :-) My apologies... Zif posted the proper link...

http://www.w3schools.com/js/

Thanks for catching that, Elizabeth.

One thing I'll add in addition to the link above, is that an older
version of the FireFox webbrowser seems to be helpful in
debugging javascript applications. It also provides a great way
to get at least one other browser to test against. There's a few
useful things inside of the FireFox browser, such as a Javascript
console which helps in debugging.

Hope that helps.

Jim Carlock
Post replies to the group.

[Elizabeth]

Nobody seems to want to recommend an AJAX book or books; is that because
there aren't any good ones ?

E

"Zif" <zi***@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:qy*****************@news.optus.net.au...

Elizabeth wrote:

"Jim Carlock" <an*******@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:MM****************@tornado.tampabay.rr.com...

"Elizabeth" <el*******@nospam.com> wrote:

Can you all give me your best recommendation(s) for books
on AJAX ?

Search the CLJ archives, web references:

<URL:http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html>
<URL:http://www.ajaxtoolbox.com/>

[...]

http://w3schools.com/js/

that seems to be a dead link, Jim

<URL:http://www.w3schools.com/js/>

[...]

--
Zif

[VK]

Elizabeth wrote:

.. this book supposedly has only one chapter on AJAX ... where is it
that you can see the sample chapters ? Amazon does not have them ..

Why do you expect an entire book about Ajax?
Ajax in it's current state is nothing but uniformed build up over
IXMLHTTPRequest (IE) and XMLHttpRequest (FF etc.) Plus a dozen or bugs
across different browsers to take into account, plus a dozen of tricks.
Enough for a good online article or a printed chapter. But what do you
suppose to write a *book* about?

[John Bokma]

"VK" <sc**********@yahoo.com> wrote:

Elizabeth wrote:

.. this book supposedly has only one chapter on AJAX ... where is it
that you can see the sample chapters ? Amazon does not have them ..

Why do you expect an entire book about Ajax?
Ajax in it's current state is nothing but uniformed build up over
IXMLHTTPRequest (IE) and XMLHttpRequest (FF etc.) Plus a dozen or bugs
across different browsers to take into account, plus a dozen of tricks.
Enough for a good online article or a printed chapter. But what do you
suppose to write a *book* about?

- Drag & Drop
- Dynamic table reordering
- WYSIWIG editors
- maybe a bit on the server side?

No idea if a JavaScript book covers the first 3 though.

--
John MexIT: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/
personal page: http://johnbokma.com/
Experienced programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html

[Randy Webb]

Elizabeth said the following on 2/9/2006 2:09 PM:

Nobody seems to want to recommend an AJAX book or books; is that because
there aren't any good ones ?

Precisely. If anybody were to sit down right now and write a book on
this "AJAX" then 99% of it would have to be dedicated to explaining the
problems with it in it's current state. The page referred to in the FAQ
<URL: http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html >
Has everything you need at the moment to make an HTTPRequest Object. Why
clutter it up just to make it a "book"?

--
Randy
comp.lang.javascript FAQ - http://jibbering.com/faq & newsgroup weekly
Javascript Best Practices - http://www.JavascriptToolbox.com/bestpractices/

[Randy Webb]

John Bokma said the following on 2/9/2006 2:19 PM:

"VK" <sc**********@yahoo.com> wrote:

Elizabeth wrote:

.. this book supposedly has only one chapter on AJAX ... where is it
that you can see the sample chapters ? Amazon does not have them .. Why do you expect an entire book about Ajax?
Ajax in it's current state is nothing but uniformed build up over
IXMLHTTPRequest (IE) and XMLHttpRequest (FF etc.) Plus a dozen or bugs
across different browsers to take into account, plus a dozen of tricks.
Enough for a good online article or a printed chapter. But what do you
suppose to write a *book* about?

- Drag & Drop

Can be done without an HTTPRequest Object.
- Dynamic table reordering
Can be done without an HTTPRequest Object.
- WYSIWIG editors
Can be done without an HTTPRequest Object.
- maybe a bit on the server side?
Can be done without an HTTPRequest Object.
No idea if a JavaScript book covers the first 3 though.

Probably none of them.

--
Randy
comp.lang.javascript FAQ - http://jibbering.com/faq & newsgroup weekly
Javascript Best Practices - http://www.JavascriptToolbox.com/bestpractices/

[Elizabeth]

"VK" <sc**********@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@g47g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...

Elizabeth wrote:

.. this book supposedly has only one chapter on AJAX ... where is it
that you can see the sample chapters ? Amazon does not have them ..
Why do you expect an entire book about Ajax?

I don't *expect* anything; I was looking for a "book" because it's a
commonly used unit of delivery; it doesn't have to be an "entire book" in
the sense of having some large number of pages .. I really don't care if
it's a short PDF file; but I would like something which covers enough ground
in a single text to be able to start doing some useful work with this
collection of technologies. I just don't want to have to refer to XML tomes
to see some simple ways of parsing the returned stream, for one

There are of course several AJAX books on the market; from experience I
know a lot of what the "computer press" puts out is garbage .. sold by the
pound ... so I asked in a forum where I expected people might know which, if
any, of the books might be worth buying. Needless to say, I also appreciate
any non-book references as well .. if they're good
Ajax in it's current state is nothing but uniformed build up over
IXMLHTTPRequest (IE) and XMLHttpRequest (FF etc.)

that's a little bit like saying all you need or want to learn "C" is the
ANSI specifications .. good luck, have fun

E

[John Bokma]

Randy Webb <Hi************@aol.com> wrote:

John Bokma said the following on 2/9/2006 2:19 PM:

"VK" <sc**********@yahoo.com> wrote:

Elizabeth wrote:
.. this book supposedly has only one chapter on AJAX ... where is
it that you can see the sample chapters ? Amazon does not have
them ..
Why do you expect an entire book about Ajax?
Ajax in it's current state is nothing but uniformed build up over
IXMLHTTPRequest (IE) and XMLHttpRequest (FF etc.) Plus a dozen or
bugs across different browsers to take into account, plus a dozen of
tricks. Enough for a good online article or a printed chapter. But
what do you suppose to write a *book* about?

- Drag & Drop

Can be done without an HTTPRequest Object.

- Dynamic table reordering

Can be done without an HTTPRequest Object.

- WYSIWIG editors

Can be done without an HTTPRequest Object.

Of course. In a similar way a book on CGI could be one page. Yet, the
books I have seen show shopping carts, web counters, dynamic page
creation, smart redirecting, email form handling, etc.

- maybe a bit on the server side?

Can be done without an HTTPRequest Object.

No idea if a JavaScript book covers the first 3 though.

Probably none of them.

So I just gave you an outline for a book on AJAX, and it wasn't even
hard :-D

--
John MexIT: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/
personal page: http://johnbokma.com/
Experienced programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html

[John Bokma]

Randy Webb <Hi************@aol.com> wrote:

Elizabeth said the following on 2/9/2006 2:09 PM:

Nobody seems to want to recommend an AJAX book or books; is that
because there aren't any good ones ?

Precisely. If anybody were to sit down right now and write a book on
this "AJAX" then 99% of it would have to be dedicated to explaining
the problems with it in it's current state. The page referred to in
the FAQ <URL: http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html >
Has everything you need at the moment to make an HTTPRequest Object.
Why clutter it up just to make it a "book"?

Because you can read a book away from the computer, which to me is the
recommended way to learn anything on programming in general: read the book
twice before you touch the computer.

I can already think up 3 chapters on AJAX that could be put before that
link you gave *without* even looking at it.

And probably have no problem to think up at least 7 chapters after it with
real world examples.

Sometimes knowing a technique is not enough, seeing it written out as an
example explaining the steps, the design decisions, etc. really makes a
lot clear.

--
John MexIT: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/
personal page: http://johnbokma.com/
Experienced programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html

[VK]

Elizabeth wrote:

I don't *expect* anything; I was looking for a "book" because it's a
commonly used unit of delivery; it doesn't have to be an "entire book" in
the sense of having some large number of pages .. I really don't care if
it's a short PDF file; but I would like something which covers enough ground
in a single text to be able to start doing some useful work with this
collection of technologies. I just don't want to have to refer to XML tomes
to see some simple ways of parsing the returned stream, for one

There are of course several AJAX books on the market; from experience I
know a lot of what the "computer press" puts out is garbage .. sold by the
pound ... so I asked in a forum where I expected people might know which, if
any, of the books might be worth buying. Needless to say, I also appreciate
any non-book references as well .. if they're good

Ajax in it's current state is nothing but uniformed build up over
IXMLHTTPRequest (IE) and XMLHttpRequest (FF etc.)

that's a little bit like saying all you need or want to learn "C" is the
ANSI specifications .. good luck, have fun

Do not get so defensive right a way. Ajax is an interface to get server
response without reloading or leaving the current page. Plain vanilla
all of it.
But after you got server data (would it be plain text, HTML, XML or
JSON objects) you naturally need to do something with it, otherwise why
would you try to get in the first place. So you will need to know how
to navigate through XML nodes, update page content, add rows to the
table etc. etc. This has nothing to do with Ajax, it's what was once
called DHTML. There are some good books about DHML, surprisingly (or
not) older they are - better they are.
If you know DHTML thus if you know how to change any given part of the
page in the wanted way, you don't care about Ajax anymore. It is just a
data delivery system. If you know what to do with data, you don't
really care how the data came to you. And if you don't know what do
with the data, then you don't really need it yet.

So if we are taking Ajax as it is, there is a very good article at
<http://www.jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html>

If we are taking Ajax in some superimposed meaning like "All kind of
cool things I can do in the modern Web" then I'm not ready to suggest
something right off my head. If you tell me what is your intended
future use of Ajax, I could possibly be more specific.

[Ian Collins]

Elizabeth wrote:

Can you all give me your best recommendation(s) for books on AJAX ?

Ajax in Action, ISBN: 1932394613

Covers the basics pretty well.

--
Ian Collins.

[John Bokma]

"Elizabeth" <el*******@nospam.com> wrote:

There are of course several AJAX books on the market; from experience
I know a lot of what the "computer press" puts out is garbage .. sold
by the pound ...

So very true.

Let me see: (Amazon)
<http://amazon.com/gp/search/ref=br_ss_hs/?search-alias=aps&keywords=ajax>

"Sams Teach Yourself AJAX in 10 Minutes"
no, reason: Sams and "10 minutes". Most books I have seen
with days, hours and minutes in them are crap

"Ajax For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))"
no, reason: obvious :-)

So that's two less.

Personally I like O'Reilly and Wrox. Not sure if "JavaScript & DHTML
Cookbook" covers AJAX, and if it covers it good (Not all O'Reilly books
are good quality, sadly).

"Pragmatic Ajax : A Web 2.0 Primer" sounds promising.

Book Reviews: "Ajax in Action"
http://weblogs.asp.net/jasonsalas/ar...16/430681.aspx
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2005/1...n_book_review/

Ajax in it's current state is nothing but uniformed build up over
IXMLHTTPRequest (IE) and XMLHttpRequest (FF etc.)

that's a little bit like saying all you need or want to learn "C" is
the ANSI specifications .. good luck, have fun

Yup, and silly :-)

--
John MexIT: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/
personal page: http://johnbokma.com/
Experienced programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html

[Luke Matuszewski]

Elizabeth napisal(a):

Nobody seems to want to recommend an AJAX book or books; is that because
there aren't any good ones ?

Certainly not. The whole thing with AJAX and it's main object, which
is XmlHttpRequest, is about lack of standards or even recomendation
(mean of w3c.org). Different vendors implemented it by theirs way and
that is a fact, which in turn will persist in their product. Maybe in
this year (2006) the standard will emerge:

<URL:http://www.w3.org/2006/webapi/>

(as an addition (to responseXML and responseText) i would like to see
responseJSON property in XmlHttpObject, see
<URL:http://www.json.org/>).
In my opinion good source of start is

<URL:http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html>

, and good use of is

<URL:http://www.ajaxtoolbox.com/>

(which reveals some aspects of XmlHttpRequest and the catches you might
run into using it).

The use of it is wide, including existing API (google API, gmail API...
others based on SOAP messaging and WebServices (WSDL)).
As far as i know none of existing books cover working examples covering
mentioned topics.

B.R.
Luke Matuszewski

[Luke Matuszewski]

As a final note, AJAX life is longer than XmlHttpObject first appeared,
becouse of techniques:

- using hidden <iframe> element:

<URL:http://www.ashleyit.com/rs/>

(and using cookies: <URL:http://www.ashleyit.com/rs/rslite> ((so amount
of data transfered is limited (to 4 kB))) )

- using hidden Java applet in the page to communicate with the server

<URL:http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-resc/?dwzone=web>

- using XmlHttpRequest:

<URL:http://www.ajaxtoolbox.com/>

BR.
Luke Matuszewski

[Richard Cornford]

Elizabeth wrote:

Nobody seems to want to recommend an AJAX book or books;
is that because there aren't any good ones ?

It is as likely that AJAX follows on from what most here are already
familiar with so closely that nobody has gone to a book for information
on the subject. I have spent the last year working on an asynchronous
web service based web application (which is pretty much what many now
label AJAX), for which I read the specifications for SOAP and WSDL but
everything else was just a continuation of what I had previously learnt
scripting web browsers and writing server-side Java.

I could not recommend an AJAX book because I have never read one and
have no intention of doing so (unless directly (and well) paid to do
so). However, I would be surprised if there were many, if any, good
books on the subject. What I have seen written about AJAX has mostly
been superficial, and historically the quality of client-side scripting
books has been abysmally low.

Richard.

[Richard Cornford]

John Bokma wrote:

Randy Webb <Hi************@aol.com> wrote:

John Bokma said the following on 2/9/2006 2:19 PM: <snip>

No idea if a JavaScript book covers the first 3 though.

Probably none of them.

So I just gave you an outline for a book on AJAX, and it
wasn't even hard :-D

The thing that seems to be missing from most sources about 'AJAX' is
information on, and strategies for, the co-ordinating of the two
asynchronous input sources (the responses from the web server and the
browser interactions from the user). You would not want a response form
the web server to be writing a value into an INPUT field while the user
was busily typing into it, that would be a very poor GUI for any
application. That subject alone would probably take half a book to do
justice to.

Richard.

[Ian Collins]

Richard Cornford wrote:

The thing that seems to be missing from most sources about 'AJAX' is
information on, and strategies for, the co-ordinating of the two
asynchronous input sources (the responses from the web server and the
browser interactions from the user). You would not want a response form
the web server to be writing a value into an INPUT field while the user
was busily typing into it, that would be a very poor GUI for any
application. That subject alone would probably take half a book to do
justice to.

Ajax in Action covers this pretty well. I think it's worth the $22 for
an electronic copy.

There is a good section on user feedback and event processing.

--
Ian Collins.

[John Bokma]

Ian Collins <ia******@hotmail.com> wrote:

Ajax in Action covers this pretty well. I think it's worth the $22 for
an electronic copy.

I glanced over some reviews of AiA, and I think I am going to put it on my
wishlist :-D

--
John MexIT: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/
personal page: http://johnbokma.com/
Experienced programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
Happy Customers: http://castleamber.com/testimonials.html

[Jim Carlock]

"Elizabeth" <el*******@nospam.com> wrote:

Some of this information is handy; are references around for JS,
DOM, DHTML in help-file format ? I have some older ones from
MS but I'd like to find something newer and more complete

Well, the stuff I've used in the past include the 5.6 scripting document-
ation that Microsoft provided. I think the problem you run into though,
the lack of a book on the subject... exists primarily due to the history
of javascript. Javascript was/is a NetScape language, and Microsoft
calls their implementation JScript. There's probably a really good
history available at the http://jibbering.com/ site, specifically check out
the following page...

http://jibbering.com/faq/

I don't know who built the site, but I bet the guy Jim Ley knows him.
Jim Ley posts FAQ inside this newsgroup, and the FAQ themselves
provide useful information, perhaps a duplication of what's at the faq
link above.

He's done a heck of a good job putting together information about
javascript. His website name sounds a little silly and I fail to see how
jibbering specifically relates to javascript. <shrug>

There's a fourth edition of "Javascript for Dummies"... but I know
naught about it (the website indicates 376 pages - standard "Dummies"
size book). I hesitate to say this, but I own "HTML 4 for Dummies".

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/Dumm...OGRAMMING.html

A PDF exists at the following link. Don't know what's in it. I believe
the link represents the organization that creates the javascript standards(?).
http://www.ecma-international.org/pu...s/Ecma-262.htm

I still like http://www.w3schools.com, and they provide a good deal
of information, organized well and very easy to read. It's great for any-
one just starting out.

Hope this helps.

Jim Carlock
Post replies to the group, please.