Ajax Design Patterns

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 655 pages
• Published by: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
• Edition: 1st Edition June 29, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0596101805
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0596101800
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 2.1 pounds

Product Description


Ajax, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, exploded onto the scene in the spring of 2005 and remains the hottest story among web developers. With its rich combination of technologies, Ajax provides a strong foundation for creating interactive web applications with XML or JSON-based web services by using JavaScript in the browser to process the web server response.

Ajax Design Patterns shows you best practices that can dramatically improve your web development projects. It investigates how others have successfully dealt with conflicting design principles in the past and then relays that information directly to you.

The patterns outlined in the book fall into four categories:

• Foundational technology: looks at the raw technologies required for Ajax development
• Programming: Exposes techniques that developers have discovered to ensure their Ajax applications are maintainable
• Functionality and usability: Describes the types of user interfaces you'll come across in Ajax applications, as well as the new types of functionality that Ajax makes possible
• Development: Explains the process being used to monitor, debug, and test Ajax applications

Ajax Design Patterns will also get you up to speed with core Ajax technologies, such as XMLHttpRequest, the DOM, and JSON. Technical discussions are followed by code examples so you can see for yourself just what is-and isn't-possible with Ajax. This handy reference will help you to produce high-quality Ajax architectures, streamline web application performance, and improve the user experience.

Michael Mahemoff holds a PhD in Computer Science and software Engineering from the University of Melbourne, where his thesis was "Design Reuse in software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction." He lives in London and consults on software development issues in banking, health care, and logistics.

"Michael Mahemoff's Ajax Design Patterns is a truly comprehensive enyclopedia of web application design expertise, centred around but not limited to Ajax techniques. Polished nuggets of design wisdom are supported by tutorials and real-world code examples resulting in a book that serves not only as an intermediate to expert handbook but also as an extensive reference for building rich interactive web applications."
--Brent Ashley, remote scripting pioneer

About The Author
Michael Mahemoff holds a Ph.D in Computer Science and software Engineering from The University of Melbourne, where his thesis was on "Design Reuse in software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction". He lives in London and consults on software development issues in banking, healthcare, and logistics.

Reader Reviews
This book is filled with too many stories, facts and fictions. There are lots of success stories told about Ajax. Every so called "design pattern" discussion begins with a fictional story. I'm not sure if this is good, but for me it just bloats the book and adds unnecessary readings for my eyes that too easily get tired. Most of the "patterns" discussed in this book are specific solutions. I believe design patterns are solutions to generic problems. To make it feel like you are really reading a design patterns book, the author uses the generally accepted way of presenting patterns (problem/forces/solution). It just made the book worse rather than better. Anybody who has read a real design pattern book and then read this book will soon feel the artificiality. One minor thing is that its server side examples are written in PHP. Of course, that is not a problem for PHP guys. It should, however, be mentioned in the description. Still, I am keeping this book. There are many JavaScript coding techniques that are very impressive and I feel will be very useful. I just need to use a couple of my highlighters to mark specific readings and techniques and so my eyes can avoid the other verbosity.