Foundations of Ajax is aimed at web developers who need to get up to speed with Ajax. Ajax isn't a new technology as such, it's a technique, a way to work with existing tried and tested tools that make interactive web ages easier to write and work with.

visit now life insurance buy to let home insurance

Product	Foundations of Ajax
From	www.apress.com
	Well focussed content, toolset information
	A bit hard going for beginners

What may frustrate some readers is the book's focus solely on the client end. It assumes (probably rightly) that you know how to develop server side code and are familiar with your favourite server side development environment. After all, you've probably already written countless web sites using it.

What you do get is the client side of the deal. Here the book builds up your understanding and skills in reasonably straightforward stages. The book shows how to send and retrieve information from a web server and how to process it. Examples include retrieving and processing XML sent from the server and dynamically updating pages. These build towards a final project developing a platform independent Ajax version of the Mac OS X Dashboard.

The second half of Foundations of Ajax is a shopping list of Ajax tools. As Ajax is fairly new, the support for it in mainstream development tools is low so a thriving industry has risen around a growing number of IDE's which make building your pages easier. The book also includes useful information on debugging, utilities and other tools that you can check out to see what suits you best. However, this is a fast evolving area so take this as a starting point rather than a definitive list.

The general style of Foundations of Ajax is clear if a little dense, there's not much fluff here. It doesn't teach anything other than Ajax and its techniques. You will need to know HTML, JavaScript and the page request processing cycle in some depth to really get the best from this title. It does make a refreshing change to read a book that sticks to its subject and doesn't add spurious appendices trying to teach JavaScript in 5 pages. That said, you do get an appendix on cross browser JavaScript compatibility but given the subject, that does make sense. The book is heavy on listings so the publishers have made the source code available for download from www.apress.com.

Anyone who is serious about their web skills needs to get in to Ajax. Possibly more than any other, it is one of the hottest skills right now and with giants like Google and Microsoft making use of it, it can only get bigger. Foundations of Ajax will get you up to speed and help you find all the tools you need to get you started. The writing style is tight but clear with little waffle. As the authors note, it tells you what you need to know and nothing else so you won't get bogged down in minutiae you don't need. Recommended.