Prentice Hall's Ajax, part of the Bruce Perens Open Source Series (though this book has nothing to do with him specifically) is an outstanding guide to building or enhancing Web sites with Ajax techniques. Rather than assume that the reader already knows JavaScript and XML, Ajax starts the story from the beginning and teaches Ajax from the ground up.

Writing analysis

The author has a jokey, colloquial style that is as entertaining as it is distracting. You're likely to find yourself laughing out loud in many parts, but sometimes the joke gets carried a little too far and the subject isn't tied into it firmly enough. The upside is, you'll have a lot of fun reading Ajax and if you can stay with the author's wordiness, you can learn more about how to actually develop Web sites with Ajax and Ajax-like techniques without having to be a JavaScript guru beforehand.

This book is rife with typographical errors and spelling mistakes. For the first 50 pages I encountered approximately one error per two pages, which is totally unacceptable for a professional text like this. I guess it doesn't really interfere with the book's content all that much, but it harms the book's professional credibility and is wildly distracting to people like me who enjoy literary perfection.

The first section of the book deals with the history of Web development and how Ajax came into being from several different fronts. This serves to give the reader some background on what Ajax can be useful for by defining the problems that spurred its genesis. You're then introduced to XHTML as the basic language for content display, XML, the document object model, JavaScript as it applies to Ajax development, XSLT, and a number of other technologies that help to glue a Web application or service together. Using Ajax to enhance Ruby on Rails applications is covered in later chapters, but I didn't get to those in time for this review.

Putting the book to the test

This is the first book on Ajax development that I've read that has convinced me that I can actually use this technique effectively. I have vigorously avoided JavaScript in the past because every time I see it in use on a Web site, it is either doing something that I as the site visitor do not want it to do, or it is not working properly and preventing me from doing what I want to do on the site. I'd seen so much bad JavaScript usage that I had sworn off using it forever. Recently, though, I've started to accept the fact that I am going to have to learn at least some JavaScript if I want to have more responsive and less bandwidth-intensive Web sites. Ajax is how JavaScript should be used, I think, and Prentice Hall's Ajax book is undoubtedly the book to learn it from.

Ajax uses code samples and tables that explain what each XML, JavaScript, XHTML, or other programming element does and how it is used. This is extremely helpful for understanding the technology, but you will have to have a Web project in mind when you start reading the book, because there are no exercises or quizzes to help you put your knowledge to use.

Conclusions

Overall I found Ajax to be by far the best introductory guide to learning and using Ajax to build responsive Web sites. Most other books assume that you already know JavaScript and XML, which is too bold an assumption for many of today's Dreamweaver-dependent Web developers (and people like me who have always considered JavaScript to be pure evil because of the way it's frequently used against Web visitors). If you build Web sites and have wanted to get into Ajax but couldn't get past the technology, this informative and entertaining book is your best option at this point.

Despite the book's content, on the back cover there is a picture not of the author, but of some clown named Bruce Perens. It's a shame that Perens' name and image has to be plastered all over a book that someone else wrote and researched. I'm sick of self-aggrandizing ego monkeys like Perens and his shadow brother Eric Raymond bragging and overstating their nonexistent importance to the open source world, and standing in front and taking credit for work that other people are doing. It offends me to the point that I would never have considered buying this Ajax book simply because it's in the "Bruce Perens Open Source Series." I strongly encourage Prentice Hall to consider eliminating Perens' name and image from this and other good books. Give authors like Ed Woychowsky more than the honor of being some media whore's sidekick.

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Copyright 2006 Jem Matzan.