Ajax Construction Kit

I liked this immediately, and liked it more with each chapter I read.

Chapter one starts off the way every tech book should start off, by describing what Ajax does for you. Most books would start off describing how to drive a car by jumping into a description of the engine rather than telling you that you can use it to get to the store and carry groceries back. Michael Morrison does it right, giving you the usefulness before delving into specifics.

The first words in Chapter two are these:

If there's one thing I hate, it's computer books that spend the first five chapters laying groundwork for everything to come.

Amen to that. I would have added that many fail miserably at that, because after wasting your time with "a byte is 8 bits" nonsense, they then accelerate so rapidly that you are lost anyway.

This author doesn't make that mistake. In fact, he assumes throughout that at best you know a little HTML, but don't know much at all about Javascript or PHP. I don't think I've seen another Ajax book that dared make that assumption, but surprisingly enough, Michael carries it off and makes it work!

The book comes with a Linux LiveCD that has all the code examples in a working webserver; you of course could easily install this to a Mac or Linux box.

Well done - probably the best introduction to Ajax I've seen.

Tony Lawrence 2007-08-04 Rating: 4.5

• Michael Morrison
• Prentice Hall
• 0132350084

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