Ajax Hacks: Tips & Tools for Creating Responsive Web Sites (Hacks)

Ajax, the popular term for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is one of the most important combinations of technologies for web developers to know these days. With its rich grouping of technologies, Ajax developers can create interactive web applications with XML-based web services, using JavaScript in the browser to process the web server response. Taking complete advantage of Ajax, however, requires something more than your typical "how-to" book. What it calls for is Ajax Hacks from O'Reilly. This valuable guide provides direct, hands-on solutions that take the mystery out of Ajax's many capabilities. Each hack represents a clever way to accomplish a specific task, saving you countless hours of searching for the right answer. A smart collection of 80 insider tips and tricks, Ajax Hacks covers all of the technology's finer points. Want to build next-generation web applications today? This book can show you how. Among the multitude of topics addressed, it shows you techniques for: Using Ajax with Google Maps and Yahoo Maps Displaying Weather.com data Scraping stock quotes Fetching postal codes Building web forms with auto-complete functionality Ajax Hacks also features a number of advanced hacks for accelerated web developers. Discover how to create huge, maintainable bookmarklets, how to use client-side storage for Ajax applications, and how to call a built-in Java object from JavaScript using Ajax. The book even addresses best practices for testing Ajax applications and improving maintenance, performance, and reliability for JavaScript code. The latest in O"Reilly's celebrated Hacks series, Ajax Hacks smartly complements other O'Reilly titles such as Head Rush Ajax and The Definitive Guide . The title of the book implies that it is a supplement by the use of the word "Hacks" and should be rated as such. Perhaps the author could have given this indication more, however, it is clear it is not an exhausting introduction to Ajax. For those of us who have been around in this industry long enough and understand the underlying technologies this is a good book as an extra with many tips for the web developer. Of course most of this can be obtained off the web and through forums, but it is always handy to have a reference like this on the shelf. I weighed this up with Ajax for Dummies and knew I would get more out of this book. Because the basics of Ajax is so simple to learn (suggest looking at the tutorials on the web) this book has more value. I have given it a 5 because I feel that overall it is worth more than just 4. However, note that it was published in 2006 and there are many more books coming out on this subject.