Book Review: Ajax for Web Application Developers - My Thoughts
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The writing style is very good; he is clear and not pedantic. He has clear biases towards JSON and PHP/MySQL instead of XML, ASP and ColdFusion; he also has a preference for simple, easy to understand code. He clearly explains the OOP principles which are applicable to any programming language. He writes with the skill of a professional writer but still speaks the lingo of programmers. The writing is gripping.
The cons of the book are mostly in the aesthetics/ergonomics. All pictures are gray scale. The book's jacket gets dirty easily; by the third day of lugging it, the white parts of the jacket was brown. The text is smaller than I prefer, but that's a personal preference as I am extremely myopic. Frankly the jacket is terrible but the book is great.
The book can be read at once then kept as a reference, which is what I am doing. It can also be read twice, the second time very quickly and concentrating on specific parts, as I am doing for the debugging section and the forms section. The major themes of the book include reusable code and logic. Now for my marks.
I won't give it a ten, because the jacket is awful. I think the publisher (Sam's) skimped on the jacket; then again I use books like I am at war so maybe for a more genteel user the jacket will be good. I will give it an eight out of a possible ten. I give it marks for reusable code, clarity and practical use. I fail it on aesthetics (horrible gray scale pictures) and ergonomics (it gets dirty rapidly). For such a pricey book it should have more lively pictures; the cover is beautiful though.
It is a good book. If you know nothing about AJAX pick it up. If you just started with AJAX pick it up. If you need a reference for AJAX pick it up.
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