Preface


This book is all about making your Web applications look and feel like desktop applications, which is the whole idea behind Ajax. Web applications are becoming more and more popular these days, but there’s still that problem with Submit buttons: when you click one, the whole page flickers and refreshes, and you have to wait until the page downloads.

That’s exactly where Ajax comes in. With Ajax, you can communicate with the browser behind the scenes, get the data you need, and display it in a Web page. There’s no page refresh, no waiting required, no flickering in the browser.

That’s cool, because it means your Web applications start to look and feel like desktop applications. As your users’ connections to the Internet get faster and faster, soon there will be just about no way to tell a Web application apart from a desktop application.

Ajax is the future of Web programming. With Ajax, applications in a Web browser can work just like those installed on the user’s computer. It’s no surprise that Ajax is the hottest Web programming topic in years.

About This Book

Everything Ajax is in this book. Part I starts with a guided tour of how Ajax is used today. Along the way you’re going to see some very cool applications, as well as some games.

Ajax is based on JavaScript, and there’s a section in this part on how to work with JavaScript. If you don’t know JavaScript, you’re going to need to pick it up, and you can do that here. If you do know JavaScript, you can skip this part of the book and go on to the more advanced topics such as working with Ajax and PHP and security.

Part II then charges into Ajax programming, showing you how to create Ajax-enabled applications from scratch. There are a few chapters on the basics of Ajax, and some on the more advanced, potent aspects. You’re also going to see how to save yourself the need for nearly any programming at all when you learn how to work with Ajax frameworks. These frameworks, most of which are available for free, do the Ajax programming for you, letting you create full Ajax applications in a snap.

Ajax involves more than just JavaScript, however. Part III presents the full story on using XML, cascading style sheets, and server-side programming, including a chapter on each of these topics.

Part IV includes chapters on security, as well as chapters on other advanced topics, such as using Web-server filters with Ajax.

All this and more is coming up in this book. In other words, you’re going to get the full Ajax story in this book, from soup to nuts. Ajax is going to become a rich toolset for you, ready to be put to work.



Ajax Bible
Ajax Bible
ISBN: 0470102632
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 169

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