Knowing the foundational technologies is one thing; applying them is another. Ajax is not rocket science, but there are still plenty of technical issues that will arise in building a serious Ajax App. The programming patterns focus on technical qualities of softwarein particular:
Maintainability
Ensuring web services and browser code are easy to understand and work with
Robustness
Ensuring the application will prevent errors where possible and handle them gracefully when they do arise
Performance
Ensuring the application runs as quickly as possible and feels smooth and responsive from the user's perspective
The first chapter in this section, Web Services (Chapter 9), provides several alternative strategies for designing web services. Also related to Web Remoting, Browser-Server Dialogue (Chapter 10) looks at the flow of information between browser and server; e.g., synchronization techniques.
DOM Population (Chapter 11) covers several strategies for handling DOM population following a server response. Code Generation and Reuse (Chapter 12) contains a couple of general programming patterns for maintainability and portability. Finally, the Performance Optimization (Chapter 13) patterns are about improving not only speed of updates and communication, but also about optimizing the user experience in the face of inevitable delays.
Chapter 9: Web Services
Chapter 10: Browser-Server Dialogue
Chapter 11: DOM Population
Chapter 12: Code Generation and Reuse
Chapter 13: Performance Optimization