Ajaxian

Friday, October 7th, 2005

Pragmatic Ajax: Beta Book Released

Category: Books, Pragmatic Ajax

The Beta Book of Pragmatic Ajax has been published and made available at the Pragmatic Programmers home of the book.

We are really excited about getting this out there. For those that are not familiar with the Beta Book process:

A Beta Book is a book that’s still in development. Buy it, and you’ll be able to download successive releases of the PDF as the authors add material and correct mistakes. Then, when the book is finished, you’ll get the final PDF (along with the paper book if you opted for the combo pack). And, like all our PDFs, you’ll get free updates for the lifetime of the edition.

Get information early. Participate in the development of the book.

This was a real success with the Rails book, and the community feedback truly made it a better book.

We are hoping tha the same happens here!

Table of Contents

This is the estimated table of contents for the final book. Not all of the chapters are there in the beta book right now, but they are coming. Your feedback may also influence the final look of the book too.

• Building Rich Internet Applications with Ajax. What is Ajax. Why now? Wither now?
• Ajax In Action. What it means to Ajaxify a web application.
• Ajax Explained. Client-side JavaScript. DOM manipulation. Server access.
• Google Maps Made Easy. Folks are awed by Google Maps, but it isn’t rocket science (apart from the satellite pictures). See how to implement your own Google Maps-like application using DHTML.
• Ajax Frameworks. Why you need a framework. Introduction to Dojo and Prototype.
• Ajax UI, Part I. Using Ajax and JavaScript to provide a rich client user interface.
• Ajax UI, Part II. Standard patterns. Web forms and effects. A look at the things that you shouldn’t do when deploying Ajax applications.
• Degradable Ajax. Degrading gracefully with old browsers, and browsers with JavaScript disabled.
• Debugging Ajax. Making sure you can debug your ajax application
• Server-side frameworks. Java, .NET, PHP, and Rails
• Beyond Ajax. Mozilla XUL, Microsoft HTA, Flash as an Ajax component.
• Ajax Futures. E4X, Canvas, SVG, JSON.

Posted by Dion Almaer at 12:39 am
13 Comments

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

Pragmatic Ajax by Ajaxians

Category: Pragmatic Ajax

Here at planet ajaxian, we have been hard at work on a book on Ajax, Pragmatic Ajax:

Now there’s no need for you to choose between the ease of deployment of a web page and the interactive features of a rich desktop application. Ajax redefines the user experience for web applications. Your application can provide a compelling user interface delivered plug-in free using modern web browsers. This book shows you how to make Ajax magic, exploring both the fundamental technologies and the emerging frameworks that make it easy.

It has been a pleasure working with the Pragmatic Programmers on this effort, and we will be announcing the beta of the book soon, so you can check out the content and even help influence it.

We know that the readers of ajaxian.com are a great community, and a lot of you are leaders in the ajax wave, so getting your feedback will be important to us.

Google Maps Chapter

One of the enjoyable parts of the book is a chapter on Google Maps, in which we show that it is far from rocket science, and walk you through building the client-side from scratch.

This comes from a really fun talk that we give on the same subject. Ben and I always told people that Google Maps was far from rocket science on the client, and that the real rocket science was on the server side geocoding, AND coming up with the idea to visualize things in a different way.

I think we were both amazed when we tried to proof it before a talk at JavaOne, and ended up with a working version in ~2 hours.

A few more hours of cleanup, and we end up with the book version, that we will place on ajaxian.com as soon as everything is ready to roll.

Anyway, I hope you will hear more from us soon on the book, and can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

Posted by Dion Almaer at 12:28 am
10 Comments