ajax

I have bought two books now on AJAX technology, really interested in what this brings to web applications. However what I have noticed is that most of the books available and certainly the best of the books available are written with PHP in mind. So my previous preference for ASP.NET is waning as my AJAX knowledge increases.

I have already finished (no mean feat) 'AJAX in 10 minutes', which probably would be best described as an introduction only. I would actually advise against buying this book as all the content provided is freely available on the internet. For this reason I bought 'Professional AJAX' hoping to advance the introduction to a more working knowledge. I am only at the beginning of this book but have already seen some applications which I would like to make use of.

Really impressed with the AJAX form validation shown in chapter 3 of this book, I would imagine many developers of small/medium/large sites could make good use of this technique. The main advantage of client side validation is the almost instantaneous feedback the user receives on entering data in the form. However this validation can be quite limited for example how could you check if an entered username is already taken with client side scripts, put simply you can't. With AJAX the client side validation can make use of server-side procedures and such a username check would be possible. This all happens in a similar kind of response time to basic client side validation meaning none of the advantages are lost and the power of such routines is greatly enhanced.

As I continue reading the book I will post the most interesting points on here so keep watching.

Currently working on some AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) implementations for my website. Very interesting technology which seems to be in its infancy at the minute, very few sites using this at the minute. Perhaps the best illustrations would be from google in their gmail/suggest/maps applications.

The performance and usability benefits are probably minor enough that many people may not even notice them, however I would be quite the perfectionist and I believe that its the minor touches in life that make the experience.

At the minute I can see why there are few sites implementing this technology, it is quite difficult to begin with and is a rather new and unique way of thinking. The methodology requires some thinking and structuring of your application in order to get the best out of it. The most challenging part is actually deciding where you can use the asynchronous communications.

More to come..