Scriptin' with JavaScript and Ajax

There are lots of JavaScript and AJAX books out there now, but few really combine both skills into one book. A few books that do, are huge books (700+ pages) and really are impossible to read through and actually get through all the 'techo-jargen' to really get anything out of the book. Most people need a easy-to-understand, to the point with real-world examples book.

This book by Charles Wyke-Smith is the book you are looking for if you want to quickly get started learning JavaScript with all the latest features (including libraries) and how to incorportate AJAX features as well. Since AJAX is not a separate technology, but incorporate sepecific JavaScript objects to create AJAX-enabled websites.

The author assumes no previous JavaScript experience and goes through the basics of JavaScript covering variables, if statements, loops, arrays and how objects/classes work. Then the author goes into explaining the DOM works in modifying and referencing HTML elements of a web page as well as modifying CSS styles of elements (and child elements) of a page. This of course is the foundation of how to use AJAX properly and explained very nicely by the author will great examples to get anybody up and running easily.

The author then goes into explaining JavaScript events inrelation to how they affect an HTML page with window and mouse and keyboard events. The author also covers the Event object in talking about event delegation and working with the DOM in creating some complex JavaScript examples.

Then various JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, Adobe Spry, Prototype are explained with some really cool examples of using multiple libraries together which is very unique for most JavaScript books.

Finally, the author very nicely explains how the objects that work with AJAX work and how to create some really useful AJAX web pages with PHP.

Lots of good stuff to learn from this book and the author does a fabulous job doing it a relatively short book (300 pages).

A great book and worth buying if you want to learn JavaScript and AJAX the proper way!!!