With AJAX, Internet developers and designers can create web-based application that looks and feels like a desktop application. This book is a guide to designing, implementing, and debugging AJAX applications. The book begins by comparing and contrasting the life cycle of a traditional web application with an AJAX application. Because AJAX is a fundamental new way of creating web applications, this book is careful to explore the usability guidelines for AJAX developers. The book concludes with a chapter about debugging AJAX applications, along with an attachment that includes the toolkit that greatly simplifies development of AJAX.