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Ajax in Action Review by Clint Pachl
Extremely Comprehensive for Beginner Through Intermediate
This book covers lots of ground coming in at 600 pages of real content. I almost gave this book 3 stars until I re-read it. It may seem verbose for the more experienced programmer, but I think would be a perfect read for the novice Javascript programmer. It really is packed full of great implementation ideas and good practices, such as the use of software patterns (MVC, singleton, adapter) and extensive code refactoring. There are tons of screen shots, images, diagrams, code examples and snippets, and external references. Although the AJAX protocol is server-side neutral, the author implements the backends in Java, C#, PHP, and VB.NET.
The biggest drawback is security coverage. Security issues in the AJAX world have really unfolded since this book was first published. This title does dedicate about 30 pages (chapter 7) to security. The author touches on the basics, like securely parsing XMLHttpRequest response data. However, I would highly recommend Ajax Security for a more in-depth study. "AJAX Security" is almost the size of this book, but entirely dedicated to security and about 2 years newer.
The book concludes with five big example applications. The fourth example implements a live search. It employs XSLT for XML parsing and presentation, which really piqued my interest. For me, the live search example is the highlight of the book.