Head Rush Ajax by Brett McLaughlin

Ajax is fun, and this book makes Ajax fun. I read this Ajax book cover-to-cover. And then I read it again. It's easy to read and packs a lot of information in a small space. There might be more comprehensive books on Ajax out there, but this will be the only one you want to read cover-to-cover.

Pros

Cons

I admit it, I've hated JavaScript for a long time. So when someone described Ajax as "JavaScript finally works", I knew that I had to check it out. So I picked up a few books. But most of the books were the traditional programming tomes - big (giant!), often red, and full of code samples and very few explanations. It's almost as if developers want to feel macho by reading these books.

But I don't think anyone actually reads them.

You Will Read Head Rush Ajax

I read this book cover-to-cover. I read it in the car, I read it on planes, I read it instead of the fiction I usually prefer to read. Then when I was done, I read it again. This book is very easy and fun to read.

And as a bonus, I learned Ajax. It's actually surprising to me how simple, at it's core, Ajax really is. In some ways, using JavaScript to manipulate the DOM and make your Web pages display differently dynamically is Ajax. In fact, this book has a whole chapter on manipulating the DOM with JavaScript, which while there really isn't any asynchrony (let alone XML), is still pretty cool.

Some people might be turned off by the humorous stories and graphics that illustrate the entire book. But most of these people are not Web developers anyway, so who cares? If you're interested in learning Ajax, but don't want to wade through a big book of technical jargon, Head Rush Ajax is the perfect book for you.