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| ASP.NET AJAX in Action | 
 enlarge | Authors: Alessandro Gallo, David Barkol, Rama Vavilala
Creators: Scott Guthrie, Bertrand Le Roy
Publisher: Manning Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $44.99
Buy New: $18.33
You Save: $26.66 (59%)
New (43) Used (8) from $18.33
Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 55635
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 600
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7.4 x 1
ISBN: 1933988142
Dewey Decimal Number: 005
EAN: 9781933988146
ASIN: 1933988142
Publication Date: August 24, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A clear guide to an often unclear subject October 14, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
ASP.NET brought its own structure to the task of web development, formalizing some common practices and building a classical Visual/RAD development environment upon them. ASP.NET AJAX brings this into the realm of asynchronous communication, partial page updates, and client scripting. It's hardly the be-all, end-all of client-side development - but for the task of adding a faster, smoother, AJAX-style experience to an existing, postback-heavy ASP.NET site, it is well-developed set of tools.
This is not an AJAX book. It's a book on a framework, one which builds on another framework, and which uses AJAX techniques as a means to its ends. Frameworks change the game: as the name suggests, they're designed and used for the purpose of providing structure, but not necessarily easy access to a specific technology or techique. You will read this book to learn what that structure is, how to use it, and how to work around its limitations.
And you will learn it. This book is ruthless - everything an ASP.NET developer might need to know to move up to AJAX.NET gets pulled in, from a thorough Javascript chapter to basic authentication and cross-site-scripting security to the improvements coming in the forthcoming Orcas release, to common patters for use. I fully expected it to fall into the "tutorial-wrapped reference manual" trap that so many of these books do, but it never does. Nor does it spend too much time on any one topic. We get an introduction, discussion, example, further resources... and on to the next one.
The writing style is formal but not stiff, and relatively free of the sorts of scatter-shot proofing that seem all too common with first-edition technical books. Diagrams and code samples are clear, attractive, and plentiful.
I would recommend this book to anyone thinking about adopting ASP.NET AJAX for their site(s), and especially for anyone coming into a project already using it - I honestly cannot recommend a better resource for getting up to speed on the ins and outs of the framework quickly.
A book you can follow December 18, 2007
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
I decided to purchase this book for two reasons.
1. Asp.net has it as highly recommended.
2. It was recommended to me by multiple colleagues.
To say the least, it's a great book. The writing style is easy to read and understand. The authors do not use the book as a vehicle to self promote their knowledge. The authors use the book to help teach you what they understand. I was really getting tired of purchasing books which were difficult to follow this book has won me back. If any of the authors read this review...Thank you.
Pete
 Frustrating Examples May 27, 2008
3 out of 12 found this review helpful
WARNING: Examples are in C#
I purchased this book due to the abundance of positive reviews. Unfortunately, the author/publisher fails to include in their description that the examples are based in C#. I was looking for VB. (Note to ALL publishers of technical books: Be VERY SPECIFIC in your Product Description as to what language your examples are based in. If you don't, then you are just pushing paper for the purpose of making a sale....) While I have some experience in C#, converting the examples to VB became a nightmare! And, even when I did try running the examples in their native C#, several failed.
During the first chapter the author provides some quick and dirty examples of Ajax as implemented by Microsoft. In doing so, he gives you the code in well explained fragments, but, leaves out some key points. Mainly, the fact that the JavaScript (your code) to be used with MS/Ajax MUST come AFTER the asp:ScriptManager declaration. Which means that you cannot include your .js code in the "header" section of a web page (as many experienced JavaScript programmers would do...). When MS compiles a page, it adds it's own .js code AFTER it encounters the asp:ScriptManager tag. Therefore, any .js code you add, MUST come AFTER the asp:ScriptManage tag. This is a CRUCIAL point the author left out. If the author had mentioned this, I wouldn't have wasted an hour trying to figure out why his example kept blowing up on me. There are a number of examples that required you to add or include something that wasn't mentioned. Generally trivial things, but annoying to troubleshoot none the less.
While the depth and coverage of the material is very good, giving plenty of under-the-hood information about AJAX and Microsoft's implementation of such, this is almost nullified by the fact that the code examples are continually presented out of order. A (very annoying) example of this is in chapter 5 where the author attempts to explain how to make cross domain calls to the Yahoo mapping API. The author provides the code to create a webservice (GeocodeService) that includes a reference to a class (Location) that isn't provided until later, which has a reference to another class (YahooProvider) that isn't explained until after that...(lather, frustrate, repeat, or should it be rinse, repeat, lather?) Had the examples been presented from inside-out it would have been easier to code and follow in a step-by-step manner. Instead, you are constantly required to read ahead, then code from back to front. Annoying to say the least.
Had the examples been better organized, and more explicit on including that button, the onclick event, the assembly reference, etc., it would have been a four or five star book. Instead, the frustration factor made the attempt to learn-by-example impractical.
MUST GET - If you want to get under the covers May 25, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Ok for me its a must have book.
Why because I want to know all about what the micrsoft javascipt injection is actually doing, how I debug applications with it, how I make it leaner (versa using CSSQuery,JQuery and MooTools), how I wire up events and become articulate with this tecnology. You can use the MS Ajax framework on its own in say PHP.
So this book is really all about the client side of MS Ajax. If you are familiar with javascript libs like prototype.js you can absorbe this book easy. If you are a UI/Frontend developer then this is a must have.
If you are a PHP developer then why not use it to pick up a robust framework.
If you are a C# UI developer this will allow you to go beyond stuff that all the other can only drag and drop from the toolbar.
Worth while looking at writing control extenders in 3.5 as this would be the place to put the results of your ajax efforts (write one - use many).
 Who should be allowed to review? July 2, 2008
1 out of 12 found this review helpful
I wonder why people who did not buy the book but are allowed to review the book. This opens the door for many dishonest reviews.
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