Ajax, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, exploded onto the scene in the spring of 2005 and remains the hottest story among web developers. With its rich combination of technologies, Ajax provides a strong foundation for creating interactive web applications with XML or JSON-based web services by using JavaScript in the browser to process the web server response.

Ajax Design Patterns shows you best practices that can dramatically improve your web development projects. It investigates how others have successfully dealt with conflicting design principles in the past and then relays that information directly to you.

The patterns outlined in the book fall into four categories:

• Foundational technology: Examines the raw technologies required for Ajax development

• Programming: Exposes techniques that developers have discovered to ensure their Ajax applications are maintainable

• Functionality and usability: Describes the types of user interfaces you'll come across in Ajax applications, as well as the new types of functionality that Ajax makes possible

• Development: Explains the process being used to monitor, debug, and test Ajax applications

Ajax Design Patterns will also get you up to speed with core Ajax technologies, such as XMLHttpRequest, the DOM, and JSON. Technical discussions are followed by code examples so you can see for yourself just what is-and isn't-possible with Ajax. This handy reference will help you to produce high-quality Ajax architectures, streamline web application performance, and improve the user experience.

Michael Mahemoff holds a PhD in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the University of Melbourne, where his thesis was "Design Reuse in Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction." He lives in London and consults on software development issues in banking, health care, and logistics.

"Michael Mahemoff's Ajax Design Patterns is a truly comprehensive compendium of web application design expertise, centred around but not limited to Ajax techniques. Polished nuggets of design wisdom are supported by tutorials and real-world code examples resulting in a book that serves not only as an intermediate to expert handbook but also as an extensive reference for building rich interactive web applications." --Brent Ashley, remote scripting pioneer

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 16 Ratings

A "must have" Ajax Resource for every Web 2.0 developer. - 2008-02-26
Reviewer Rating:
Let me get something straight here: Michael Mahemoff really knows how to teach, this book is one of the most appropriated books for those who want to learn about AJAX and in this review I'll tell you why I think so.
First of all, the book starts explaining all the basics of AJAX with its definitons, how it works, related technologies and more. But the best point is: the author always explains using real-life examples, which makes everything easier to understand. The following chapters cover the AJAX Design Patterns properly. You can think about these design patterns as specific solutions, for example "how to made an auto-complete box with ajax", which will give you a great variety of "what can I do with ajax" things. The book also covers some architectural patterns too.
I think the main goal of this book is not only the great diversity of solutions that you can apply in your projects, but how the author explains them. He always starts the explanation of a design pattern with a brief history of how this pattern can help you giving real examples on where these patterns have being applied. Don't forget that one of the main goals of Design Patterns is to create a "vocabulary" to make an easier reference about a specific subject, and this book completely achieves this goal by giving names for each one of those solutions represented as a Design Pattern.
That's why I believe this book is a "must have" for any AJAX professional or student.

Good AJAX Cookbook - 2008-04-18
Reviewer Rating:
The title 'Ajax Design Patterns' is a little misleading because this is more like an AJAX cookbook or solutions book. Packed with ~650 pages of material spread over 19 chapters and 4 indexes, this is a good resource for anyone looking to work with and/or learn about what AJAX is and what it has to offer.

My only issue with this book is that the overall look and feel is like many of the other O'Reilly offerings that have a more 'nerdy' feel to it. The cover and layout looks like it is just going to be a pocket with published papers all put together into one package, but because of it's cookbook nature it's not the same niche of book. I would have chosen a different design and layout to make this book better represent the content contained within.

Having said all that, I think the book is a smashing success. Case studies such as slider bar creation, drag and drop, text editors are interspersed with the history of AJAX and why this buzzword is one that really DOESN'T get old (it's so powerful).

For all AJAX developers I easily recommend this book. It's full of yummy tidbits of information that you will no doubt fine useful and engaging.

**** RECOMMENDED

Lots of ideas, little organization. - 2010-01-08
Reviewer Rating:
While learning modern ways of displaying information on the web, I eagerly awaited this book's arrival. When I got it, though, despite its being packed with information, I was disappointed in its lack of focus and depth. Here is the problem. Today, it is much easier to get started programming anything on a computer than it used to be--want to learn Javascript, type "Javascript" into a search engine and you will be rewarded with scads of data on how to program Javascript. The same goes for CSS, and even Ajax. This is a different world than that of 20 years ago, when to learn 'C,' for example, you would go to the bookstore, buy one of the three books they had on 'C' and then go home and carefully read it. The problem with the new way is that while there is a lot of information immediately available, it is in complete disorder. You have to figure out, through inference, what's fundamental and what's ephemeral, and where the boundaries of the subject are, all of which requires hours of digging through horrible web pages, where 99% of the content is noise. It's all very exhausting, time consuming and frustrating. This is why we spend money on books--because they organize the chaos into a structure our minds can grasp. O'Reilly books, in particular, have historically been outstanding in this respect. They're typically concise, they're written in cohesive, complete paragraphs that aren't constantly interrupted by the clutter of boxes and shading and ten different text fonts and an overabundance of headings like "The Everything Learn C in 21 Days for Dummies Bible". This book, in contrast, is like browsing the web for information. The subjects, while interesting and useful, are dissociated blobs of notes with "Problems" and "Forces" and "Real World Examples" (which may or may not still be live) but precious little exposition, most of which is superficial. The book is a mess. The supreme irony here is that the book uses as an example of "cross-domain proxy" Philip Greenspun's "Bill Gates Wealth Clock," which I first encountered in Greenspun's "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing," a stunning work of great depth about database-backed website design, well organized around fundamentals still useful ten years later!

This book, in contrast, needs an editor--O'Reilly should be ashamed.

.NET Developer Group Coban - 2009-07-19
Reviewer Rating:
Para mi, AJAX y las herramientas que involucra es algo nuevo. Este libro me parece interesante porque muestra como disenar paso a paso la estructura AJAX de los sitios web y como implementar todo el entorno de desarrollo. Espero aprender mucho del libro.

By: Manuel Alejandro Garcia

Widgets or Design Patterns it's a great book - 2009-03-03
Reviewer Rating:
Michael Mahemoff's comprehensive book describes a large number of common web metaphors that mostly have Ajax in common.

The introduction is short, and provides a good introduction to Ajax and what it means for web interfaces. I especially like the advice in Ajaxifying a Web App: One Pattern at a Time. We're frequently asked to use Ajax on a page when all that's need is a small feature implemented with Ajax. He shows how to use Ajax to improve a simple application and then lists other patterns from the book that could be used to further improve the example. I think it's a great way to get people thinking about applying patterns to existing pages -- and we all mostly work on these.

The Foundational Technology Patterns in part two weren't all that informative for me. Anyone who's done a small amount of JavaScript can browse it quickly or just skip over it.

For me, the real value in the book comes in section 3, 4, and 5. Yes, some widgets are covered in chapters 14 (Widgets) and 15 (Page Architecture). But the rest of these sections provide a complete description of the patterns used to create a web-based user interface and connect it to a server.

Some patterns cover needed functionality that you don't usually find in a web development book. For example the Call Tracking and Submission Throttling patterns deal with different ways to stop users from flooding servers with unneeded request. You won't learn on the job until your users start complaining about server performance.

The book is substantial (over 600 pages) and not a quick read because there's a lot of useful information there. Despite this, I found it a LOT more readable than Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series). I especially liked the real world examples given with each pattern. You can look these up and try them out to really understand how the solution works.

I recommend this book as an important addition to the library of any web developer or web architect.

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