It was one of those Friday afternoon surprises. Rewrite the code in a customer facing document and it needs to go out on Monday. The problem was that I had never written an AJAX program and hadn't written much JavaScript. This book really helped me to put together simple and correct examples over the weekend and inspired this ASP.NET bigot to keep learning more about these technologies. I owe the author a big one!

To be honest I wasn't expecting too much from Practical JavaScript, DOM Scripting and AJAX Projects, I was anticipating a cut down version of the AJAX part of his Practical Ajax Projects with Java Technology book, but it was so much. In fact it has taught me so much that I'm still trying to work out why some of the concepts weren't in some other AJAX/JavaScript books I have read and how I had gone for so long without encountering them.

Usually AJAX in Action is given as the yardstick for measuring AJAX books, and I found Frank's first book a good compliment for AiA when you're integrating with Java, but Practical JDAP (if I may call it that) is something else again, and still a very strong contender for the web-developer's bookshelf. The main reason is that while it provides coverage of JavaScript with a view towards use of the latest technologies and practices in web development, its approach is complimentary rather than overlapping. For example only the last chapter covers AJAX explicitly, with the main focus of the book being the manipulation of the data on the client.

On the down side, most of the hints and gems in the book are hidden in the text and are not marked up to bring them to your attention. If you browse the book or only implement parts of the examples you may miss some of these items.

So while I wasn't expecting to learn from this book, I found it filled a niche between general JavaScript and AJAX that I wasn't aware existed.

I've been a fan of Frank Zammetti's writing since the first book I read of his. I was browsing through a local bookstore one day, taking a look at the Javascript and AJAX-related books available, and ran into another book by Frank Zammetti on a similar topic. One of the things I like to do when looking over technical books is read the dedication... authors tend to express themselves more openly in the dedication. In that book's dedication, I saw a Babylon 5 reference. That really caught my attention, and I pulled the book out to read more. It really paid off.


The Pros

Zammetti has a very "friendly" style of writing. His writing seems like he was actually speaking to the reader, and it's like he's talking to a friend. He intersperses humor into his writing rather regularly, in such a way that reading never becomes boring. His writing style makes the book very accessible, regardless of programming experience.

Mr. Zammetti is a proponant of the "hands-on" approach. This book is all practical projects, all with full source code. (The source code is available from the publisher's web site.) Each chapter essentially breaks down a project, explaining why each section was written the way it was, and how to apply the theory behind it. This means a programmer can get a project working using the included source code, and then go through Zammetti's text to learn how it works. Working with this book feels like a hands-on project with a teacher available, as opposed to some other technical books which feel like a lecture.

Despite the emphasis on getting hands-on with projects, this book can be utilized easily even without working with the included code, as Zammetti's descriptions and examples are all very well written for accessibility and ease of understanding. The selection of projects is varied and has a pretty wide range of subjects, and includes building your own Javascript library early on which contains many helpful functions not available in stock Javascript. Also, the introductory chapters of the book have a very good "refresher" on basic Javascript concepts and best practices. This section has a good deal of information I found valuable. (For instance, which string concatenation method takes 3000 milliseconds longer in IE than in Firefox?)


The Cons

Both of Zammetti's books showcase a wide variety of frameworks and extensions. This is a good thing and a bad thing. It's good in that it gives the reader knowledge about a large number of different frameworks (prototype, Dojo, etc). The downside is that it may result in reliance upon one or more of those frameworks.

The other downside about this specific book is that it's hard to track down specific techniques within the projects themselves. For instance, an autocomplete field with a "drop-down" list of recommendations. This is only a minor inconvenience, as the goal of the book is on full working projects, not just the elements inside of the projects, and it's organized accordingly.

Both of the aforementioned cons are really more a matter of personal preference than a problem with the book itself. I only use frameworks when absolutely necessary, for instance.


Summary

I'm very impressed with both of Frank Zammetti's coding books. This one was on pre-order for a good long while, and it was completely worth the wait. The focus is very tightly upon web applications independant of server backend, and it's a great read. I highly recommend picking this book up if you're wanting to improve your understanding of DOM and Javascript techniques.