This actually is a decent book but I felt it wasn't quite up to what I thought I was buying. I was hoping for a little more subject matter on actually using all three technologies together and how that might look. For a lot of folks, mixing Javascript and PHP is a mystery and this could have been covered better. Ajax topics were well written, however.

Contrary to its publishing blurb, this book contains very few "step by step" instructions and almost no opportunities to practice or integrate the information presented. Although the very basic principles of JavaScript, Ajax, and PHP are fairly easy to understand from what is written, the more complicated the programming concepts, the fewer and further between are explanations, examples, and exercises. This book is so "Do-It-Yourself" that I'd literally recommend going and buying three different books on each of the topics this one tries to cover rather than bothering with this one.

The cut-and-paste editing of the text is also obvious, with various standards of HTML being adhered to on different pages, without any regard for or even mention of current best practices for any of the technologies in question. I'm reading this book under an online subscription and am very glad I did not actually buy it, because I am learning very little that I didn't already know.

For someone with no programming experience at all, its usefulness would be very limited, as it is mainly a breezy introduction to its subject matter; I'm still reading it precisely because I hope to at least get an overview of how Ajax works, but I will be looking at other texts to find out how actually to implement the many briefly mentioned concepts in this one. I was skeptical that a 350-page book would be able to present, in depth, any one of the three topics this one proposes to teach, and I was right. Longer books may seem more intimidating, but you can't cut out so much substance and expect to have anything helpful left. The book is not even worth keeping as a reference, there is so little explanation here.

This book provides the bare minimal knowledge/information required for you to get started using Ajax. This can be good or bad: if you want to get started quickly ( without learning too little ) than this might be for you, if you are looking for a in-depth ajax book, than this is not for you.

No previous Ajax programming experience is needed to use this book, which provides step-by-step lessons on using Ajax, programming with JavaScript and PHP, and understanding their technological foundations. The cd includes a complete Ajax programming starter kit with all tools needed to set up a learning and testing environment, while the pages of black and white screen shots and applications provide all the detail necessary to follow through. Both computer libraries and college-level courses will find it a winner.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

As has been said in a previous review, this book already seems quite dated after only the first two chapters. Having completed the book, I can say it only got worse. Much of the basics are covered fairly well, but as the book progresses into more complicated areas, where more detailed explanations are really needed, it fails to deliver. Some of the example code will not even run without error. It seems the book is a "best of" compilation thrown together from bits of previous books, but purported to be a new work.

Firstly, when a book is about a constantly changing web-programming technology like AJAX, you expect it to be up-to-date, right?

Well, two chapters in, and I've already spotted several typographical errors. What's worse is the outdated nature of some of the technologies depicted in the book. Let me illustrate:

Chapter 1: When illustrating assorted web browsers the text uses IE6. I'm sorry, but IE7 has been officially released for nearly two years now, and you couldn't be bothered to upgrade the screenshots in that time? This book was published June 2008, with a 2009 copyright, and you're using screenshots that were outdated in 2006?

Further, the fact that the screenshot of Firefox in the first chapter shows that at the time of the screenshot, Firefox 1.0.7 was the current release shows that that was taken mid-2005, as Firefox 1.5 was released November 2005.

I'm sorry, but these over-two-years-old screenshots of antiquated technologies featured in a text, and the fact that it seems to feature IE6 throughout already has me somewhat turned off to the book. If this is the attention to detail that they have paid thus far, what will have slipped through the cracks in the programming portions, and what other techniques were already antiquated by the time this book was published?