ASP.NET AJAX in Action by Assesandro Gallo, David Barkol and Rama Vavilala
Paperback: 600 pages
Publisher: Manning Publications (August 24, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1933988142
This book gets 5 stars from me!
Review:
Whether you're a novice or you've already been writing ASP.NET Ajax apps for a while, you'll benefit from this book. At times the flow of multi-author books can be choppy, but not this book. ASP.NET Ajax in action reads like a novel de' geek the flow is so smooth. So much so in fact, that I am convinced that Allesandro, David and Rama are really all the same person. The topics in the book are placed in perfect order so anyone could follow them and the code examples in this book were clear, precise to the point and easy to follow, whether you were opening the downloadable solutions or just moving along step by step.
The beginning of the book covers the basics of JavaScript and the AJAX library, how they fit together with the overall Ajax architecture as well as Ajax patterns such as partial page updates and asynchronous network calls. This part of the book also discusses the ScriptManager component, its importance and how it interacts with the page, including the ever important page lifecycle - but not just the server lifecycle, the client page lifecycle is covered in depth.
The latter half of the book digs deep into the UpdatePanel control, giving us extended insights, best practices and great coverage of this frequently abused and misused control. The last part of the book covers advanced technical topics such as creating your own Ajax enabled controls, using the control toolkit, extenders, behaviors, animations and everything under the Ajax hood that you'll need as an ASP.NET Ajax developer. If you read this book you'll enhance your skills and expand your tools by tenfold. This latter section of the book also includes an intriguing segment on ASP.NET Ajax futures so we get a great look at the up and coming, soon to be hot new technologies like XML Script, Debugging and Drag & Drop Ajax style. While some of these futures may change between the publish date and the next release from Microsoft, you'll still be ahead of the game and pointed in the right direction, as the authors made sure to keep this notion in mind.
If Gallo, Barkol or Vavilala write more books, you can be sure I'll buy them.
