I had finished several Ajax and JavaScript books before I read this one. Be honest, I am totally lost in this book. Not sure whose fault it is, the writer or the editor. but it's not good book.

First of all, too many words. Second too many puzzle words and sentence. I don't care how great idea you have, if you cannot present it clearly, forget about it.

I just don't get how this book even made it past an editor? The writing is horrible, which causes the reader to put the book down in frustration. At least there is consistency among the lowest rating reviewers.

It's one thing to build Ajax applications because you can and they're cool. But the real issue is building Ajax applications that actually solve problems and use established techniques to do so. This book can help you move from "cool" to "correct"... Ajax Patterns and Best Practices by Christian Gross.

Contents: Introduction to Ajax; The Nuts and Bolts of Ajax; Content Chunking Pattern; Cache Controller Pattern; Permutations Pattern; Decoupled Navigation Pattern; Representation Morphing Pattern; Persistent Communications Pattern; State Navigation Pattern; Infinite Data Pattern; REST-Based Model View Controller Pattern; Index

Gross uses the familiar formula of most books that deal with design patterns. First there's the Intent (what is happening), followed by the Motivation (why the pattern is necessary). Applicability talks about when it should be used, and the Associated Patterns talks about other patterns that may work well with this one. The Architecture and Implementation sections go into the most detail, talking about how the pattern is laid out and built, as well as what issues might be encountered in the real world. The final section, Pattern Highlights, does a quick summary of the material and is a good overview/reminder of what was covered.

This is an important addition to the Ajax books that are currently out on the market. I've always been a believer in the maxim "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Because Ajax is "hot" right now, it's tempting to use it to build applications that might well be better designed without all the whistles and bells. This book helps the reader to make the leap from "how can I use Ajax in my next project" to "would Ajax be a good fit for my next project." It's a subtle difference, but an important one to professional developers...

I read a lot of technical books in relation to my work as a software developer and also out of my interest in particular topics. I was highly motivated to read this book having a great deal of interest in the material. Frankly this is one of the worst technical books I have ever read. Actually I can only admit to getting to page 86 before giving up. Technically the material is good and the example code is well presented. Unfortunately the rambling text made the whole experience painful and ultimately I just gave up.

While this book does present useful topics that are particularly relevant to AJAX applications, my main problem with it is the poorly edited and structured way it is written.

The book is full of paragraphs like this one (found at the very beginning of the "Applicability section" of the "Decoupled Navigation Pattern"):

"The Decoupled Navigation pattern is used when content is navigated. The statement is obtuse and does not really say anything because HTML content is always navigated. However, because of the way Dynamic HTML is used, content navigation is sometimes used to generate an effect. When links are used to generate effects, the Decoupled Navigation pattern does not apply."

That's the whole paragraph beginning to end -- what the heck is this trying to say? Apparently aware of how non-sensical this is, the author starts the next paragraph with "To clarify this explanation..." and then goes on to present an example of a website in Swiss German (I think), with no translation given. Two pages of more examples and a summary rules-of-thumb later, and the only implied take-away is that the Pattern applies when decision-making and data processing are required, and the contents of the page change but not completely.

A few sections like this could be forgiven (and you could quibble as to why he had to write this example this way), but stuff like this prevails throughout every chapter. More often than not, ideas which with some thought could have been condensed into a few sentences, result in half a page of digressions and logical dead-ends.

Here's another one:

"The need to separate the resource from the representation has not been adequately explained, and some developers may wonder why it is necessary at all. After all, may websites work well and nobody has complained too loudly. The reason why many websites work well is because they have probably implemented the separation of resource from representation. And those that have not done so have received complaints."

Upon reading this, I feel some irreplaceable portion of my lifespan has just been wasted.

At least one good thing this book does is that it only focuses on Patterns that are particular to an AJAX environment (e.g. Persistent Communications, Decouple Navigation, etc.), without wasting time on stuff that is applicable to other more general software design settings (which plenty of other books already cover of course).

While the ideas in this book are interesting and potentially useful to somebody beginning to design an AJAX application, the writing style makes reading it a true chore. Surely there is better written stuff out there on AJAX software design.