Head Rush Ajax
Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Brett D
O'Reilly, April 4, 2006
ISBN 0596102259
446 pages
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About: Head Rush Ajax It's been a while since we reviewed a "Head First" book so it is worth saying something about the style. Put simply you either consider it a mess or really like it. It's an attempt to provide a non-linear lecture note approach to a text book. There are cute pictures, difficult to read handwritten notes, sketches, and lots and lots of white space. The language is cue or smug depending on your point of view. For example, the text box emanating from the picture of an attractive girl reads "sweet! Now I can find any element I want, move up and down the Dom tree. I"ll bet I can get element names and text values too, right?" If you need this sort of distraction to get through a book of this size then you will like the approach. However it is worth pointing out that the actual content of the book would occupy far fewer pages if a more logical, more normal style were adopted. Overall this is less successful then other Head First books mainly because it's just too slow and repetitious even for this dragged out format. Another shortcoming is that the book completely ignores the server side and leaves you to set up your own PHP web server to make the examples actually work. The problem here is that if you need an approach that is this slow and full of irrelevant amusements then you don't have much chance of mastering a PHP web server. This book isn't for the expert or the intermediate programmer, and it certainly isn't going to suit every beginner. In my honest opinion it's mostly a waste of paper. Give me a good logical account and I'll generate my own lecture notes from it and really learn something - it's in the making of the notes not the reading of them that the learning occurs.
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Biography
Tsoteho Valashiya:Tsote is an avid reader and writer. She has read hundreds of both technical and non technical materials over the years, but recently decided to document all her work or write about what she's read so far when ever she can. In as much as she likes computers, she prefers to stick to her principles: never to use it more than a few hours a day; or in some cases, minutes. [read more...] You may contact her at tsote.valashiya@googlemail.com
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