Reviews for Head First Ajax

1. Disappointing

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2009

   This is an extremely disappointing book in the Head First series. The premise behind the Head First books is that they are not supposed to be just 'ordinary' guides for learning. They are supposed to use activities, different learning styles, stories and the unexpected in order to stimulate your brain into learning. Head First Ajax barely pays lip service to these ideas.
   
   Instead, what you get is just another standard Ajax-for-beginners book, and not a particularly good one at that. The concepts are poorly explained, you're quizzed on concepts and code before they've been introduced so you're left with guesswork, and the style is dull.
   
   I've read several Head First guides before this one and found them extremely good. This one, sadly, doesn't succeed.
   
   If you're a beginner, you'll be far better off trying their earlier Head Rush Ajax (Head First), which does a fantastic job of introducing the concepts in a fun way that really helps you understand them.

2. Strictly for hobbyists

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2009

   This book is arguably useful for people with some extremely basic HTML, no CSS and little or no Javascript. It covers the absolute basics, but concentrates mainly on XHTML markup & trivial Javascript. It contains no Ajax stuff that someone with a cursory grasp of these technologies couldn't get online from a 2-page how-to.
   
   The style of the book is incredibly irritating, jokey & content-lite - 2 pages of *every* chapter are taken up with a word search, unbelievably, as well as a huge number of trivial exercises. There are about 30 pages of information here. I know this is supposed to enhance cognition of the topics covered, but honestly - this is really stuff for children, and the content covered is so simple that it's not necessary for anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with web design.
   
   I want my money back!

3. Excellent if you have the background technical knowledge

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2008

   Interactivity is at the heart of the WEB 2.0 and while server side interactivity and scripting is comparatively simple, client side interactivity is rather more difficult. It has been pretty much the domain of JAVA applets or bespoke technologies like FLASH, however these technologies typically required browser plugins of one type or another. Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is arguably a more flexible approach to client side interactivity using (typically) a combination of JavaScript, XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Headfirst Ajax, while spending some time on the underlying technologies actually spends much more time exploring the concepts behind the Ajax approach. You will find much more detail on asynchronous communication, writing cross browser event handlers, the Document Object Model (DOM), JavaScript Standard Object Notation (JSON) and the like rather than screeds of task specific JavaScript. Whether this approach works for you or not depends very much on your previous experience of client side scripting. To use head first Ajax properly you really need at least a reasonable grasp of JavaScript and CSS. Providing you have this basic knowledge then the book will do an excellent job of teaching you the principles underlying Ajax which is far more valuable than simply presenting a cookbook of applications to cut and paste into your website. However if you don't have at least a basic grasp of JavaScript and CSS then you will find the book very hard going indeed and you would be well advised to learn these basics before moving into the world of Ajax. Overall I would say that given the required background knowledge then Head First Ajax deserves a fine five star rating, however if you are a JavaScript and CSS neophyte then it probably only rates a three - so on average I would have to give it a solid four stars.