14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Solid foundation + great examples, Sep 4 2007
By Jason Jung "JCube" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: ASP.Net Ajax in Action (Paperback)
I don't normally give a rave review about books unless I was really satisfied with the book, but this book really is a great book.
First of all, apart from it being an ASP.NET AJAX book, one of things I consider when buying a book is the overall flow of the book - the flows between paragraphs and the flows between chapters. On that note, ASP.NET Ajax in Action has a great flow. Especially the transitions of the book and the divisions of the chapters were well put into the book, so it could feel like reading a novel in some cases.
On the technical side, I like technical books that have a lot of examples that make good sense. This book is full of examples, which is very imporant for understanding a new technology. Another thing I like about th book is the detailed examplanations of the ASP.NET Ajax foundations. For example, it doesn't talk about UpdatePanel until Chatper 6 and 7, which most of ASP.NET developers like to just use for quick development. However, this book does a good job of illustrating the overall architecure of the Ajax framework, and does not neglect that Javascript is also a big part in developing Ajax-enabled websites. Unlike other ASP.NET Ajax books, this book has a few chapters dedicated to client-centric ASP.NET Ajax development, which is necessary for building hard-core ajax sites and components.
To conclude, this book is a must-have for asp.net developers and you can use it as both a reference book and a learning material.
19 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clearly the best ASP.NET AJAX Book - buy it NOW!, Aug 28 2007
By Eric W. Engler "Avid Reader" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: ASP.Net Ajax in Action (Paperback)
I do a lot of reading, and to the best of my knowledge my personal .NET book collection is bigger than anyone else's. The first thing I noticed about this book is the smooth and highly readable writing style - very rare to see in a technical book. As I read through the chapters it became clear to me that the content was no less stunning than the readability! The charts and tables are not merely a reprint of MSDN, and the authors dominated the subject without making it dry like a reference manual.
It was obviously their goal to ensure that readers already familiar with ASP.NET in general would become a subject expert on AJAX just by studying this book. The real world example code stands alone among the other books: this code works and it is highly relevant instead of being a bunch of contrived example snippets! There is no better book on ASP.NET AJAX.
I am looking for any other books from these authors - I'll order them without even thinking about it. There's a very short list of authors about whom I can make that statement. And I'll keep my eye on the Manning publishing company from now on. They know how to edit books well, and they selected the best authors available.
15 of 19 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A highly recommended book on a surprisingly useful library, Oct 1 2007
By Christian Graus - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: ASP.Net Ajax in Action (Paperback)
I had written off ASP.NET AJAX as bloated and for beginners until I bought this excellent book. While I have done AJAX by hand in the past, I'm now a convert to the advantages of leveraging this powerful library. I highly recommend this book both for beginners who want to start with ASP.NET AJAX and those professionals looking to either leverage this library, or to be convinced that they need to.
The book is full of practical examples that I was able to apply immediately to my code, as well as thorough explanations that enabled me to expand on and understand the code provided