It just hurts to put an article about ajax on my website, those knowing soccer teams in the netherlands will understand me. But nevertheless, I started reading this book mentioned above Foundations of Ajax. I have read the book and it has a high been there done that feeling. This has nothing to do with the book but more with my knowledge of Javascript and the DOM. About 2 years a go I did a lot with javascript and now this knowledge comes in hand. I think this is a nice book. I did not read anything about ajax until today, still the book is very easy to read (Mayby a little bit to easy if you have some prior experience). I do like the samples that are given, almost all classes and scripts are given in total and therefore easy to read and follow. A lot of screendumps clarify the examples. i gues the most interesting stuff is yet to come (the different toolboxes and unit testing your scripts). I also like the part where test driven Javascript development is discussed. The best part is chapter 8, a discussion of a more thorough example. A framework called Taconite is used to create a dashbord application. An example of using rss, word completion and using a webservice. The example can be easily deployed in a webserver.

I do have a note of critique, I think there is actually little theory in the book. I really read it in one week-end, so i guess it will take you about 8 hours fulltime. On the other hand that can be an advantage to

The book triggers me to find nice extensions for my websites, I cannot wait to try out some stuff in the book. I see this as a compliment. Well in short, I like the book and if you are clean in the area of ajax and want to learn something about it in a week-end, this is your book.

Within the next few weeks i will try some of the existing frameworks, I did have a short look at the demo from Matt Raible:
Matt Raible ~ Equinox and ajax