Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action [Ajax]

Eric Smith-Jones said
The outline and concepts of the first few chapters are solid - repurpose an old-fashioned web app into a modern Ajax one. However the example code had a funny smell to it - duplicate code, unclear variable names, etc. I pressed on anyway but found myself reading pages over and over again that still didn't make sense. I kept thinking "there has to be a simpler explanation for this" and finally gave up and returned the book around Chapter 3. There are books out there that explain Prototype and Scriptaculous more clearly. I recommend using the "Look inside this book" feature to see if the writing and coding style make sense to you before plunking down the cash.

Siddhardha said
I really cannot add much to what other reviewers have already said. This book is, simply put, excellent. It covers prototype and scriptaculous libraries very thoroughly by illustrating various features with relevant examples. Server-side technologies used in some examples use either Java or PHP. No prior experience is required with Java/PHP as enough detail on instructions for running the examples is included in this book. Editors seem to have done a very good job - I could not find any significant errors that are too often presented in some programming books. By reading through the chapters in the book, you can quickly identify areas in your application that can utilize these two libraries. Scratch pad application included in the source code turns to be a nice way to test your own code. I tried the examples and they work as expected.I was once fearful of writing javascript and this book has made it much more palatable and interesting. Highly recommended.

Tech Reader said
Overkill/ repetitive explanations of simple codes and examples. I would recommend reading "Prototype & Scriptaculous" published by the "Pragmatic Programmers" instead - they consistently publish concise, detailed books that are highly rated by readers.

D. N. Ensey said
I was looking for a good intro to Scriptaculous and Prototype and this books is pretty good. There are a few irritating things, however. First, the visual illustrations for Chapter 8 are completely wrong. There is a new Chapter 8 posted on the book website.

Second, while some of the code is included in the download (also available from the site), not all is - especially all of the "snippets" which take up all of Chapters 8-11. While most of the "snippets" are under 50 lines of code, it is still annoying - especially when they provide a scratchpad application specifically to run the snippets.

Overall, the problems are not deal-killers, they just show a lack of attention to detail on the part of the book team.

Scott Bale said
I'm not even halfway through this book yet and I'm already satisfied with my purchase. I look forward to reading about Scriptaculous, but to me the book is already worth it for (a) the treatment of JavaScript in general and the details on object-oriented JavaScript, JSON, and especially JavaScript prototypes and function closures, (b) Prototype, especially how prototype extends JavaScript itself by modifying various object prototypes, and (c) AJAX, including historical perspective, details and gotchas of AJAX request/response versus traditional GET or POST via browser, and the utilities Prototype offers to ease AJAX communication. Additionally, I know this book will make a great reference for it's coverage of the DOM basics and it's appendices on HTTP basics and traffic. There's even some useful contrasting of different server-side options (PHP versus servlets/JSP, etc.) I don't mean to sound like I'm fawning over this book but it's exactly what I hoped to find after working for the first time with all these technologies on a recent project; I wish I'd had this book during that project.