AJAX Black Book – A Quick Review

While searching information on a specific topic today, I got my hands on a book that I purchased some time back. I generally buy a lot of books, but this book somehow I didn't read earlier. Name of the book is “AJAX Black Book”. Book is published by “Dreamtech Press” and author(s) name is not mentioned. TOC tells us that the book covers following topics –

AJAX, XMLHttpRequest, JavaScript, AJAX Frameworks (jQuery, Prototype, Dojo, DWR, Yahoo UI Library, Google Web Toolkit), Maps in AJAX (Google Maps, Yahoo Maps), ASP.NET and AJAX, PHP and AJAX, AJAX with JSF, AJAX with Struts, JSON in AJAX, AJAX Patterns, Consuming Web Services in AJAX, Securing AJAX Applications, Debugging the AJAX Application, Comet, Ruby on Rails etc.

Impressive, isn’t it? Or just look like a huge list of buzzwords? For me, I feel disappointed after going through the book. First of all, I don’t know why I bought this book. A book covering so many topics can not detail on the topic. Most of the time basic information is well covered by the product websites itself and you do not need any book for first level of information.

Moreover, author(s) names are missing. No good author will allow published to publishing their work without giving them credit. This is generally the first criteria for me while buying the book and that is the reason I wonder why I bought this book at very first place. I like the way Wrox/ Wiley published photograph on the book author on the front page of the book itself.

The book is not worth the money. None of topics are given enough details so that a reader can develop enough confidence. Expected user level is mentioned as “Intermediate to Advanced” on book but the detail is not enough for a school student.

There is no highlighting for important points. Summary of the important points is also missing. Examples are missing altogether. Looks more like a book on “History” or “Geography” than “development” to me. All in all, I would not recommend spending your money on this book. With so many good books available on this topic, you should definitely stay away from this book. I also learnt a lesson that we should be careful while purchasing books by “Dreamtech Press.” I guess “Dreamtech Press” books are available only in India.

You can read limited preview on Google Books.