Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Need more examples, half of the book is filled with Documentation
Comment: Why do I have to buy a book for documentation? I can look it up online for free. People learn by examples. These book needs more examples than just reproducting the dry documentation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ajax on Rals
Comment: I am a few chapters into the book and although it is a good book that gets your started fairly quickly, there are quite a few examples that do not work. I also think that the author could have done a better job about explaining some of his examples. He does say in the introduction that the book is not trying to teach ruby or javascript, but they are integral parts of the Ajax on rails concept it looks like and he should spend more time explaining his choice of examples.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Balanced AJAX Discussion
Comment: Visuals:
Pretty standard layout. Good clear type. Page numbers, chapter titles, and section titles at bottom of page for easy skimming / searching. Screenshots are clearly printed.
Readability:
Overall the book is written in a instructive & readable format. There are also complete reference for Prototype & scriptaculous, which although you wouldn't necessarily "read" them provide explanation and examples of the various functionality provided.
Practicality:
This is a useful book for individuals looking to start adding AJAX features to their Rails application. Like most books, if you are already using the subject matter (AJAX) at a high level you will find much of the material to be a review of what you have perhaps already learned in the "trenches". Nevertheless, for beginners or experienced users alike, there is valuable information to be had. In addition to "how to do it" type material, there is also some theory about why and when to do it. For example, there are chapters covering "Usability", "Testing & Debugging", "Security" and "Performance".
Audience:
The book describes itself as written for individuals with existing web development experience. While Ruby / Rails specific experience in not necessarily required - those are fundamental topics which are beyond the scope of this book. If you are new to Ruby or Rails, it is best to acquire separate books for those topics.
Overall:
It's a keeper.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal Reference for Rails Programmers
Comment: I'm a relative newbie to the Rails programming world, but thanks to this book I've become more than competent at using ajax within the rails framework in a very short time. This book starts with a clear step-by-step introduction to vanilla ajax, then progresses quickly into prototype and finally into using rails helpers for prototype. Next, Raymond delves into Prototype in detail, then Scriptaculous, and finally RJS. This is only the first 5 chapters, and the book would be well worth the price for the first 5 chapters alone. Beyond that are 4 solid chapters on Ajax / Rails / Web programming best practices (Usability, Testing, Security, Performance), and while none of these is exhaustive, they are all full of very good real-world advice and examples. If that's not enough, Raymond rounds it all off with comprehensive reference chapters on Prototype and Scriptaculous. (Far better than any documentation I've seen online for either of these libraries.) Lastly, he includes code and walkthroughs for 3 full-blown Rails apps. (Although I had trouble getting a couple of them up and running on my dev machine). Basically, if you're a Rails programmer or want to be a Rails programmer, you Should Have This Book. My guess is even seasoned Rails/Ajax pros could fill in some gaps with this book as a reference, and the rest of us can step up our game with it immediately. One of the best tech books I've bought in the last 5 years.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ajax on Rails
Comment: This helps me to use Rails for building richly interactive web applications with Ajax as the author says.
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