Nate Schutta

Congrats everyone - Ryan and I hope you enjoy the book and find it useful. Many thanks to all of you that asked questions and to JavaRanch for helping us promote the book!

Are you asking which Ajax framework is the best for you? I'll throw out the classic computer science answer: it depends. I will say that the odds of you needing to roll your own solution are small - there are dozens of great frameworks out there. Pro Ajax and Java Frameworks discusses:

Dojo

Prototype

DWR

Taconite

scriptaculous

AjaxTags

You may also want to investigate GWT and the Yahoo UI library.

At the end of the day it depends a lot on what you want out of the framework...

Well you could use the XHR object to post your responses instead of using an iframe...

This book is focused solely on Java as your server side language though the first three chapters are truly agnostic. We do expect that you have some Java and web development experience.

You know, I've really got to second Bear's comment on using XML - I know the (former) acronym ends in X for XML but frankly I think JSON or HTML is (typically) a better approach.

We skim through the basics but if you're really looking for a starter, I'd recommend our first book:

Foundations of Ajax.

I'm sure Eric might have other recomendations as well

We cover:
*Developer Tools
*Prototype
*Scriptaculous
*Dojo
*Taconite
*DWR
*AjaxTags
*JSF
*Struts
*Tapestry
*Spring

A mistake? No - just the reality of writing a book When we started writing, IE 7 was still in a very early state but moving forward I would advise flipping the check.

Gez - three copies - you'd think you were a coauthor

Congratulations to the winners - we hope you enjoy the book (please let us know what you think)! Thanks again to JavaRanch for helping us promote the book and thanks to all of you for posting your questions.

Nice piece Eric - well stated. To me, security is a bit of a red herring when it comes to Ajax...much like the "it's only for rocket scientists" claim.

One of the biggest Ajax myths is that you need to be a rocket scientist to do it - absolutely false. Anyone with solid programming skills can do this! The tools might not be where we want them but they are getting better...and they will continue to improve. Don't shy away from Ajax thinking it's only for Google!!!

I second what Ryan said - Ajax works *with* your favorite framework. While I'm sure some people will eject Struts or whatever from their office, I just can't see the reason to abandon them. Afterall, you still need something to dish up the initial page and the subsequent bits and pieces. I do think that the frameworks will change though to facilitate Ajax...

Ajax finally allows us to break the request/response paradigm of the web. By using a simple object (XMLHttpRequest) we can communicate asynchronously with our server allowing us a whole new freedom in creating really rich thin apps.

Yes, but the vulnerability that was exploited was not *because* of Ajax! Honestly, Ajax doesn't introduce any new security issues - anything that a malicious user can do with a normal web app can be done with Ajax. The one thing I'll caution though - Ajax is more "hackable" so think twice before you expose your datastore or business logic in JavaScript. Essentially you just need to practice safe web apps and you'll be fine.