By now, it should be obvious that there are quite a few books out there on Ajax…and it seems like new one’s are published every day! In case you were curious, Michael Mahemoff (author of Ajax Design Patterns and proprietor of AjaxPatterns.org) has added a list of books to his popular site. Enjoy!
On Saturday, I had the distinct pleasure of presenting Foundations of Ajax and Pragmatic Usability at the Central Iowa Software Symposium. As regular readers know, I’ve attended NFJS events in the past (take a look at my thoughts on this year’s MN show: day 1, day 2, day 3 and of course quotes) but this was my first go at actually presenting. If you’ve ever attended a NF event, you know how outstanding the speakers are so I was really honored when Jay Zimmerman gave me the green light! Based on the feedback I received, I think I held my own which is saying quite a bit when you’re sandwiched by the likes of David Hussman, Venkat Subramaniam, Glenn Vanderburg and a host of outstanding technical minds.
I want to thank everyone that came to my talks - especially those that came up during the breaks to chat! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stick around for very long (though I thoroughly enjoyed Scott Davis‘ talk on Easing into Agile - oh, and thanks to Scott, his mom, and Matt for making me feel right at home). My apologies for the handouts, I will get that corrected (though I know that is of little help to the good folk in Iowa). For your viewing pleasure, I’ve uploaded the slides (FoA, Pragmatic Usability) and as usual these are released under a Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
If you’re interested in hearing me present either of these talks, I’ll be at the Southern Ohio Software Symposium in two weeks - hope to see you there!
If you’re interested in learning a bit more about Ajax, you might want to give Sang Shin’s 10 week free Ajax course a try. The class starts on August 4th - to register, send an email to the Yahoo group he has created. The schedule looks pretty darn complete though alas, no mention of Prototype or script.aculo.us… Of course if Ajax isn’t your thing, take a look at the other courses he teaches.
Despite the stormy weather last night, Ryan and I had a (nearly) packed house for our talk about Ajax and Java at the Twin Cities Java User Group. We had a great time - thanks to everyone that came, we really appreciate the support! Jeff Jensen was awseome as always (sorry for giving you a bit of heartburn there my man!) and we got some great questions. Congrats to everyone that won a book or a shirt, enjoy!
For posterity, here are the slides (you can also get them from the TC JUG site). I added a slide on Yahoo’s library and there’s a special surprise buried in there… Please note, this presentation is licensed under Creative Commons License: Ajax and Java Slides.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Ryan and I are proud to announce our second collaboration, Pro Ajax and Java Frameworks! We just got our author copies so I expect it will be available shortly from the major retailers. This book largely picks up where Foundations ends: after a general Ajax overview, we cover some common tools (including my new favorite Firebug) then we discuss a number of frameworks (Dojo, Prototype, script.aculo.us, DWR, etc). Once we’ve covered the client side goodness, we walk readers through integrating Ajax into common Java frameworks including Struts, JSF, Tapestry, and Spring.
We’ve been thrilled with how well received Foundations has been and we hope people learn as much from reading Pro Ajax as we did writing it!
On Monday, I posted about the cool promotion on select Apress and Friend of Ed books at Barnes and Noble. Well, I was just informed that, along with the great discount, you can win an iPod nano! The details are here but the gist is this: take your picture at B&N in front of the display, send the pic in and you’re entered in a drawing to win a 1 gig nano. Remember, the cool kids will be reading Foundations of Ajax… Good luck!
Just before the 4th, Ryan and sat down for a chat with Nem and the rest of the crew at Geek Muse - the results are available on iTunes, from their site or as a plain MP3. Be aware, like ZeroLogic, this one carries the Explicit tag… For the URLs and notes, click here.
My wife doesn’t think it sounds like me but the audio is great! Ryan and I had a great time (many thanks Nem, if you ever need another voice, shout!) - enjoy! Oh, and Nem, thanks for leaving in the part about cream cheese 
I’m excited to announce a fantastic promotion from Barnes and Noble - from today until the 9th of August, you can get a heck of a deal (a 40% discount!) on Foundations of Ajax and a host of other great books from Apress. The promotional price is good online (via this link) and in physical stores. So, if you haven’t picked up a copy of our book, now you really don’t have an excuse!
Ryan and I had a rather interesting package waiting for us yesterday - a translated copy of Foundations of Ajax (I think Korean, but we’re not really sure). I dig the new cover and I’ve got to say, it’s pretty cool to see our book in a different language!
Here are a couple of pix:
There’s also a new review on Javalobby. I would like to say that at least a few of the examples run without a Servlet container and given this particular site’s audience, I’m betting people will be just fine. We certainly could have delved into patterns a bit more and I would direct people to Christian Gross’ Ajax Patterns and Best Practices and Michael Mahemoff’s Ajax Design Patterns (also check out his excellent Ajax Patterns web site).
All in all, a pretty positive review. As I’ve mentioned before, given more time, we would have written some examples in some other server side languages. I was happy to hear that the book has helped the reviewer (Schalk Neethling) and thanks for noticing the tools chapters - lots of people seem to miss those somehow!
By the way, that *was* Ryan on Future Tense a while back talking about Ajax…
While I was in Chicago, Ryan and I did a podcast with the lads from ZeroLogik. We had a fantastic time chatting about a *wide* variety of topics (seriously Shane if you ever find yourself in need of another voice, just let me know). I want to thank Shane and the rest of the lads for all their patience - we’ve been trying to get together with them for a while now. One night we mixed up the time shift, another night Ryan didn’t have power and we were supposed to talk last Wednesday but the travel gods conspired against me. Anyway, we finally got everyone online at the same time last Thursday after the guidebook and all is well!
I haven’t had a chance to listen all the way through but I have to say the hotel wi-fi was a little, well, spotty so on more than a few occasions I wasn’t always sure what had been said - or even if my words got through (though that really doesn’t sound like me)! I’ll warn you right now, ZeroLogik carries the explicit tag in iTunes… Here’s a link to their blog and the mp3.