Ajax In Practice, kind of Blue Prints ?

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Hi.
It is nice to see all Ajax guys in the ranch again.
Your book covers alot of Ajax libraries like DWR, prototype and Scriptaculous.
In the examples, lets say you used DWR to implement a use case, but for another one, you used prototype.
Why you used DWR for case1 and you used prototype for case2 ?
I mean, did you use DWR for case1 because other libs solve it easly and you want to show us how to employ DWR for this case and avoiding possible pitfalls?
Is you book some kind of 'BluePrints' ?
Thanks.

[Bear Bibeault]

I don't think I'd call the code examples "blueprints", but rather "practical, real-world examples".
[ April 10, 2007: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[Bear Bibeault]

With regards to your question on libraries: in some cases, a library could have been chosen as best-suited to a particular example, but since they all have their strengths, sometimes we just picked one to show how it can be used and to showcase its strengths.

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Does this book use Java for the server side ? or it targets more auidence ?

[Jord Sonneveld]

Originally posted by John Todd:
Does this book use Java for the server side ? or it targets more auidence ?

We exclusively use Java.

[Hussein Baghdadi]

What are the libs used for the book ?
(besides of DWR, prototype and Scriptaculous).

[Jord Sonneveld]

Originally posted by John Todd:
What are the libs used for the book ?
(besides of DWR, prototype and Scriptaculous).

Phew... Let's see here: RSH, Rico, Dojo, AMASS, ICEfaces, jQuery, Qooxdoo, JSON, Sarissa (using XPath/XSLT natively in the browser), ws-wsajax (IBM SOAP library for JS).

I may have missed a few.

[Bear Bibeault]

I also used jQuery in some of my examples. I know Dave and Jord sprinkled their examples with samples of other useful libraries as well, and I'll let them expound on that themselves.

[Jord Sonneveld]

Forgot to mention the mashups, which use the public Flickr and Yahoo APIs.

[Bear Bibeault]

Oh yeah, I forgot the service APIs. We also explore the Google API.

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Wow, alot of stuff.
Mr Bear, what is your impression of jQuery ?
Writting such a book is certainly hard, thank you for your time.

[Bear Bibeault]

Originally posted by John Todd:
Wow, alot of stuff.

I'm really proud of the book. I think it covers a lot of really good and useful stuff.

Mr Bear, what is your impression of jQuery ?

I really really, really like Prototype. And I really, really, really like jQuery. I can't decide which I like better. I use both regularly.

Writting such a book is certainly hard

No kidding. I was warned that it was a lot of work. But I had no idea!

thank you for your time.

You are most welcome!

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Ajaxian.com 2006 Survey Results
Why you decided to cover non popular frameworks (according to the survey) like AMASS, Sarissa ?

[Bear Bibeault]

The vast majority of the code examples that use a library use Prototype, the #1 winner on that chart. Other librarires were chosen not necessarily for their popularity, but for their utility.

[Jord Sonneveld]

Originally posted by Bear Bibeault:
Other librarires were chosen not necessarily for their popularity, but for their utility.

Precisely. Not all libraries replicate each other's functionality. For example, AMASS functionality is not found anywhere else (local client storage), but it is still really handy to have.