Win Web Hosting

WARNING: Examples are in C#

I purchased this book due to the abundance of positive reviews. Unfortunately, the author/publisher fails to include in their description that the examples are based in C#. I was looking for VB. (Note to ALL publishers of technical books: Be VERY SPECIFIC in your Product Description as to what language your examples are based in. If you don’t, then you are just pushing paper for the purpose of making a sale….) While I have some experience in C#, converting the examples to VB became a nightmare! And, even when I did try running the examples in their native C#, several failed.

During the first chapter the author provides some quick and dirty examples of Ajax as implemented by Microsoft. In doing so, he gives you the code in well explained fragments, but, leaves out some key points. Mainly, the fact that the JavaScript (your code) to be used with MS/Ajax MUST come AFTER the asp:ScriptManager declaration. Which means that you cannot include your .js code in the “header” section of a web page (as many experienced JavaScript programmers would do…). When MS compiles a page, it adds it’s own .js code AFTER it encounters the asp:ScriptManager tag. Therefore, any .js code you add, MUST come AFTER the asp:ScriptManage tag. This is a CRUCIAL point the author left out. If the author had mentioned this, I wouldn’t have wasted an hour trying to figure out why his example kept blowing up on me. There are a number of examples that required you to add or include something that wasn’t mentioned. Generally trivial things, but annoying to troubleshoot none the less.

While the depth and coverage of the material is very good, giving plenty of under-the-hood information about AJAX and Microsoft’s implementation of such, this is almost nullified by the fact that the code examples are continually presented out of order. A (very annoying) example of this is in chapter 5 where the author attempts to explain how to make cross domain calls to the Yahoo mapping API. The author provides the code to create a webservice (GeocodeService) that includes a reference to a class (Location) that isn’t provided until later, which has a reference to another class (YahooProvider) that isn’t explained until after that…(lather, frustrate, repeat, or should it be rinse, repeat, lather?) Had the examples been presented from inside-out it would have been easier to code and follow in a step-by-step manner. Instead, you are constantly required to read ahead, then code from back to front. Annoying to say the least.

Had the examples been better organized, and more explicit on including that button, the onclick event, the assembly reference, etc., it would have been a four or five star book. Instead, the frustration factor made the attempt to learn-by-example impractical.

Rating: 2 / 5

Well I am only a few chapters in, but so far so good. I find its a pretty easy read with good examples in code and thorough explanations. I like the fact that it gives a good and quick over view of Javascript and JSON especially if you are someone like me who learned Javascript on the job.
Rating: 4 / 5