Beginning Ajax with PHP: From Novice to Professional

Book Preface

Working with technology is a funny thing in that every time you think you have it cornered . . . blam! Something pops out of nowhere that leaves you at once both bewildered and excited. Web development seems to be particularly prone to such surprises. For instance, early on, all we had to deal with was plain old HTML, which, aside from the never-ending table-wrangling, was easy enough. But soon, the simple web site began to morph into a complex web application, and accordingly, scripting languages such as PHP became requisite knowledge. Server-side development having been long since mastered, web standards such as CSS and XHTML were deemed the next link in the Web’s evolutionary chain.

With the emergence of Ajax, developers once again find themselves at a crossroads. However, just as was the case with the major technological leaps of the past, there’s little doubt as to which road we’ll all ultimately take, because it ultimately leads to the conclusion of clicking and waiting on the Web. Ajax grants users the luxury of accessing desktop-like applications from any computer hosting a browser and Internet connection. Likewise, developers now have more reason than ever to migrate their applications to an environment that has the potential for unlimited users.

Yet despite all of Ajax’s promise, many web developers readily admit being intimidated by the need to learn JavaScript (a key Ajax technology). Not to worry! I wrote this book to show PHP users how to incorporate Ajax into their web applications without necessarily getting bogged down in confusing JavaScript syntax, and I’ve chosen to introduce the topic by way of practical examples and real-world instruction.