Because scouring the job boards on an almost daily basis has become a habit of mine the last few months, I’ve found that there are a few technologies I have yet to master. One of those is Ajax. I’m on a mission to change this ASAP so I went to the bookstore and purchased an instructional book from O’Reilly’s Head First series.
Why Head First? Well, mostly because I’ve had a few recommendations for them. These books can be compared to The Complete Idiot’s Guides or the So You Wanna Learn [insert skill], Huh” series (the latter is how I learned HTML way back when and is what introduced me to web design).
What’s Ajax? What it’s NOT is a completely new programming knowledge. It’s a way to make your web pages more interactive and allows for asynchronous requests (requests that run in the background). Ajax uses existing technologies such as XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, the DOM, and others.
If you want to learn Ajax, I suggest that you become comfortable with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript first. It will make learning it so much easier.
Halfway through the book I decided to stop and sharpen up my JavaScript first. Yes, I’ve seen JavaScript before but I’m not exactly an expert. And because I want to understand and become fluent in Ajax, this also needed to change. To remedy this I got myself a JavaScript book this morning.
Needless to say, I haven’t seen much sunlight this past week. But it’s all going to be worth it. I’ll have my websites “Ajaxed” in no time! And hopefully by then I can author a post or two with live before and after samples.
Until then ..
