Ajax Training

Students learn to make calls to the server with JavaScript and to manipulate XML content returned from the server. Ajax opens the door to creating sophisticated web-based applications with much more of the logic (and therefore code) handled on the client. While Ajax allows for more dynamic and responsive applications, it changes the traditional role of JavaScript dramatically and forces developers to rethink how they write and manage JavaScript code. After taking this Ajax training course, students will be able to create sophisticated Ajax-based applications in an efficient and modular way.

For private groups new to CSS, XML, XSLT and/or JavaScript, this Ajax training course can be customized to include accelerated introductions to those technologies.

This Ajax course has been updated for HTML5.

Students learn to make calls to the server with JavaScript and to manipulate XML content returned from the server. Ajax opens the door to creating sophisticated web-based applications with much more of the logic (and therefore code) handled on the client. While Ajax allows for more dynamic and responsive applications, it changes the traditional role of JavaScript dramatically and forces developers to rethink how they write and manage JavaScript code. After taking this Ajax training course, students will be able to create sophisticated Ajax-based applications in an efficient and modular way.

For private groups new to CSS, XML, XSLT and/or JavaScript, this Ajax training course can be customized to include accelerated introductions to those technologies.

This Ajax course has been updated for HTML5.

Students learn to make calls to the server with JavaScript and to manipulate XML content returned from the server. Ajax opens the door to creating sophisticated web-based applications with much more of the logic (and therefore code) handled on the client. While Ajax allows for more dynamic and responsive applications, it changes the traditional role of JavaScript dramatically and forces developers to rethink how they write and manage JavaScript code. After taking this Ajax training course, students will be able to create sophisticated Ajax-based applications in an efficient and modular way.

For private groups new to CSS, XML, XSLT and/or JavaScript, this Ajax training course can be customized to include accelerated introductions to those technologies.

This Ajax course has been updated for HTML5.

Students learn to make calls to the server with JavaScript and to manipulate XML content returned from the server. Ajax opens the door to creating sophisticated web-based applications with much more of the logic (and therefore code) handled on the client. While Ajax allows for more dynamic and responsive applications, it changes the traditional role of JavaScript dramatically and forces developers to rethink how they write and manage JavaScript code. After taking this Ajax training course, students will be able to create sophisticated Ajax-based applications in an efficient and modular way.

For private groups new to CSS, XML, XSLT and/or JavaScript, this Ajax training course can be customized to include accelerated introductions to those technologies.

This Ajax course has been updated for HTML5.

The course begins with a discussion of rich Internet applications, which include substantial client-side code, typically JavaScript. Microsoft's AJAX tools are surveyed, and a simple AJAX application is illustrated. The JavaScript programming language is covered in enough detail to give the student a good working knowledge of writing client scripts. To retrieve and update information on a Web page from client-side code, the programmer needs to use DHTML or the Document Object Model (DOM), which are discussed in the third lesson along with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and an introduction to jQuery.

Lesson 4 covers the AJAX Client Library, which simplifies client-side programming with JavaScript extensions, a debugging trace facility, and various API shortcuts. The next lesson covers partial page rendering, which enables part of a page to be updated asynchronously, resulting in an improved user experience. The next lesson covers various techniques for making remote-method calls, resulting in greater efficiency in an AJAX application. The next lesson introduces the AJAX Control Toolkit, which provides many very useful controls enabling sophisticated client-side effects with relatively little programming. The last lesson covers built-in application services, which provides a client-side API to various services on the server, such as authentication and user profiles.

Numerous programming examples and exercises are provided. A case study illustrates a number of features of ASP.NET AJAX working together. The student will receive a complete set of notes and all the programming examples.

The course begins with a discussion of rich Internet applications, which include substantial client-side code, typically JavaScript. Microsoft's AJAX tools are surveyed, and a simple AJAX application is illustrated. The JavaScript programming language is covered in enough detail to give the student a good working knowledge of writing client scripts. To retrieve and update information on a Web page from client-side code, the programmer needs to use DHTML or the Document Object Model (DOM), which are discussed in the third lesson along with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and an introduction to jQuery.

Lesson 4 covers the AJAX Client Library, which simplifies client-side programming with JavaScript extensions, a debugging trace facility, and various API shortcuts. The next lesson covers partial page rendering, which enables part of a page to be updated asynchronously, resulting in an improved user experience. The next lesson covers various techniques for making remote-method calls, resulting in greater efficiency in an AJAX application. The next lesson introduces the AJAX Control Toolkit, which provides many very useful controls enabling sophisticated client-side effects with relatively little programming. The last lesson covers built-in application services, which provides a client-side API to various services on the server, such as authentication and user profiles.

Numerous programming examples and exercises are provided. A case study illustrates a number of features of ASP.NET AJAX working together. The student will receive a complete set of notes and all the programming examples.

We start with a tour of basic browser programming, using JavaScript, the HTML DOM, and CSS. Then, students learn how to establish communication between their on-page JavaScripts and server-side application components, and thus to develop richer, more user-friendly and responsive web applications. We pursue Ajax connectivity entirely from the client side in this first module, at several levels. From an initial study of the bare-bones approach using the XMLHttpRequest browser object, we move on to consider programming techniques for thread safety, and use of higher-level script libraries such as Prototype and Dojo.

Then we analyze the challenges of supporting Ajax from the server side, going beyond simple Ajax request-handling strategies to consider goals such as:

Reuse mechanisms such as JSP tag files and JSF facelets are also considered.

We then look at two of the dominant forms of Ajax framework: the RMI approach, and JSF component libraries. For each class of tool we investigate two popular options -- DWR and jabsorb; RichFaces and Trinidad -- and use that comparison to discover the broader architectural patterns of that approach.

Students will complete the course ready to make intelligent choices of Ajax tooling for their applications, and to start working with their chosen framework.

This course has been updated for updated for jQuery 1.4.2.