Here is a common problem: barriers to learning. Whether we’re talking about the walls between design and development or development and engineering or crossovers between many other web related disciplines, we are talking about walls. This is the first of several posts that will attempt to create bridges between these disciplines and open up the doors to Web 2.0 for those of you who are willing to learn.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not going to write tutorials or repeat many of the books and articles that talk about what AJAX is (if you want me to, just let me know and I would be happy to post about that as well). For now, I am just going to show you some of the shortest and most easy to thread paths for getting the knowledge that you want to get.
Now, since we’re talking about Designers in this first post, here are some of the best resources to begin a smooth and quick path of learning to the wonders of AJAX:
AJAX is not a single language, but a new approach to utilizing several old (and not so old) technologies. JavaScript, DOM ( the Document Object Model), and XML are the very basics of AJAX. If you carry no or very little cohesive hands-on knowledge in those three, this article is for you.
You can use the common JavaScript libraries out there, you can read tutorials about them, and you can plug and play, while thinking that all the JavaScript in the world has already been written and it just awaits you to find the right google search string and get it… and you can also be very wrong. JavaScript knowledge is required more and more with the rising awareness of User Experience and Ajax needs on the web. It will boost your flexibility in projects, allow you to build better interactions, and just be another very powerful outlay to your creativity as a designer. Point blank of his paragraph: you need to know JavaScript in for many reasons, one of which is so that you can learn Ajax.
There are a many many books on JavaScript. According to Amazon, there are about 870. These are the ones which will give you a great grounding in the language with level of difficulty easy to complex in this order:
Short clear and very easy to comprehend books that will give you the basics of JavaScript, the Document Object Model, XML and Ajax. Reading these books first will spare you the plethora of details on one language or the other. It will provide you with the big picture of the topic which you can use as a guide for future learning.
The Document Object Model is the reason why we have seen a return of JavaScript on the web market. In the past, browser specific code was required for each and every JavaScript manipulation of web content. Today DOM has become the common language to make all browsers behave the same way at the cost of much less code. You can choose to learn the essentials, or you can choose to expand with the advanced book. Either way, DOM scripting is something you will never regret learning if you are making a living through web development.
Once you have grasped the basics, this book can be your desk reference for any function, detail, or peculiarity in the JavaScript Language. It is a thick and very thorough reference that will be of great service when you need to solve problems.
Some more examples of advanced projects and practices. Do not play with these guys unless you have given yourself a good grounding with the language. The examples here will serve you much better if you can understand them.
And here is the desert. Two great books that will give you a great wrap of the path to Ajax. Both of them short and sweet and with good coverage of topics such as accessibility for Ajax, unobtrusive JavaScript, and graceful degradation.
Learning is not about the quantity of books you will read but about the quality of knowledge you will comprehend. Please feel free to comment further with more ideas, and great sources of learning on this topic. These books, while mostly short, will still be a big spoon for anyone to take on simultaneously. That is why it is best to start with just one, the first one, and see where that knowledge take you. Enjoy, and please, let me know if these suggestions have worked for you. More will be coming soon.
Posted by: Diana Zink on Tuesday, 18th Mar, 2008
Mark Maximus Muskardin Said:
March 18th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Great post. I quite often feel exasperated at the deluge of new information out there about every technology under the sun. It’s difficult for me to step into a Borders or Barnes & Noble knowing full well that I will shell out $100 to buy books I know I will not have the time to fully complete. Which makes me wonder: how do today’s tech-savvy people keep abreast of the latest technologies? How do we continually refine our skills and learn more and more to remain on the cutting edge? Is it a simple matter of having the discipline to pursue a steady diet of, say, 2-3 hrs per day devoted strictly to experimentation and study-time? How do other developers deal with the addiction of needing to know everything juxtaposed to the reality of limited time? It would be quite useful if the digerati of the web world were to assemble a clear-cut path to varying levels of web expertise. A path that would include a selection of cherry-picked must-reads and a whole lot more.
Diana Zink Said:
March 20th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
There are many paths and many trends, and I will only list a few here, reserving the details for a new post. For a start – publishing houses nowadays seem to specialize in targeted audiences. As a result, it has become a standard that FriendsOfEd.com, Apress, New Riders, and Wiley will offer the best and latest in front end and flash development. Sites like A List Apart are also a major pivot in knowledge gathering. Guides like this will hopefully become another resource. Expect additional guides from this blog on learning CSS, JAVA, PHP and more…