The second book in my series of reviews is AJAX and PHP by Cristian Darie, a book that takes us on a journey through a now MUST when you develop web applications. If you are developing anything on the web platform page refreshes are a thing of the past, integrating AJAX is now a standard. This book will help give you the basics on the interaction between AJAX and PHP. This book covers the nitty gritty of JavaScript and their implementations, not using a JS Framework like Prototype.

This book will give you a great background in how AJAX functions work in most of the popular frameworks and allow you to build great Web 2.0 application without the need for them. The last chapter however does talk about Drag and Drop using script.aculo.us which is built on Prototype.

Some things that can be helpful in this book however include, using the Document Object Model, DOM and CSS, Charting using SVG, and AJAX RSS Readers. Good book overall if you are looking to build apps without frameworks. Nice job Packt Publishing