Manning Early
Access Program
Appcelerator in Action
EARLY ACCESS EDITION

Kevin Whinnery

MEAP Release: June 2008
Softbound print: June 2009 (est.) | 375 pages
ISBN: 1933988908
Start Reading Appcelerator in Action today through the Manning Early Access Program
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Table of Contents, MEAP Chapters & Resources

Table of Contents         Resources 
Part I Appcelerator Basics
 1. Introducing Appcelerator - FREE
 2 Developing on the Client Side - AVAILABLE
 3. Developing on the server

Part II Developing PlayDate
 4. Iteration Zero: Planning and basic navigation
 5. Iteration One: Implementing login and signup
 6. Iteration Two: Implementing the user profile page
 7. Iteration Three: Implementing the friends page
 8. Iteration Four: Implementing the events page
 9. Iteration Five: Bringing it all together on the splash page

Part III Beyond the Basics
10. Using the command line utility
11. Security tips
12. JavaScript functions and variables
13. Data visualization
14. Consuming web services
15. Localization
16. Using the Appcelerator widget framework 		 

DESCRIPTION

User experience matters in apps of all sizes, but the Ajax approach of server-generated HTML plus JavaScript doesn't scale well enough for significant asynchronous data access and a high-traffic, event-driven user interface. The Appcelerator RIA framework tames the browser as a client application platform and lets you create true client/server architecture in a web application. It's open source and integrates with server-side technology including Java EE, .NET, PHP, Rails, Merb, and Google App Engine. And since Appcelerator applications are written in HTML with some JavaScript on the client side, they run in the browser without a plug-in.

Appcelerator in Action introduces Appcelerator-based RIA development in an easy-to-read, example-rich tutorial. You'll quickly master the heart of Appcelerator--a message-oriented framework that allows browser UI components and server-side services to easily communicate asynchronously. The examples blend pre-built widgets and standard HTML with the Appcelerator Web Expression Language and plug-in architecture to give you limitless possibilities.

Through increasingly sophisticated iterations, the running example illuminates the Appcelerator Service Broker that ties your rich web interface to an SOA-based application. The service broker handles requests, executes business logic, and returns a response message with a JSON data payload. All serialization and de-serialization is handled by the framework.

WHAT'S INSIDE

In Appcelerator in Action you'll discover:

This book assumes you know how to build a web application using HTML, JavaScript, and any server-side technology. You don't need any prior exposure to Appcelerator.

About the Author

Kevin Whinnery is an Appcelerator community member and user interface developer with experience in a number of RIA frameworks, notably Adobe Flex and OpenLaszlo. By day, he is a systems engineer at Lawson Software where he works primarily with Adobe Flex and dabbles in C# and WPF. By night, Kevin is President and CEO of LightRail Systems, LLC, the publisher of several Web 2.0 applications leveraging Appcelerator, Flex, Ruby on Rails, and more. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with his beautiful wife Kendra and their children Emmett and Grace.

About the Early Access Version

This Early Access version of Appcelerator in Action enables you to receive new chapters as they are being written. You can also interact with the authors to ask questions, provide feedback and errata, and help shape the final manuscript on the Author Forum

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