Book Review: Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API

Introduction

• Today I am going to Review a Book which has been published by Packt Publishing.
• The Book is Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API.
• The Authors of this book are Nishanth Nair and Ragini Kumbhat Bhandari.

Table of Contents

What You Will Learn from this Book

• Learn the concepts behind building mobile applications using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript Build HTTP based services using ASP.NET Web API
• Secure ASP.NET Web API services
• Build a complete real world Movie Tickets application from scratch
• Implement HTTP basic authentication
• Learn about Kendo UI Framework components like templates, MVVM, and DataSource
• Discover Kendo UI Mobile widgets and customize them using jsFiddle examples
• Organize your JavaScript code using the Revealing Module Pattern

Pros

• I took roughly 7 days to read this book. Before reading this book, I didn't have any prior experience about mobile application development or Kendo UI framework. But this book gave me all the necessary knowledge which it requires to develop mobile application with Kendo UI Mobile for my next App development.
• This is a concise book (only 228 pages), directly targeted to the most needed materials for developing Mobile App with Kendo UI.
• The author has explained in a simple step-by-step manner how to create a service back-end layer using ASP.NET Web API and how to integrate it with your front end mobile application by using extensible and maintainable JavaScript code in a very clear and nice way.
• When I went through this book, I saw a number of very useful Tools and extensions are introduced for doing our work easily. Some of them are Ripple Emulator and Advanced Rest Client chrome extensions. The author has taught us how to configure those Tools by using nice images and clear step-by step explanations.
• Another very useful feature of this book is where it shows all the code snippets on JsFiddle. So we can easily play with it when we do a fork.
• In each and every chapter, there are a number of useful external links for getting additional knowledge if we would like to. It's really helped for getting in-depth knowledge of the desired areas.
• The author has explained the JavaScript Revealing Module Pattern (RMP) and use it with all the code snippets. It's really awesome when we consider the best practices with JavaScript.
• The way the author has explained the code snippets are really awesome. It's very clear and we can follow it even without practically involving with the code base. Because it contains all the relevant images, output of the source code and more...
• I saw a very useful performance and Development Tips have been added to most sections of the book. Those tips will definitely help when we make the real app in the future.

Cons

• The only complaint I have about this book is with the formatting of the code snippets. Currently it's in Black and White (mono). It should require color syntax code for better reading experience (at least for the eBook).

References

• Packt Publishing - Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI
• Amazon - Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI

Conclusion

• I would like to recommend this book for all the Novice and Intermediate Developers who are willing to learn Mobile App development with Kendo UI.
• I have to put in a special thanks for Packet Publishers, who gave me this opportunity to review this book. This is my second book review and I hope to do more in future as well. Packet Publishers are doing an outstanding job in the Software Developer world by publishing these kind of Up-To-Date books in very specific areas. Keep up the good work.
• I have thoroughly enjoyed the reading of this book and I hope that you will feel the same way as well.
• Thanks to the authors Nishanth and Ragini as well for writing this kind of Instant category book. Keep up the good work.

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