Product DescriptionPrototype and Scriptaculous are libraries that extend standard Ajax. They make it easier to program Ajax and provide powerful features like drag and drop and animation. In this book, developers learn by playing and see how the libraries work in the real world.
As experience with Ajax increases, developers want the standard Ajax capabilities they repeatedly use to be preprogrammed for them--and that's exactly what Ajax libraries do for them. They reduce the pain of handling cross-browser inconsistencies, they add useful language features, and provide sophisticated functionality. Of these, Prototype is the most popular JavaScript and Ajax framework for low-level user interface features such as animation, drag and drop, and pre-built widgets. Together, they free the developer up to concentrate on building the application. They make a rich user experience easy to achieve.
This book guides the reader through the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries feature-by-feature. In just 350 pages, readers will find over 100 small working examples to help them explore the libraries. As well, they will develop a web-based image gallery that teacher them how to use Prototype and Scriptaculous in the real-world.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Verbose wording, shallow details, & simple examples
Overkill/ repetitive explanations of simple codes and examples. I would recommend reading "Prototype & Scriptaculous" published by the "Pragmatic Programmers" instead - they consistently publish concise, detailed books that are highly rated by readers.
Rating: - Some Basic Errors, but Generally a Good Tutorial
I was looking for a good intro to Scriptaculous and Prototype and this books is pretty good. There are a few irritating things, however. First, the visual illustrations for Chapter 8 are completely wrong. There is a new Chapter 8 posted on the book website.
Second, while some of the code is included in the download (also available from the site), not all is - especially all of the "snippets" which take up all of Chapters 8-11. While most of the "snippets" are under 50 lines of ... Read More
Rating: - Exactly what I hoped for, and more
I'm not even halfway through this book yet and I'm already satisfied with my purchase. I look forward to reading about Scriptaculous, but to me the book is already worth it for (a) the treatment of JavaScript in general and the details on object-oriented JavaScript, JSON, and especially JavaScript prototypes and function closures, (b) Prototype, especially how prototype extends JavaScript itself by modifying various object prototypes, and (c) AJAX, including historical perspective, details and gotchas ... Read More
Rating: - Top-notch tome
Javascript has exploded onto the web development scene in the last few years, and powers much of the web 2.0 and Ajax revolution. Every web developer now needs to know how to do common Ajax tasks. Thankfully, Prototype and Scriptaculous In Action makes it both easy and enjoyable.
This is a comprehensive book. The size (510 pages) was initially intimidating, but Prototype and Scriptaculous In Action is exceedingly well written and a genuine pleasure to read. The thorough and thoughtful organization ... Read More
Rating: - Excellent
I wrote a longer review that Amazon has apparently lost. Oh well. This is an excellent book, very well written. The authors are the rarest kind of technical author: they can actually construct prose that is pleasant to read, not deadly boring, but which works well as a reference book later. The book's organized thoughtfully--it's certainly much more than just an API reference. There's also quite a lot of general advanced Javascript information here, too.
There's at least one other book on these libraries ... Read More
![: Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action [Ajax]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51i%2BlUTDmbL._SL160_.jpg)
- Verbose wording, shallow details, & simple examples
- Some Basic Errors, but Generally a Good Tutorial
- Top-notch tome
