Product DescriptionTired of getting swamped in the nitty-gritty of cross-browser, Web 2.0-grade JavaScript? Get back in the game with Prototype and script.aculo.us, two extremely popular JavaScript libraries, that make it a walk in the park. Be it AJAX, drag and drop, auto-completion, advanced visual effects, or many other great features, all you need is write one or two lines of script that look so good they could almost pass for Ruby code!
Web applications are getting richer and richer, with more interaction baked in every day. But JavaScript, DOM, CSS and a full host of other Web standards are quite complex, and the result isn't always browser compliant.
The Prototype and script.aculo.us libraries are veritable treasure troves, smoothing over all the usual nitty-gritty differences between browsers, and making most common features a breeze to implement. With this book, you can quickly wield the whole power of these extraordinary libraries.
Dive into Prototype, the library that makes JavaScript so much more powerful, and it looks a lot like Ruby code. Exploring the DOM, handling events, taming AJAX, and radically simplifying most of your scripting code: it all becomes easy-and very portable-with Prototype.
When it comes to advanced UI features, script.aculo.us is every web developer's dream come true: whether you need to create auto-completed text inputs, implement in-place editors, provide customized drag-and-drop behaviors, capture your users' attention with visual effects or simply build DOM fragments more efficiently, it's all there, and lightweight too.
This book guides you through all the details of these features, letting you use many technologies on the server side, such as PHP, vanilla Ruby, and Ruby On Rails, in countless examples illustrating every aspect. Power users will also learn the design philosophies of the libraries, and how to contribute to them and augment them for their own needs.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Starts Without Explanation
I approached this book with the expectation that it would teach me in the traditional gradual fashion. You start with some accessible portion and build on the rest. Well, he just starts out of the blocks at a full dash--full complexity--and you really don't know where to begin to understand what he's showing you. So, though I'm sure I could have taken some of his examples and used them, I feel like I did not really get an understanding of the WHY you do it this or that way. So, the ironic effect ... Read More
Rating: - Great Prototype Reference
'Prototype and script.aculo.us: You Never Knew JavaScript Could Do This!' is a wonderful reference for learning how to use Prototype and writing better and more powerful Javascript code. Pragmatic has a history of publishing good books that are full of stuff and not fluff and this book follows in that tradition. After reading this book you will learn more about this efficient library that makes things easier for web developers, doing things like dragging and dropping, autocomplete code, and event ... Read More
Rating: - Good Example Driven Book
I received a review copy of this book, and was able to use some of the code examples to jazz up a site I was building. The examples are very well written, and the code works. If you are into programming in javascript, this book is worth a look.
Rating: - Worth it alone for the Prototype section
This book builds upon the existing Prototype documentation found at http://prototypejs.org/api by putting the API in context. Other than the fact it uses Ruby for the server side examples (I'm sure everyone who reads it will have a differing opinion there), I have to say it was one of the most helpful programming books I've read. The short usage examples that were neatly tucked into the text were very useful and I found myself reading it almost like a novel and able to soak everything in without needing ... Read More
Rating: - Pragmatic Prototype Indeed
Reading this little piece of work is a great way to very quickly learn the nuts and bolts of Prototype and Scriptaculous. This book is long on code and short on deep explanation and banter (for better or worse; hence "pragmatic programmer").
My background: I'm not a ruby programmer. I program in ASP.NET and I recently accepted a job where I needed to quickly learn prototype. When I settled on this I didn't realize that, along with choosing an intro book, I was also choosing a Prototype/Scriptaculous ... Read More
- Starts Without Explanation
- Great Prototype Reference
