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: - Christophe Hits a Home Run
If you have some Javascript experience, have hit the cross browser issues, and now are looking for the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries to take away some of the pain then this is a great book for you. Christophe takes you through the entirety of the API with a very readable book. When a new method is introduced short examples are given that show not only how to use the call but also provide the context of how the functionality might be used in a real world web application. Christophe often ... Read More
Rating: - Excellent Pragmatic Introduction
I set out to read this book from start to finish to understand what the Prototype and Script.aculo.us libraries were about, but before I could I found myself needing to use them, and the book was an extremely useful resource. The book compliments the online resources nicely, explaining not just what to do, but why, and how to do things best. This book does an excellent job of straddling the line between reference and introduction. The writing style is readable enough that you can read a few chapters ... Read More
Rating: - Good reference but not a learning book
I learn best by example, and this book has a but a precious few. Most of the book is a glorified API documentation. I was really looking for a book with a lot of ajax examples ( or even non ajax ones ) but it seems this book does not fit the bill.
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 is that ... 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 handling ... Read More
- Christophe Hits a Home Run
- Good reference but not a learning book
- Starts Without Explanation
