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Prototype and script.aculo.us: You Never Knew JavaScript Could Do This! (Pragmatic Programmers)
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| List Price: | $34.95 |
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Product Description
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 asPHP, 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.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #434691 in Books
- Published on: 2007-12-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 426 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9781934356012
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Excellent "Up to Speed" Introduction to the Prototype library
This book was a fantastic overview of all the various bits of the Prototype library. Clearly written and filled with useful examples this really helped catapult me into more professional Prototype usage.
The Pragmatic Programmer's have a solid (although short) history of turning out amazing books on the latest development technologies and techniques loooooooong before other publishers even start looking for authors on the subjects. I own about a dozen Pragprog books and have yet to be disappointed.
Just month or so before the release of this book Prototype 1.6 came out (with some major changes to Hashes and Events). I was beyond impressed with the book was updated to reflect these changes. Most publishers would have released the older version and come out with the 1.6 version of the book just in time for 1.7! This is the type of quality service you can expect from these folks.
My one major beef with the book is the topic of building custom classes. I really think this is where most developers are headed when working with unobtrusive javascript. "Classes" (really a abstraction created for programmer convenience since javascript isn't a class-based language) is the major advantage Prototype has over some other javascript libraries. Creating reusable classes for dealing with common, repeating parts of your site that you want to enhance with javascript is an excellent way to cut down on the amount of javascript you write.
Classes get only 8 pages attention, otherwise this book would have been a perfect 5.
Now I Use Prototype
I had heard of Prototype before, but had not begun using it until this book. I bought it after seeing the recommendation on the official Prototype site and I am glad I did. Book provided an excellent learning pace, practical examples, and an extensive resource in a very concise and easily readable way. Good buy for a developer's collection!
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 you will benefit the most from this book if you already know how to use these libraries. If you have never used them, then you will be on your own. So, this is NOT an introductory book.
Frankly, I have a good ten years experience using JavaScript and walking the DOM. So, I know my way around client-side scripting. I just felt like the introductory chapters were missing. You're expected to jump right into the hard-core stuff with no buildup, no gradual accumulation of the basics of this library. He was trying to prove how cool the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries were and so he skipped the actual bones of the book. He skipped to the end and omitted the buildup. Buy this book wtih that caveat, in my opinion.
