| Subcategories |
 |
Computers & Internet |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Prototype and script.aculo.us: You Never Knew JavaScript Could Do This! (Pragmatic Programmers)
written by Christophe Porteneuve
Studio : Pragmatic Bookshelf
by Pragmatic Bookshelf
Publisher : Pragmatic Bookshelf
Released : 2007-12-17
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9781934356012
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 9 reviews)
List Price : $34.95
Our Price : $18.00
|
|
| |
|
Product Description |
|
Tired 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. |
| |
|
| |
|
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. |
| |
|
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 that is better than ever before!
Content is spread over 400 pages and 20 chapters. The writing is solid and right to the point.
If you are a Javascript programmer that is looking for a better way to do things, pick up this book and enjoy.
***** RECOMMENDED |
| |
|
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. |
| |
|
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 to download or code them out.
I began using Prototype during the middle of last year when it was in version 1.5. There are many welcomed updates in v1.6 and the author does a good job of filling the reader in on the important changes.
I recommend this book to anyone who might have dabbled in Prototype and is looking to take it to the next level. I also think others like myself will benefit who have been using v1.5 and are looking for a good excuse to stay up to date with the framework.
Oh and it covers Scriptaculous too which is great because the web documentation is seriously lacking compared to Prototype and jQuery |
| |
|
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 coding cookbook.
I couldn't tell you how many times the authors displayed a line of code and I analyzed the code for a moment then thought "A ha!" because they demonstrated a clean and concise way to do exactly what I needed to do. Segments of code that I had written that were 25 lines code be shortened to 3 or 4 due to their examples. In javascript the less code that needs to be downloaded to the client the better, so obviously any code reduction w/o affecting performance is a good thing.
My only criticism is perhaps the authors might have added a touch more coding explanations for complex code. Sometimes I would read a line of code and be totally lost as to how it functioned (which is essential if you want to reproduce said code on your own), and there would be little in way of explanation in the book. I quickly overcame this by supplementing the reading with the online documentation, which explained any prototype methods which might not have been thoroughly explained by the authors. I should probably iterate that this happened relatively few times overall. |
| |
|
|
|
