Customer Reviews

FXRuby: Create Lean and Mean GUIs with Ruby (Pragmatic Programmers)

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'FXRuby: Create Lean and Mean GUIs with Ruby' is a nice introduction to creating GUIs with Ruby. The content is straight and to the point filled with no frills information. Data is spread over 14 chapters and the writing is concise. My only complaints are that I feel this book is too short at just over 200 pages and I wish there was color within. Having said that, I feel this is a good resource for Ruby developers who need to learn how to work with and create GUIs in one of the hottest new technologies to come about in some time (Ruby).

**** RECOMMENDED

GUI programming tends to get ignored when people talk about Ruby. That's a shame, because there are some excellent GUI libraries available for the language. FXRuby has been around for several years and it is probably the most mature. Lyle Johnson, the author of this book, is also the primary maintainer for FXRuby. He is always very helpful in the support mailing lists, and his approachable friendly manner shines through in this book. It's a great introduction, building progressively more complicated applications as you establish a more solid foundation of experience using the library. You'll definitely be ready to use FXRuby in your own apps by the time you're finished with the book, and you'll be hungry to learn more if you're anything like me.

I would have liked to see more about using OpenGL from FXRuby, but it might have made the book unnecessarily cumbersome. It would be nice to see a dedicated library reference someday. Then again, the online RDocs will probably always be the best reference.