Prototype and script.aculo.us: You Never Knew JavaScript Could Do This! (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Daniel H Steinberg (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

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 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.

About the Author

Daniel is the editor for the new series of Mac Developer titles for the Pragmatic Programmers. He writes feature articles for Apple's ADC web site and is a regular contributor to Mac Devcenter. He has presented at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, MacWorld, MacHack and other Mac developer conferences. Daniel has produced podcasts for Apple featuring the work of developers and scientists working on the platform. He has coauthored books on Apple's Bonjour technology as well as on Java Programming and using Extreme Programming in Software Engineering classes.

Product Details

• Paperback: 426 pages
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf (December 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934356018
• ISBN-13: 978-1934356012
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #272,756 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #63 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Programming > JavaScript

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent "Up to Speed" Introduction to the Prototype library, January 13, 2008

By	Pietrek F. Glowacki (Ann Arbor, MI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now I Use Prototype, February 23, 2008

By	J. McCreary - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Starts Without Explanation, June 6, 2008

By	Curmudgeon99 (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews

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.