Ajax on Rails: Build Dynamic Web Applications with Ruby 1st Edition

I'm working through this book as I work to transition from PHP development to Rails with Ajax. I'm starting a new project from scratch and wanted to take on this "newish" methodology that is supposed to make my development more fun and way faster.Well I bought the book a year ago when I was thinking the same thing. But I didn't find the time to invest in a new language until now.Unfortunately Rails 2.0 has been out for a while and this book is written to 1.2 or something. Prototype is also in version 2.x and the book was written to something like 1.5And that doesn't even mention that there are much different ways to get Ruby and Rails installed now.So far I've spent a few days just making Rails work at all on my XP computer. It turns out that there is now a package called InstantRails that you just unzip and run in place. So I wasted those days trying to track down the components described in this book to no avail.Now that I'm working with the code, I'm finding that the examples simply don't work in about half the cases due to the deprecated functions and new naming conventions and so on. It's like learning how it was done two years ago along with how it is done now. And it's really slowing me down.Every time something doesn't work, instead of learning the lesson intended by the book, I spend a lot more time learning how to troubleshoot the problem until I find the new correct way of doing the same thing.So I can't say that I'm not learning from this book. I'm learning a lot. It just that I'm learning by correcting errors on my own instead of by clear examples that work. It's kind of painful and slow.The book seems to be good other than that. My only complaint is that some of the terms used aren't clearly explained early on. But I think most programmers can get past those and just keep reading and be fine.I just don't recommend buying this book anymore. If there's an updated version to cover the current versions of the applications, that might be worth getting.

This is a great book to get. The author is an expert in the field - I've seen him speak in person, and read his articles in the past. The book does not disappoint.It's really three books in one. The first part is a tutorial, taking you through the paces and up the ladder of frameworks. You go from JavaScript to Prototype to Scriptaculous to RJS, chapter by chapter, and it really makes sense. Then you get chapters on Usability, Performance, Testing, and Security, which really cover more than just the basics - Mr. Raymond shows you how to build your application around Ajax, and do it intelligently. The chapter on Performance had a better explanation of caching than I'd read anywhere else!The second part is two chapters, two comprehensive references on Prototype and Scriptaculous, respectively. Combined, these might be worth the price of the book for some folks. I'm sure I'll be referring to these pages for some time.Finally, you have three real-world application examples. Again, these might be worth the price of the book as well! You get a Review Quiz, Photo Gallery, and Intranet Workgroup application. The code is available at the O'Reilly site now, so you don't have to type them in, of course. Still, it's nice to read about them in the book, and why the author wrote them the way he did. All of the applications are useful, and use best-practices throughout.It's nice to see O'Reilly starting to get their Rails titles out. Predictably, they're awesome. They always choose the best authors, edit and proof the books meticulously, and put out a quality product. Highly recommended.

But maybe the third book.The book is good for learning more about programming Rails. You need to read something else if you are just starting in Rails.For those of you who are alreadying doing rails this adds a few more arrows to the programming quiver. It does not have a bunch of information as it is a thin book. The information it does provide is worth the cost of the book. I always just my professional books as to how much money they would save me and this book has saved me money. It is worth about 40-80 hours Internet searching and trial & error work.It has explainations of scrip.aculo.us packages. It does have a good set of features that I find useful in a good collection.For those of you familiar with O'Reilly books of the past, this book can be a little hard to read like the books of 10 years ago. Needs a little better editing.A good book on Rails, just not a good starting book.

I bought this book thinking I would learn a lot. I've done very little JavaScript and Ajax before so I was expecting to soak this up like a sponge. I did the examples and read through the book and felt like I got a great introduction to using Ajax with Rails. That's the problem though, I feel like the book needs more meat, especially in the RJS section. Now that I have a good foundation, I'm looking elsewhere for more intermediate concepts that should've been part of this text.

Bought the book using saturday shipping. Continuesly read for 5 hours to finish the first 9 chapters.It is not a beginner's ruby on rails book. You definitely need the official ROR book first. But this one covers ROR Ajax in great detail.A must have book for whoever wants to bring Ajax into their rails development.

This helps me to use Rails for building richly interactive web applications with Ajax as the author says.

Get this Ajax under the rim of your out of your practice computer studies.

Good condition

第4章でドラッグ＆ドロップや順序を入れ替えることができるリスト表示などに対する解説が詳細に記述されており、非常に参考になりました。上記のことが掲載されている本は、今のところこの本ぐらいしか無いので、この知識を取得したい方にはおすすめだと思います。また、Rails でサポートしている Ajax のクラスに関するリファレンスが11章にあり、詳細を把握するのに非常に役立ちました。