- More than just a reference this book shows practical uses for the included methods.
- Covers what the methods are there for as well as how to use them.
- Discusses efficiency issues and cross browser compatibility.
- Appendix C on Ruby not relevant to the rest of the book.
- Does not explain how some of the more essoteric JavaScript syntax that the framework uses works.
- First Edition: 2007
- 426 page paperback
- Published by Pragmatic Bookshelf
- ISBN : 1-934356-01-8
- You Never Knew JavaScript Could Do This
- Author: Christophe Porteneuve
I'll start by admitting that I have never looked all that closely at Prototype since I consider the 120k library to be far too big to use with web pages where the entire page including all files should never be bigger than 80k given the speed at which most people currently connect to the internet. This review isn't about Prototype itself though but about a book that teaches you how to use Prototype once you have decided to use it.
For those relatively new to JavaScript, this book takes you step by step through all of the additional features that the Prototype and Scriptaculous frameworks add to JavaScript to make it relatively easier to create advanced effects using minimal code. For those with a more thorough understanding of JavaScript the book even spends some time making brief explanations of how the code achieves what it does.
As you would expect from someone actually involved in creating Prototype, this book provides a detailed coverage of all of the methods that the framework provides that you are ever likely to use, how to use them, and what to use them for. Reading about all of the fantastic tasks that this library allows you to perform has convinced me of how useful that using these frameworks actually is. Now if only I can find an environment to run it in that isn't dependent on downloading web pages from the internet or alternatively a way of compressing the framework down to a more reasonable size (like about 5k).
A very impressive book for anyone wanting to learn a really easy way to convert web pages into interactive applications.
