Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us (eBook)

Andrew Dupont is a web designer and developer living and working in Austin, Texas. He is a member of Prototype Core, the team that collaborates on the Prototype JavaScript Framework.

Contents at a Glance 4
Contents 5
About the Author 12
About the Technical Reviewer 13
Acknowledgments 14
Introduction 15
Prototype 16
What You Should Know About Prototype, JavaScript, and the DOM 17
About JavaScript 17
About the DOM 22
About This Book 23
About Prototype 24
Summary 30
Prototype Basics 31
Getting Started 31
The $ Function 32
Object. extend: Painless Object Merging 35
$ A: Coercing Collections into Arrays 38
$$: Complex Node Queries 40
Summary 43
Collections (Or, Never Write a for Loop Again) 44
The Traditional for Loop 44
Functional Programming 45
Prototype’s Enumerable Object 47
Finding Needles in Haystacks: detect, select, reject, and partition 48
Sorting Collections: min, max, and sortBy 49
Advanced Enumeration: map, inject, invoke, and pluck 51
Other Collections That Use Enumerable 54
Summary 61
Ajax: Advanced Client/Server Communication 62
Ajax Rocks 62
Ajax Sucks 63
Prototype’s Ajax Object 63
Advanced Examples: Working with Dynamic Content 75
Summary 102
Events 103
State of the Browser ( Or, How We Got Here) 103
Events: The Crash Course 106
Events and Forms 114
Custom Events 120
Summary 123
Working with the DOM 124
About the DOM API 124
Node Genealogy 124
Prototype’s DOM Extensions 126
Putting It Together 146
Summary 148
Advanced JavaScript: Functional Programming and Class- Based OOP 149
Object- Oriented JavaScript Programming with Prototype 149
Functional Programming 168
Summary 175
Other Helpful Things: Useful Methods on Built-Ins 176
Using String Methods 176
Using JSON 189
Using Object Methods 193
Using Array Methods 197
Summary 198
script.aculo.us 199
What You Should Know About DHTML and script. aculo. us 200
Introducing the CSS Box Model 200
Introducing script. aculo. us 215
Getting Started with script. aculo. us 216
Summary 220
Introduction to script.aculo.us Effects 221
What Are Effects? 221
Why Effects? 221
The Basics of Effects 223
script. aculo. us Effects 226
Putting It All Together 250
Summary 261
Enabling Draggables, Droppables, and Sortables 262
Exploring Draggables 262
Exploring Droppables 269
Exploring Sortables 275
Summary 280
Advanced Controls: Autocompleters, In- Place Editors, and Sliders 281
Adding Autocomplete Functionality 281
Adding In- Place Editing Functionality 291
Adding Sliders 297
Summary 300
Prototype As a Platform 301
Using Code Patterns 301
Solving Browser Compatibility Problems: To Sniff or Not to Sniff? 309
Making and Sharing a Library 314
Summary 318
Index 319