I’ve been messing round with JQuery and with plenty of resources around to get started on, seems an easy path to follow. (Probably because the tutorial are aimed at designers)
Can anyone point to some basic examples/tutorials to get moving with Scriptaculous / Prototype Or get a bit more basic how to accomplish this particular task?
For a rich compendium of “stupid prototype tricks”, JavaScript legend Kangax has a great site: http://scripteka.com Note that many or most of these expect you to understand enough about hand-coding to insert the links to the various libraries and to add classnames or IDs to the elements you want to affect.
The Freeway FX Actions are all based on Prototype/Scriptaculous, and if you need something basic, they’re the first place to start. My Carousel, ScriptyAccordion, ScriptyLightbox, CalendarView and others are an attempt to make some designer-friendly packaged effects on this same platform.
The Protaculous Action and Observer are more of a hybrid, in that they expect you to find or write a snippet of Prototype-flavored JavaScript and paste it into a plain text editing window, rather than using pull-down menus and such to configure a limited set of options. In that respect, they do require more of you, but they also remove any limits from what you can choose to do.
One thing that messing around with Proto/Scripty for the last two years has definitely taught me is the finer points of the JavaScript language. It’s quite beautiful, even if it appears mysterious from the outside. I will admit it’s not for everyone, and there are some people for whom a more cookie-cutter approach is not only preferable but also correct.
It ultimately limits you, in my opinion, so I don’t recommend it as a first step. Instead, I would go with copy and paste (without understanding) first, asking questions and learning to debug second, and letting repetition of those two steps lead to true understanding. Google is FULL of P/S code, free for the copying. Prototype itself is “self-hosted”, meaning that the library in part is used to build itself. This leads to a degree of internal consistency that is rarely seen in software projects. Meaning that a kernel of understanding in one area leads to a massive leg up in another.
jQuery has seen a massive push in the last year and a half due to corporate sponsorship from Microsoft and other vendors. There is a large culture of plug-ins surrounding jQuery that allow a designer or beginning developer to chain together a complex effect using what appears to be an English-language syntax for the most part. But I would argue that this culture engenders a posture of dependence and self-editing on the part of the user, never encouraging that user to get her (metaphorical) hands dirty and figure out why and how it works. Being able to take things apart is the first step toward craftsmanship, as opposed to mere kit-assembly.
Prototype remains independent, and is still the default in professional development frameworks like Rails (from whence it sprang, not unlike Athena, as from the forehead of Zeus), Symphony, CakePHP, and others.
Using Prototype can be, as Obi-Wan once said, “…your first step into a larger world.”
Walter
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followed by PHP. Javascript has been on the back burner for far too long. I need to spend more time looking at it, especially as its so much more design related these days.