script.aculo.us 1.7.1 beta 3

An other beta, this time featuring the final version of Prototype 1.5.1, as well as Sortable speed optimizations.

Download 1.7.1 beta 3

There’s quite a backlog of patches and bugfixes, that I’ll hope to incorporate over the next weeks to get 1.7.1 final out when it’s ready.

Meanwhile, the beta versions of script.aculo.us are quite stable, and while I’m not doing any recommendations for doing so, work quite well on production websites. YMMV, of course; no guarantees. 🙂

You can help getting 1.7.1 final out faster of course, by testing out 1.7.1 beta 3 and discussing any issues on the Google Group and/or submitting reports (please don’t just leave a comment here!). 😉

Is JavaScript overrated?

Here is the example code:

examples.zip

And here are the slides (this version replaces the previous PDFs and have individual animation frames as seperate slides to clear some things up):

slides_v2.zip

License

The book on Prototype and script.aculo.us

Now in PDF as a Beta Book from Pragmatic Programmers with a dead tree version coming later this year: Prototype and script.aculo.us by Prototype core team member, script.aculo.us contributor and Google Group help wizard Christophe Porteneuve.

Christophe shows you all the little helpers and niceties of Prototype, and explains how they’re supposed to be used. Whether it’s Element manipulation, DOM traversal, Ajax or the JavaScript extensions like Enumerables, Christophe’s book will give authorative, complete and oftentimes fun answers, paired with some great insights on why things are done as they are in Prototype.

Basically, with this book in your arsenal, you’ll quickly make the transition from just using Prototype to being the resident code ninja.

Needless to say, the book is completely up-to-date (and also covers features from the yet-to-be-released version 1.5.2 of Prototype!), to help you stay on top of things.

Of course, not only does Christophe show you how to really leverage Prototype, but there’s a second beta on the way, providing the same coverage for script.aculo.us, which I really look forward too!

Go grab your beta copy!