About this Book
Prototype and Scriptaculous are both, like most software libraries, productivity tools. Coding in a web browser is a curious experience—it is much freer and more expressive than any desktop GUI toolkit, yet it is also lacking in some of the most basic facilities. I know of few desktop developers who tried to maintain their own drag-and-drop library or drop-down list widget as part of a product, and several DHTML/Ajax developers who did. This type of feature is rarely the raison d’être of a software project, but rather is a means to an end. Guddling around with the low-level code required to enable those means is, at best, a distraction, and at worst, a burden that can sink a project.
This book is aimed at JavaScript coders with a clear purpose behind what they’re doing, who need to express their business ideas and concepts elegantly and to spend their time improving user workflow and satisfaction, or developing cool new features. Prototype and Scriptaculous let you express your code fluidly and elegantly, and you get to lead a full and rewarding life outside your programming job. If you like futzing around developing your own coordinate system, or reimplementing commonplaces in modern computing, such as tree widgets, sorting algorithms, and event listeners from scratch, then you’re out of luck here. Although, come to think of it, Prototype and Scriptaculous could certainly help you to do that faster, and better...