RJS Templates: An Execise In Frugality
Posted by Chris Shorrock Tue, 15 Aug 2006 22:15:00 GMT
So I'm not much of a gambler (unlike my daughter), so putting money towards something that I have no clue as to the value of is something I find difficult.
$6.50, this is all about 6 frickin 50 (with a coupon). I was sitting at my desk attempting to find a good reference for Rails based RJS Templates (AJAX made easy) when I found O'Reilly, the king of technical references, was offering me what seemed to be the definitive guide on the subject. I was having so much trouble justifying spending $6.50 on something I couldn't physically touch, but eventually decided to do so. chris.good_decisions++
The book is written by Cody Fauser who, previous to writing the book, had written a few tutorials on the subject. In fact his tutorials had helped me with RJS pre rails 1.1 when I was working on iCompete so I knew he had a good grasp for technical writing. He also recently updated the book, so if you happened to purchase it recently be sure to go grab an update.
The book is well written and the examples are very clear and do a good job of outlining the point they are trying to make. It's not a huge book, at 58 pages, but it doesn't need to be as it does what it sets out to do; show you how to use RJS templates avoiding some of the common pitfalls while taking advantage of Rails built in functionality as well as points you in the direction of some very handy tools. Additionally the RJS Reference at the end of the book will turn out to be a well used addition as it lists all the commonly used features of the library.
I'm sure this book will be worth it's weight in gold as I recently started out on a new rails project in my personal time. For a technology as useful as RJS Templates, it's shocking that there isn't much more literature out there, but when you can pick up a book like this for $6.50 I suppose it doesn't matter. A great purchase, and maybe in the future I'll learn something from my daughter
