Prototype javascript
reference to the element with the ID 'nav' Give it one or more element IDs, and it’ll return references to them: The $ function has already been getting some attention. One of the really nice things about using Prototype is the deadly simple helper functions that it provides for very common scripting tasks. Now, let’s get into it! Prototype’s Little Helpers You can include it into your views by putting this into the of your pages:
Prototype javascript download#
If you’re on Rails, you don’t need to download Prototype: it’s included in the distribution. Simply download prototype.js and link it to your pages with a tag: The latest version of Prototype can be downloaded from the prototype site. See the Prototype site for details of browser support.
The final boring note is that at this time Prototype only supports the newer browsers - as you might expect of a DOM and XMLHttpRequest based library. I have a feeling that the library will change quite quickly in response to Rails’ lightning-quick development cycle, so things will change. I’d like to note that the current stable version of Prototype at time of writing is 1.4.0. Finally, we’ll finish with a brief discussion of other interesting projects that are based on it. Then, we’ll move on to look at Prototype’s well-known AJAX helpers. It aims to give you enough examples and resources to get started using Prototype in your DOM scripting projects.įirst, we’ll examine the basic building blocks of Prototype: its $ functions, its additions to the String, Number, Array and Function objects, its form handling capabilities and its DOM functions. This article provides a whirlwind tour of the whole library. Personally, I think the jury’s out on the whole ‘fun’ JavaScript thing, but nevertheless Prototype is a really well executed JavaScript library which, although the situation has been improving of late, has had notoriously sparse documentation. However, Prototype can be used independently of Rails to aid the coding of many JavaScript doodads and Web 2.0 thingy wangles.
Those of you who are familiar with the open source community’s latest and greatest application framework, Rails, may recognise Prototype as it actually forms the backbone of Rails’ JavaScript helper.
Prototype is an object oriented JavaScript library (written by Sam Stephenson and friends) that makes JavaScript fun.