(Wed Jan 02, 2008) [/Books] #
The second beta revision of Advanced Rails Recipes is now
available. The contributors and I have burned the midnight oil since the first
beta to pack as many new recipes as possible (25 more!) in
for your New Year reading pleasure. Here's what's new:
-
Analyzing SQL Queries
-
Caching Up With the Big Guys
-
Creating a Wizard
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Creating Meaningful Relationships Through Proxies
-
Decouple Your JavaScript with Low Pro
-
Dynamically Updating Cached Pages
-
Freshening Up Your Models With Scope
-
Generating Custom Error Pages
-
Geocoding to Find Things By Location
-
Giving Users Their Own Subdomain
-
Handling Multiple Models In One Form
-
Keeping E-mail Addresses Up To Date
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Keeping Forms Dry and Flexible
-
Monitoring (and Repairing) Processes with Monit
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Off-Loading Long-Running Tasks to BackgrounDRb
-
Preserving Files Between Deployments
-
Processing an Asynchronous Workflow
-
Receiving E-mail Reliably via POP or IMAP
-
Responding To Remote Capistrano Prompts
-
Taking Advantage of Master/Slave Databases
-
Testing HTML Validity
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Tracking Test Coverage with RCov
-
Updating Partial Resources with AJAX
-
Uploading Images and Creating Thumbnails
-
Validating Required Form Fields Inline
Current recipe contributors include: Aaron Batalion, Adam Keys, Andre Lewis, Andrew
Kappen, Benjamin Curtis, Chris Bernard, Chris Haupt, Chris Wanstrath, Dan Benjamin, Dan Manges,
David Chelimsky, Erik Hatcher, Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Geoffrey Grosenbach, Giles
Bowkett, Greg Hansen, Gregg Pollack, Hemant Kumar, Hugh Bien, Jamie
Orchard-Hays, Jared Haworth, Jarkko Laine, Jay Fields, John Dewey, Jonathan Dahl, Kevin
Clark, Luke Francl, Marty Haught, Matthew Bass, Michael Slater, Mike Hagedorn,
Mike Mangino, Mike Naberezny, Mike Subelsky, PJ Hyett, Patrick Reagan, Peter
Marklund, Pierre-Alexandre Meyer, Ryan Bates, and Sean Mountcastle.
We'll continue to refine these recipes and add new ones for the next beta
revision. Thanks to all the contributors for their great work!
Enjoy!
(Fri Dec 07, 2007) [/Books] #
Now that the much-anticipated Rails 2.0 is out, I'm very pleased to announce that Advanced Rails Recipes is now available in beta form.
This has been an especially fun project because the book is a collection of recipes from folks around the Rails community. We're filling this volume the same way my family filled our recipe box in our kitchen. Advanced Rails Recipes includes tasty recipes from many great chefs. These are people you trust who have created applications you may have sampled. This book is an informal survey of what some of the best developers in the Rails community think is advanced and important.
The current beta has 42 recipes, and there are another 30 or so on the way. All the recipes were baked with Rails 2.0 and Capistrano 2.1.0.
Thanks to all of you who contributed recipes, and thanks for enjoying our dishes!
(Tue Jan 23, 2007) [/Books] #
As promised, here's the list of books I've found invaluable in learning to craft better HTML and CSS, in the order I recommend reading them:
I'm a big fan of Dan Cederholm's simple, effective, standards-based, and gorgeous work. He's a gifted writer to boot. You're well advised to read anything he writes.
For reference, I use:
I'm also looking forward to feasting my eyes on a copy of
Transcending CSS. It looks stunning.
Hope that helps!
(Tue Jan 09, 2007) [/Books] #
The Laws of Simplicity is a lovely little book. Exactly 100 neat and refreshing pages. An inspiration to makers of things. I won't risk making it complex with a review. Enjoy!
(Wed Nov 23, 2005) [/Books] #
I was honestly planning to get some "real" work done this
afternoon. That is, until I made the mistake of opening the latest
Pragmatic Friday: Google Maps
API. Here comes the understatement of the year: This stuff is
cool!
Seriously, I've been seeing these integrated maps pop up all over
the 'net, but I never had the time to dig through blogs and whatnot to
assemble the necessary pieces of information. And with technology
this close to the hemmoraging edge and just outside my core interests,
I'm inclined to sit back and wait for a concise write-up. Here's
where I think the Pragmatic Fridays format really shines—timely,
focused, and authoritative information that you can put to work
immediately. (And at $8.50, I think it's a great value.)
Scott Davis has done a remarkable job bottling up everything I
need to know to do web mapping like the cool kids. And truth be told,
I'll still get real work done this afternoon. It took about an hour
to read through the 71 pages of well-written explanations and
comprehensive example code. Again, the Fridays format lends itself
really well to this topic in that the PDF has external hyperlinks
to running examples. I found those to be tremendously helpful.
So after just an hour, I'm confident I could put a dynamic Google
Map in any web app.
Bravo, Scott!
Obligatory disclaimer: Despite my relationship with the Pragmatic
Bookshelf, and contrary to popular belief, I don't make any money off
sales of this book. I simply think it rocks!
