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Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

pragprog.com

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Re: Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

#3

No knowledge of RoR required? I ask because a couple of the authors list RoR in their bio. I love the book idea though. Will check it out if it's just HTML/CSS/JS (which it sounds like it is).

I'm one of the authors of the book.

You don't need to know any RoR. There are a couple chapters where we use some Ruby (Jekyll and Cucubmer-driven Selenium Testing), but we walk you through getting things set up properly if you want to use them.

Re: Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

#4

No knowledge of RoR required? I ask because a couple of the authors list RoR in their bio. I love the book idea though. Will check it out if it's just HTML/CSS/JS (which it sounds like it is).

I'm one of the authors of the book. You don't need to know any RoR. There are a couple chapters where we use some Ruby (Jekyll and Cucubmer-driven Selenium Testing), but we walk you through getting things set up properly if you want to use them.

Does that mean that whenever you recommend server-side solutions that the server must have Ruby set up?

[OT question that has blocked this PHP-hobbyist from dabbling in RoR: do professionals ever add a new functionality as part of a web app via RoR when the bulk of project has already been built with something like PHP? (looking for motivation to start some experimentation in Ruby)]

Re: Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

#5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the authors of the book. You don't need to know any RoR. There are a couple chapters where we use some Ruby (Jekyll and Cucubmer-driven Selenium Testing), but we walk you through getting things set up properly if you want to use them.

Does that mean that whenever you recommend server-side solutions that the server must have Ruby set up? [OT question that has blocked this PHP-hobbyist from dabbling in RoR: do professionals ever add a new functionality as part of a web app via RoR when the bulk of project has already been built with something like PHP? (looking for motivation to start some experimentation in Ruby)]

Nope, we don't only talk about Ruby. We have a few PHP examples as well, but there's a lot more on CSS, JS, Git, server administration, etc.

There's not a lot of server-side code in the book, to be honest. Chapters like Creating a Widget focus on the client-side code - loading content in to your page and providing an example for what the data looks like, without getting in to "here's how you'd' do this in Ruby or PHP or .NET".

Re: Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

#6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the authors of the book. You don't need to know any RoR. There are a couple chapters where we use some Ruby (Jekyll and Cucubmer-driven Selenium Testing), but we walk you through getting things set up properly if you want to use them.

Does that mean that whenever you recommend server-side solutions that the server must have Ruby set up? [OT question that has blocked this PHP-hobbyist from dabbling in RoR: do professionals ever add a new functionality as part of a web app via RoR when the bulk of project has already been built with something like PHP? (looking for motivation to start some experimentation in Ruby)]

In reply to your OT question - does your PHP app have an API at all? You could make a small standalone app that pulls from your existing API. Or go the other direction and create a Ruby app in Rails or Sinatra that aggregates some information for you and makes it available for your existing app to consume.

Re: Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

#7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the authors of the book. You don't need to know any RoR. There are a couple chapters where we use some Ruby (Jekyll and Cucubmer-driven Selenium Testing), but we walk you through getting things set up properly if you want to use them.

Does that mean that whenever you recommend server-side solutions that the server must have Ruby set up? [OT question that has blocked this PHP-hobbyist from dabbling in RoR: do professionals ever add a new functionality as part of a web app via RoR when the bulk of project has already been built with something like PHP? (looking for motivation to start some experimentation in Ruby)]

Another author here - To answer your first question, no, this book is very front-end driven. We will have one server-side recipe that will use PHP. The rest of the recipes that use a backend use a "no setup required" server I wrote called QEDServer (http://qedserver.napcs.com/) which provides a JSON API full of records and a way to serve HTML pages so you can work with things like Knockout and Backbone without having to set up an API. We use it in a few recipes.

But we really wanted to keep the server-side stuff to a minimum, and while we all use Rails, it's not the answer to all web development - especially with things moving more client-side.

Your second question, yes you certainly can. I've done it and the only tricky part is making them work together, and thanks to web services, that's not terrible. I even have a new Rails app consuming some XML I wrote with classic ASP.

Re: Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

#9

I know its still under development, but are all the chapters in at this time? In other words, if I buy it now will I only be able to read 4 chapters (for example) until others are added, or are they all there in some rough form?

The beta currently contains about half of the chapters. More chapters will be added in the coming weeks as they work their through the review process, but they're not in the beta copy that you'll get today.

Re: Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

#10

I know its still under development, but are all the chapters in at this time? In other words, if I buy it now will I only be able to read 4 chapters (for example) until others are added, or are they all there in some rough form?

The beta currently contains about half of the chapters. More chapters will be added in the coming weeks as they work their through the review process, but they're not in the beta copy that you'll get today.

Thanks. By the way, I've been a back end developer for many years and have only dabbled in the front. The table of contents alone make we want to buy this book (probably will) as it appears to run the entire gamut of front end development and appears to be very up to date with what people are doing these day. For me it would be a "survey of front end best practices" that I can use to dig in deeper.
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