2 The day has finally arrived where you can run a browser-less javascript + DOM environment from within Ruby. <a href="http://github.com/mynyml/harmony">Harmony</a> offers a convenient DSL that allows you to get started simply and easily. There is even a Rails plugin (<a href="http://github.com/mynyml/holygrail">holygrail</a>) for functional tests. You can now leverage the power of the command line to do with JS what once required a browser. 2010-02-12T20:52:25+00:00 true 3447 2010-02-12T22:01:22+00:00 775 0 <a href="http://github.com/jcoglan/faye">Faye</a> is a toolkit for publish/subscribe messaging between web clients. It includes a JavaScript client library and two server backends, one for Rack based on EventMachine and the other a brand new version for Node.js. More info on <a href="http://blog.jcoglan.com/2010/02/02/faye-a-comet-client-and-server-for-node-js-and-rack/">my blog</a>. 2010-02-03T01:13:49+00:00 false 3378 2010-02-03T01:13:49+00:00 824 1 just released a plugin for rails, a helper to help create graphics with the javascript library "highcharts" the samples of the graphics are in the <a href="http://highcharts.com/demo">highcharts site</a>; and the code of the helper can be found, as always, in github: <a href="http://github.com/michelson/lazy_high_charts">http://github.com/michelson/lazy_high_charts</a> 2010-01-15T14:30:12+00:00 false 3269 2010-01-15T14:30:12+00:00 989 1 <a href="http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/">CoffeeScript</a> is a little language with a Ruby-esque syntax that compiles into the good parts of JavaScript. The compiler uses vanilla Ruby classes for the lexer and code generation, and <a href="http://i.loveruby.net/en/projects/racc/doc/">Racc</a> for the parser. If you've ever wanted to use Ruby to experiment with a little language, it's a good example to take a peek at. 2009-12-24T18:21:02+00:00 false 3187 2009-12-24T18:21:02+00:00 91 Tomasz Mazur 2 I've shared list of my favourite <a href="http://defkode.com/bloglines/favourite_company_blogs.html" rel="nofollow" >company blogs</a>, because I think it's a great source of knowledge and down to earth solutions. What are your picks in Ruby, Javascript & CSS category? 2009-12-14T00:02:15+00:00 false 3146 2009-12-14T00:02:15+00:00 0 <a href="http://xdotcommer.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/flotomatic-a-new-graphing-plugin-for-rails/">Flotomatic</a> is a new Rails plugin built on top of flot (jquery / javascript based graphs). It's got a nice DSL that makes it really easy to drop graphs into your site. 2009-12-01T03:52:17+00:00 false 3107 2009-12-01T03:52:17+00:00 575 Jakub Suder 0 Did you have a feeling that you should be running JSLint on your Javascript code, but you never had time to integrate it with your Rails project? Now you have no excuses: <a href="http://psionides.jogger.pl/2009/11/23/check-your-scripts-with-jslint-on-rails/" rel="nofollow" >Check your scripts with JSLint on Rails</a> (GitHub page: <a href="http://github.com/psionides/jslint_on_rails" rel="nofollow" >http://github.com/psionides/jslint_on_rails</a>). 2009-11-24T10:45:16+00:00 false 3072 2009-11-24T10:45:16+00:00 1 <a href="http://documentcloud.github.com/jammit/">Jammit 0.2.4</a> (asset packaging for Rails) is out this afternoon, with support for JavaScript compression via the Google Closure Compiler, in addition to the YUI Compressor. To support this new option, we've also released the <a href="http://github.com/documentcloud/closure-compiler/">closure-compiler</a> gem, as a standalone wrapper. 2009-11-18T18:23:19+00:00 false 3041 2009-11-18T18:24:18+00:00 91 0 <a href="http://documentcloud.github.com/jammit/">Jammit</a> does asset concatenation and (YUI) compression, as well as ahead-of-time gzipping, built-in support for JavaScript templates, and automatic Data-URI/MHTML image embedding. 2009-11-16T16:27:53+00:00 true 3028 2009-11-16T22:09:44+00:00 91 3 <a href="http://visitmix.com/labs/gestalt/" rel="nofollow" >Gestalt</a> is a library released by MIX Online Labs that allows you to write Ruby, Python & XAML code in your (X)HTML pages. It enables you to build richer and more powerful web applications by marrying the benefits of expressive languages, modern compilers, AJAX & RIAs with the write » save » refresh development model of the web. 2009-11-10T17:12:51+00:00 false 3000 2009-11-10T20:28:32+00:00 307 0 This is not strictly Ruby-related, but many of us Ruby hackers are web-developers in general, so I thought this might be of interest... With a couple of pals, I've launched <strong>a new Javascript blog called <a href="http://dailyjs.com">DailyJS</a></strong> which we aim to be a bit like a Javascript version of Ruby Inside. You can read more about our motives <a href="http://www.ricroberts.com/articles/2009/11/05/dailyjs-a-new-javascript-blog">on my personal blog</a>. 2009-11-05T13:16:46+00:00 true 2969 2009-11-05T14:24:21+00:00 322 Christian Johansen 0 I've written up a piece on JsTestDriver, the new-ish testing framework from Google. It's pretty solid: allowing you to have tests executed in one or many browsers, yet still run them on the command line (or in an IDE) <a href="http://cjohansen.no/en/javascript/test_driven_javascript_done_right" rel="nofollow" >Check it out</a> if you haven't already. I've written a small gem that wraps JsTestDriver, giving you colored output in the shell as well as autotest (built on top of the awesome Watchr gem): <a href="http://cjohansen.no/en/javascript/jstdutil_a_ruby_wrapper_over_jstestdriver" rel="nofollow" >Jstdutil</a> 2009-11-04T22:59:03+00:00 false 2967 2009-11-05T01:12:40+00:00 Nikolay V. Nemshilov 0 I just launched <a href="http://github.com/MadRabbit/right-rails" rel="nofollow" >Rails plugin for RightJS</a> and there are lot of good and right stuff. It's not just a Prototype replacement, there are several new cool features, like remote files uploading handler, new more powerful javascript generator, new helpers and more. 2009-10-21T07:32:22+00:00 false 2899 2009-10-21T07:32:22+00:00 0 Testing with Cucumber and Webrat is great, but when it comes to Ajax requests or Javascript, it seems to be a real pain. Well, not anymore. Watch the <a href="http://bddcasts.com/series/tools/episodes/using-selenium-with-webrat-and-cucumber">second episode</a> of the <a href="http://bddcasts.com/series/tools">Tools series</a> and see how to use a fully featured browser such as Firefox with a well known plugin, <a href="http://seleniumhq.org/">Selenium</a>, to test this functionality. You'll learn to configure Cucumber profiles, emulate transactional fixtures using <a href="http://github.com/bmabey/database_cleaner">database_cleaner</a>, create a Rails env for Selenium and more. 2009-10-20T18:06:40+00:00 false 2896 2009-10-20T18:06:40+00:00 607 Eugene Gimelberg 0 I just released <a href="http://github.com/rightscale/behaveJS" rel="nofollow" >behaveJS</a>, an unobtrusive Javascript plugin for Rails with other goodies. Comments and feedback are appreciated. 2009-10-07T15:15:27+00:00 false 2848 2009-10-07T15:15:27+00:00 0 After a few months of building and collecting recipes we use on our development machines, I have now finally released <a href="http://github.com/alloy/kicker">Kicker 2</a>. It comes with recipes for rails and javascript testing, and best of all, it's still usable for absolutely anything besides testing. <a href="http://gemcutter.org/gems/kicker">The gem is now hosted on http://gemcutter.org</a>, which was a breeze to use. Now start writing them recipes and send me pull requests! :) 2009-10-01T12:07:59+00:00 false 2827 2009-10-01T12:07:59+00:00 532 Erick 0 I just released <a href="http://github.com/ejschmitt/jsvars" rel="nofollow" >jsvars</a> - a Rails plugin for taking some of the pain out of passing values from Rails -> JavaScript. This in the controller: <code>jsvars[:loginPath] = login_path</code> instead of this in a script tag: <code>var loginPath = '<%= login_path %>';</code> 2009-09-09T20:06:23+00:00 false 2738 2009-09-09T21:10:41+00:00 0 If you want to know how remote links and forms will look like in Rails3 then check out a post about <a href="http://blog.solnic.eu/2009/09/08/unobtrusive-javascript-helpers-in-rails-3" rel="nofollow" >unobtrusive JavaScript helpers</a>. 2009-09-08T19:31:52+00:00 false 2733 2009-09-08T19:31:52+00:00 992 Vinsol Blog 0 While implementing caching in a recent rails project I came across some typical caching issues. One solution was to use JavaScript, more specifically jQuery. <a href="http://vinsol.com/blog/2009/09/07/rails-caching-and-javascript-techniques/" rel="nofollow" /> Check out the blog post by Sid</a> 2009-09-07T07:11:07+00:00 false 2721 2009-09-07T07:11:07+00:00 985 0 Get started with Rails with <a href="http://www.purpleworkshops.com/workshops/rails-for-everyone" rel="nofollow" >Rails for Everyone</a>, geared for everyone new to Rails. The workshop focuses on RESTful development and Rails best practices in an inclusive, professional environment. Oct. 24, 2009 in Chicago, $395. Or take your Rails and Sinatra apps to the next level by learning how to properly use Javascript and the jQuery framework. <a href="http://www.purpleworkshops.com/workshops/essential-javascript" rel="nofollow" >Essential Javascript with jQuery</a>, Oct 17, 2009 in Chicago, $395. 2009-09-03T14:13:41+00:00 false 2705 2009-09-03T14:13:41+00:00 365 0 The <a href="http://github.com/flyerhzm/bullet/tree/master">flyerhzm-bullet</a> gem is designed to help you increase your application’s performance by reducing the number of queries it makes. It will watch your queries while you develop your application and notify you when you should add eager loading (N+1 queries) or when you’re using eager loading that isn’t necessary. It also provides some notification, such as javascript alert, browser console.log, bullet log, rails log and growl. I think you will really like it. 2009-09-01T15:39:36+00:00 false 2696 2009-09-03T11:38:43+00:00 973 1 Accessing <a href="http://www.igvita.com/2009/08/25/post-javascript-dom-with-aptana-jaxer/">post-Javascript DOM (server-side) with Aptana Jaxer</a>. Want to build a spider which sees the page as it is seen by the user? This is it. 2009-08-25T17:45:37+00:00 false 2670 2009-08-25T17:45:37+00:00 9 Adam Hooper 1 <a href="http://github.com/adamh/html_namespacing">HTML namespacing</a> (<a href="http://adamhooper.com/eng/articles/6">release notes</a>) automatically annotates your HTML partials with special <code>class</code> attributes, and it lets you write Sass files with rules automatically scoped to those classes. Should you feel the need, you can even scope JavaScript files to those classes. 2009-07-10T22:00:30+00:00 false 2490 2009-07-11T16:26:48+00:00 0 <a href="http://github.com/jcoglan/faye">Faye</a> is an implementation of the Bayeux Comet protocol as Rack middleware, including a JavaScript client. I'm putting out a very early version and need help scaling the server across multiple Ruby processes so I can use it with Passenger. 2009-06-23T09:51:02+00:00 false 2413 2009-06-23T09:51:02+00:00 824 0 How many times do you heard you should separate <strong>content from behavior</strong>? Never? Hmmm don't try to cheat me.. So, why do you still use <code>:confirm</code> option for <code>link_to </code> helper? Here a <a href="http://lucaguidi.com/2009/06/17/rails-unobtrusive-and-i18n-javascript-confirm" title="Rails: Unobtrusive and i18n Javascript confirm">little snippet</a> to archive our goal, and as extra bonus, we get it <strong>i18n</strong>. 2009-06-17T15:58:24+00:00 false 2390 2009-07-01T15:20:18+00:00 776 1 When we have released <a href="http://adva-cms.org/">adva-cms 0.2.0</a> we have migrated all the <a href="http://prototypejs.org">Prototype</a> code to <a href="http://jquery.com">jQuery</a>. What I noticed was the lack of a valid automation support for <strong>QUnit</strong>, the test framework used internally by the jQuery team. So, in a couple of days I built what we need, just creating a custom version of <code>jstest.rb</code> and changing a little bit QUnit, in order to communicate with it. The result is <a href="http://lucaguidi.com/2009/06/09/hanoi-automated-jquery-tests-with-qunit">Hanoi</a>, a general purpose test runner for JavaScript. 2009-06-13T15:56:22+00:00 false 2378 2009-06-14T00:28:40+00:00 776 0 <a href="http://blog.jcoglan.com/2009/06/08/jsclass-21-an-improved-pacakge-manager-proper-hashes-and-lots-of-ruby-19-goodness/">I just released JS.Class 2.1</a>, my implementation of Ruby's object system in JavaScript. This release includes a Hash implementation, HashSet, an updated Ruby 1.9 Enumerable module with enumerators and Symbol#to_proc functionality, and an improved package manager. 2009-06-08T10:17:24+00:00 false 2351 2009-06-08T10:17:24+00:00 824 Raj 0 How to develop <a href="http://www.neeraj.name/blog/articles/846-how-to-create-a-dynamic-javascript-widget" rel="nofollow" >a Javascript widget</a>. There is also live DEO. 2009-06-01T13:39:19+00:00 false 2323 2009-06-01T13:39:19+00:00 0 A simple JavaScript library for interacting with GitHub's v2 API. Checkout the <a href="http://judofyr.net/posts/github-js.html">blog (spammy) post</a> or dive <a href="http://github.com/judofyr/github-js">directly into the code at GitHub</a>. 2009-05-29T10:12:57+00:00 false 2310 2009-05-29T15:12:27+00:00 56 2 Hacked up a simple Rails shout wall to <a href="http://www.rubyrailways.com/dear-railsists-please-dont-be-obtrusive/">demonstrate the differences between obtrusive and unobtrusive Javascript handling</a>. 2009-05-21T15:50:39+00:00 false 2277 2009-05-21T15:50:39+00:00 497 Jakub Kuźma 0 Simple tool for your Rails application. <a href="http://github.com/qoobaa/javascript_i18n" rel="nofollow" >Available as a gem</a>, uses standard ActiveSupport's I18n translations, converts them to JavaScript files - each language in separate file. Also provides I18n.t JavaScript function, similar to the ActiveSupport's one, no cookies needed to determine client's locale. 2009-05-20T15:01:40+00:00 false 2269 2009-05-20T15:01:40+00:00 7 <a href="http://github.com/ddollar/shoebox">Shoebox</a> lets you maintain your styles and scripts as first-class citizens while giving you controller-level granularity over their use. 2009-05-20T13:53:54+00:00 false 2267 2009-05-20T13:53:54+00:00 744 5 Avoid using custom DOM attributes in (x)HTML4, <a href="http://github.com/CodeOfficer/js-data-helper/" rel="nofollow" >JS Data Helper</a> assists you passing data from Ruby to Javascript. Compatible with the jQuery 1.2.3+, Prototype 1.6.1+ or Mootools 1.2+ Javascript frameworks. 2009-05-15T04:10:17+00:00 true 2238 2009-05-16T16:06:19+00:00 157 0 Historically, when selecting a JavaScript testing solution, you were forced to choose whether you wanted a framework that could run your tests in the browser or one that could only run your tests in a headless fashion. By providing a Rails-friendly, convention-over-configuration wrapper around a collection of great open source tools, <a href="http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2009/5/12/blue-ridge-1-0-javascript-unit-testing-for-rails-scandalous">Blue Ridge</a> gives us the best of both worlds: <strong>fast, automation-friendly, and headless testing</strong> plus the <strong>ability to run your tests in whichever browser is acting up on any given day</strong>. 2009-05-13T12:41:07+00:00 false 2226 2009-05-13T12:41:07+00:00 327 2 <a href="http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby">JetBrains RubyMine</a>—a brand new Ruby and Rails IDE is now generally available. RubyMine, built on top of IntelliJ IDEA platform inherits the intelligence of this IDE, excellent web development tools, such as advanced HTML/CSS and JavaScript editors, plus adds own features for Ruby and Rails developers, including smart code completion, analysis and refactorings. A 30-day evaluation is available. 2009-04-29T07:44:45+00:00 false 2147 2009-04-29T07:59:11+00:00 762 0 A <a href="http://blog.swirrl.com/articles/2009/04/23/introducing-grrid-js-an-open-source-javascript-grid-control">blog post</a> announcing the launch of the <a href="http://www.grridjs.org/">grrid.js website</a>. It's an open source, pure javascript, spreadsheet-like grid built on prototype.js. (Not strictly Ruby-related, I know, but Prototype is a Rails spin-off, and grrid.js might come in handy in a Rails project). 2009-04-23T13:02:25+00:00 false 2114 2009-04-23T13:02:25+00:00 322 Nikolay V. Nemshilov 1 <a href="http://st-on-it.blogspot.com/2009/04/frontcompiler-updates.html" rel="nofollow" >FrontCompiler was updated</a>, some new juicy features were added. Now it is even more powerful. (FrontCompiler is a simple collection of compactors for JavaScript, CSS and HTML source code. It removes trailing whitespaces, comments and transformates the local variables to make the sourcecode shorter.) 2009-04-05T08:07:14+00:00 false 2011 2009-04-06T08:17:09+00:00 leethal 1 <a href="http://github.com/leethal/live-validations/tree" rel="nofollow" >Live Validations for rails</a> proxies active record validations to javascript live validation libraries, for easy mode automagical (web 2.0 cloudbased social) live validations. 2009-03-16T21:33:11+00:00 false 1903 2009-03-16T21:33:11+00:00 taelor 2 I know this is RubyFlow, but I figured some jQuery was allowed. I just finished an article about <a href="http://slightlycoded.com/blog/intercepting-a-clicked-link-url-using-jquery" rel="nofollow" >Intercepting a Clicked Link Url Using jQuery</a>. Great for sending ever changing params being changed by javascript. 2009-03-08T09:40:16+00:00 false 1851 2009-03-08T09:40:16+00:00 0 Instead of using proprietary protocols, what if the barrier to entry for assembling a compute cluster was clicking a link? We can use the browser (javascript) to perform the work, and HTTP to coordinate the workflow. <a href="http://www.igvita.com/2009/03/03/collaborative-map-reduce-in-the-browser/">All we need is javascript and a 30 line sinatra web-server</a>. 2009-03-03T16:41:56+00:00 false 1822 2009-03-03T16:41:56+00:00 9 Christian Johansen 0 For best performance, CSS and JavaScript should be served up using as few requests and bytes as possible. <a href="http://www.cjohansen.no/en/ruby/juicer_a_css_and_javascript_packaging_tool" rel="nofollow" >Juicer</a> is a command line tool written in Ruby that helps by resolving dependencies, merging and minifying files. It can even check your syntax, add cache busters to and cycle asset hosts on URLs in CSS files and more. <a href="http://www.cjohansen.no/en/ruby/juicer_a_css_and_javascript_packaging_tool" rel="nofollow" >Full post</a>. 2009-03-02T20:49:13+00:00 false 1815 2009-03-02T20:49:13+00:00 0 Roundtable discussion on unobtrusive JavaScript; common drawbacks of CSS layouts. Running time: ~46:50. [<a href="http://rubyology.com/">Web Streaming</a>] [<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=49899854&id=219191394">iTunes</a>] 2009-02-16T17:23:13+00:00 false 1727 2009-02-16T18:14:51+00:00 664 Trek 0 Unlike the link_to helper, uses no inline javascript. <a href="http://wonderfullyflawed.com/2008/06/03/link_to-revisited/" rel="nofollow" >nifty</a>. 2009-02-13T03:46:00+00:00 false 1701 2009-02-13T03:46:00+00:00 2 <a href='http://wonderfullyflawed.com/2009/02/01/javascript-ousted-from-rails-views/'>Removing inline javascript</a> came up recently on the rails core google group. The consensus is, they'll be going away in favor for a standard markup microformat that JS libraries can hook into. 2009-02-05T19:35:39+00:00 false 1650 2009-02-05T19:35:39+00:00 466 1 Tore Darell has written a library to mirror your I18n setup in Ruby, together with all your translations, with JavaScript. Take a look at his blog for some instructions: <a href="http://tore.darell.no/posts/introducing_babilu_rails_i18n_for_your_javascript">Introducing Babilu: Rails i18n for your JavaScripte</a>. 2009-02-02T18:02:04+00:00 false 1621 2009-02-02T18:02:04+00:00 56 5 I’ve recently started work on a pure javascript spreadsheet-like grid control called <a href="http://www.ricroberts.com/articles/2009/01/29/grrid-a-prototype-js-based-javascript-grid">grrid</a>, and I’ve put an early version on github... 2009-01-30T11:22:24+00:00 false 1597 2009-01-30T11:22:24+00:00 322 Koneko 0 There's an article over at <a href="http://www.technetra.com/2009/01/03/building-a-remote-message-monitor-for-the-iphone/" rel="nofollow" >Technetra</a> demonstrating how to use Sinatra, Ruby and other tools to drive a mobile client like the iPhone, and integrate it with a live data source. The client side is JavaScript and CSS customized for iPhone's Safari (but playable for testing on a desktop browser like Firefox). The server side is all Ruby and Sinatra. Sinatra sings a simple but complete Web interface tune while core Ruby plays a drum beat with the live data feed -- in this case the <a href="http://www.bluez.org/" rel="nofollow" >Bluez</a> D-BUS message stream on Linux. The article is also notable because it's presents a good example of how to write a module on top of <a href="http://rubyforge.org/projects/dbus-ruby" rel="nofollow" >ruby-dbus</a> to monitor Linux's Bluetooth subsystem. 2009-01-09T00:09:40+00:00 false 1485 2009-01-09T00:09:40+00:00 0 <a href="http://trephine.org">Trephine</a> makes creating ultra-rich web applications easy by bringing the full power of the desktop to the web developer. This is achieved by executing privileged JavaScript code through a tiny (~20kb) signed Java applet. With Trephine you can: read and write from the file system, open sockets for listening, access the system clipboard, and much more. <em>This is more Web related, but could be used to run JRuby in the browser instead of JavaScript</em> 2008-12-23T19:02:43+00:00 false 1419 2008-12-23T19:56:45+00:00 255 Joe Van Dyk 3 Most Rails plugins that minify javascript and css do it on deployment on the server. This requires that the server has the tools installed for doing the minification. What you want is to have the minification process happen constantly during development, alerting you to any minification issues immediately. Fixie Shrinker does just that. Released two days ago. At http://github.com/joevandyk/fixie_shrinker/tree/master 2008-11-17T18:53:19+00:00 false 1206 2008-11-17T18:53:19+00:00 0 Posting about a small <a href="http://gusg.us/2008/11/8/smurf-rails-javascript-css-auto-minifying-plugin">write-up</a> I did of a Rails plugin I wrote called <a href="http://github.com/thumblemonks/smurf/tree/master">Smurf</a>. Smurf automatically minifies any Javascript or CSS you bundle through Rails' built-in <code>:cache</code> mechanism for <code>javascript_include_tag</code> and <code>stylesheet_link_tag</code>. 2008-11-08T07:26:23+00:00 false 1150 2008-11-08T07:26:23+00:00 490