A few weeks ago I started a new side project (a string-figure catalog, not yet ready for an audience, sadly), and I figured it would be a good opportunity to dabble in the new goodies in Rails 3. It’s been a fun experience, for the most part, but I’ll save my “wins and fails” for a separate post.

Jonathan Snook wrote a blog titled Simplest jQuery SlideShow . Checkout the demo page .

The full JavaScript code in its entirety is given below. If you understand this code then you don’t need to read rest of the article.

Introduction

jQuery’s motto is to select something and do something with it. As jQuery users, we provide the selection criteria and then we get busy with doing something with the result. This is a good thing. jQuery provides extermely simple API for selecting elements. If you are selecting ids then just prefix the name with ’#’. If you are selecting a class then prefix it with ’.’.

I've been look for some information on the unobtrusive javascript features in Rails 3, and it turns out that there's not much out there! Either that, or I'm looking in the wrong places.

So here is my attempt to explain some of the features. I'll create two sample blog apps, one using Prototype and the other using JQuery (the code is available on github).

Install Rails 3

If you haven't already, get Rails 3 installed. Everything you need to know is here.

You thought we were never going to get to this day, didn’t you? Ye of little faith. Because here is the first real, public release of Rails 3.0 in the form of a beta package that we’ve toiled long and hard over.

It’s surely not perfect yet, but we were out of blockers on the list, so here we go. Please give it a run around the block, try to update some old applications, try to start some new ones, and report back all the issues you find.