User Interface

A new alternative for WYSIWYG editors. Uses JQuery.

Searchable API documents for Rails, as well as for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Nice little utility library for managing multiple versions of libraries on the same page (jQuery in particular).

Nice, up-to-date table illustrating the compatibility across many browsers with various W3C standards.

Using the great libraries Prototype 1.6, Script.Aculo.Us 1.8 and TinyMCE 3.1, IPRE provide a really easy way to implement an in place AJAX-powered editor using WYSIWYG.

API documentation for the Prototype JavaScript framework.

Scriptaculous has moved its code to Github, and the documentation will be ported in time.

Extensive online HTML reference from the folks at SitePoint.

Home page for jQuery, a full featured, light-weight Javascript library. From site: “jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages.”

An extensive, free online reference to CSS.

Summary of some older Internet Explorer (IE6 and earlier) hacks

Collection of known bugs with test cases for IE including IE8 (beta and beyond).

A static capture, sans styling of the original Scriptaculous documentation wiki, which will eventually be ported to github.

Scriptaculous in-place editor widget documentation.

“Exploring prototype by example”

Thomas is the author of the Scriptaculous JavaScript library.

Bill Scott is the director of UI engineering at NetFlix, and previously led the UI toolkit effort and other projects at Yahoo. His blog is full of great tidbits about interaction design.

Blog from the developer of the free time-tracking application time.onrails.org, as well as RailsLogVisualizer, a Flex-based Rails log analyzer.

“A Javascript Field Guide” of useful techniques.

Web designer and programmer. Two of his well-known designs are the RadiantCMS site and the ruby-lang site.

Blog from the authors of the WebORB, a Rails plugin for connecting to Flash and Flex user interfaces. (Also available for PHP and other server-side platforms.)

An excellent list of web-related conferences.

Forum for discussion of Prototype, Scriptaculous, and other Rails spinoffs.

A list of essential reading for people interested learning CSS. Most of the articles are from A List Apart, but the volume of articles at A List Apart can can be overwhelming to people just to getting started. Consider this a pocket guide to the best of A List Apart with a few additional links thrown in to spice it up a bit.

Great set of resources for learning the peculiarities of CSS.

jRails is a drop-in jQuery replacement for Prototype/script.aculo.us on Rails. Using jRails, you can get all of the same default Rails helpers for javascript functionality using the lighter jQuery library.

Flash-based chart generator.

Rails plug for creating Flash-based charts.

A library of extensions for the Prototype JavaScript framework.

Central site for the Prototype JavaScript framework.

Windows-based utility for analyzing page load times.

Prism is a Mozilla tool for creating “single site browsers” to turn a web app into something that acts a little more like a desktop app.

An open-source CSS framework, which provides a good starting point for your CSS designs.

Unless you use tables for layout, achieving equal-height columns is a matter of choosing the lesser of various evils. This is a sophisticated JavaScript solution that has a lot to recommend it.

Javascript function to add a tooltip when the user hovers over certain items. Uses Prototype and includes Rails helpers.

Open-soure project for viewing RDocs with and Ajax interface. This is the code behind RailsBrain.com and RubyBrain.com.

An open-source, Ajax mapping client that runs in the browser and renders maps from Web Map Services (WMS), Web Feature Services (WFS), GeoRSS, and Google Maps.

Main web site for the Scriptaculous project.

Browser Debugging tool (like Firebug), but runs on any device that Opera runs on.

Comprehensive debugging and in-browser development tool for Firefox.

Plugin for using the Dojo JavaScript libraries with Ruby on Rails applications.

Plugin for integrating the WYM editor into Rails.

Plugin for using Yahoo maps in Rails applications.

Slides from a session at SXSW 2008 that included the authors of the Prototype and Scriptaculous frameworks, as well as other notables.

A Digg-like site for web design articles.

Really handy visual navigation through jQuery reference guide.

This free service renders your page in a variety of browsers for Linux, Windows, and Macintosh, so you can see how your design fares in browsers that you don’t personally have access to.

A great free visualization tool for picking sets of colors according to various schemes.

A great free service for seeing what different fonts and settings look like on screen.

An online magazine about web design, with some of the highest-quality articles available.

An assortment of CSS demos, tests, and documentation from one of the world’s experts on the topic.