PragDave

More Rails Changes

You may have noticed some of your Rails tests failing after updating to 0.14.1. This isn’t a bug: the core team have changed a few defaults around. Fortunately, Mike Clark has a wonderful article which explains both the changes and the reasons for them. (He discovered these while updating the content for the testing section of our Rails Studio.)

Rails 0.14.1 Has a Bug Which Affects AWDwR Readers

For folks trying to follow along building the Depot example from the Rails book, be warned. If you’ve downloaded the latest Rails gem (0.14.1), you’ll experience a problem when you run the command on page 57:

   ruby script/generate scaffold Product Admin

This version of Rails has a bug which causes the controller name (Admin) to be ignored: the controller will instead be named after the model.

Pole Positions

Rick Wayne sent me a screenshot that blew me away, and I just couldn't resist sharing :) (sorry about the quality: I cranked it down to save download time)

Pragmatic Ajax is a Beta Book

Beta books work well when the content is new, and the readers and authors have a lot to say to each other. And when it comes to things causing a buzz, there's not much to beat Ajax. So it seemed natural to release our new Ajax book in Beta. And it's quite a beta. Right now, it's about 2/3rds complete, with really solid chapters on the basics, frameworks, UI design, and UI anti-patterns. And, to top it all off, there's a killer chapter on implementing your own version of Google maps (yup, all the code's included, and it's less than you probably think).

As with all beta books, you can buy either the PDF only or the PDF/book combo pack now. You get unlimited updates to the PDF (both during the beta process and for the lifetime of this edition of the book), and if you ordered the paper book you'll get it when it ships.

Oh, and I couldn't resist a little Rico-based Javascript on the book's page... Sorry :)

A New Way to Learn Ruby and Rails

Well, the cat's out of the bag. After gathering gathering feedback on a venue, Mike Clark and I are thrilled to announce our first Rails Studio. It's a two day intensive Rails event (preceded by an optional 1 day Ruby tutorial for those who've not used it before). It's going to be a lot of fun: Mike and I work well together, and we're both really passionate about Rails.

The first studio is in Reston, Virginia: convenient for folks in DC and New York too. We'll be doing more (hopefully lots more), so be sure to keep looking at the site for details.

The only fly in the ointment is timing: to get everything organized, we need folks to sign up in the next 3 weeks. In fact, if early interest is an indicator, you might not want to leave it that long...