1. Chapter 1 Introduction

   1. Who This Book Is For

   2. What Ajax Is

   3. What Rails Is

   4. ‘You Got Your Ajax in My Rails!’

   5. Getting Up to Speed

   6. Summary

2. Chapter 2 Getting Our Feet Wet

   1. The Old-Fashioned Way

   2. JavaScript Libraries and Prototype

   3. Bringing Rails into the Picture

   4. Summary

3. Chapter 3 Introducing Prototype

   1. Setting the Stage

   2. Ajax Links

   3. Forms

   4. Ajax Forms

   5. Buttons

   6. Form Observers

   7. Summary

4. Chapter 4 Introducing script.aculo.us

   1. Visual Effects

   2. Drag and Drop

   3. Summary

5. Chapter 5 RJS

   1. Instructions Instead of Data

   2. Putting the R in RJS

   3. A Real-World Example

   4. Summary

6. Chapter 6 Ajax Usability

   1. Principles of Usability

   2. The Context of the Web

   3. Usability on the Web

   4. Cross-Platform Development

   5. Summary

7. Chapter 7 Testing and Debugging

   1. Debugging

   2. Testing

   3. Summary

8. Chapter 8 Security

   1. Healthy Skepticism: Don’t Trust User Input

   2. Hashing Passwords

   3. Silencing Logs

   4. The Same-Origin Policy

   5. The Use and Abuse of HTTP Methods

   6. Encryption and Secure Certificates

   7. The Rails Security Mailing List

   8. Summary

9. Chapter 9 Performance

   1. Development and Production Environments

   2. Session Stores

   3. Output Caching

   4. Asset Packaging

   5. Dealing with Long-Running Tasks

   6. Summary

10. Chapter 10 Prototype Reference

    1. Ajax Support

    2. DOM Manipulation

    3. Core Extensions

11. Chapter 11 script.aculo.us Reference

    1. Visual Effects

    2. Drag and Drop

    3. Controls

    4. Element Extensions

    5. DOM Builder

    6. JavaScript Unit Testing

    7. Utility Methods

12. Chapter 12 Review Quiz

13. Chapter 13 Photo Gallery

14. Chapter 14 Intranet Workgroup Collaboration

1. Colophon

The animal on the cover of Ajax on Rails is a Peruvian spider monkey (Ateles chamek), also known as a black-faced spider monkey. Native to the tropical forests of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, this spider monkey weighs about 15 pounds (6.8 kg) and lives 30 to 40 years. The black-faced spider monkey's body, arms, and legs each measure about 20 inches, but its prehensile tail can be as long as 30 inches. The prehensile tail acts as an extra hand and can support the weight of the monkey when it needs to pick fruit with two hands or swing from tree to tree. The tail has a section of fleshy pads that it uses for grasping and feeling, which is crucial since spider monkeys are one of the only primates that do not have opposable thumbs; biologists believe the thumb impeded the spider monkey's ability to swing from branch to branch and was evolutionarily eliminated. The spider monkey's diet is 80 percent fruit, but depending on the season it also eats insects, leaves, and seeds. Even though the black-faced spider monkey is fairly common, deforestation has shrunk its livable habitat, and it is often a target for hunters as well as pet traders.