When most people think of great web sites they don’t think of borring pages that have to refresh every time you click something, they think of sites filled with dynamic like buttons, and moving charts and graphs. While I always encouraging having a solid site before adding any javascript extras, sometimes javascript is just the best tool for the job.

Recap of last Week 5 , Quiz, & Solutions

This week we’ll cover the difference between class and instance methods in Ruby, then we’ll give you a quick intro to javascript and jQuery. Next we’ll talk about the asset pipeline in Rails and what it’s used for. Finally we’ll wrap up with some info on the project.

The exercise this week is all about adding some pretty awesome charts and AJAX functionality to our site with javascript!

Ruby class & Instance Methods

Intro to Javascript & jQuery

Rails Asset Pipeline

Class Project

We just started our class project, here are some tips and tricks to get you started. If you’re following along you should be able to start your own side project. Having something come alive on screen that only existed in your head is a pretty magical experience. Like learning a foreign language, programming is only useful when it’s practiced. If you find a fun project to work on you’re more likely to stick with it.

Exercise

Using Ruby & Javascript to Visualize Data