When looking at my own Rails code and that of the community as a whole, I often see places where certain Rails techniques could have been used, but weren’t. As much for my own memory as yours, I thought I’d list down some Rails tricks and tips that can make your application or code more efficient:

Website: http://www.rubyinside.com/19-rails-tricks-most-rails-coders-dont-know-131.html

One of the coolest things about developing ajax-enabled applications and sites is the level of interactivity that you can bring to your users. And perhaps one of the most crucial aspects of this process is adding activity indicators to your site. While a lot of ajax requests can be very fast, it’s still important to let your users know that something is happening.

Website: http://www.gen-x-design.com/archives/ajax-activity-indicators-make-them-global-and-unobtrusive

The problem with most menu systems is that they’re really touchy whether you’re too fast or slow with the mouse. The trick is to use a timeout with the effect, so it will wait a fraction of a second to pop-up, and a fraction of a second to go away…just enough to make the effect feel solid and not finicky.

Website: http://www.pjhyett.com/articles/2006/07/05/timeout-your-mouseovers#

A former student asked me a few days ago how I learned Ruby on Rails. The answer was that I simply read alot of great tutorials. So in the spirit of sharing, here are the 12 tutorials that I found most useful.

Website: http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/article/1816/top-ruby-on-rails-tutorials

quickSub is a Javascript function that adds intelligence to the Jason Brome’s RSS feed feed button on your web page. Just roll your mouse over the example, and you’ll be instantly greeted by one-click subscription links to the most popular aggregators.

Website: http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/

Litebox is a modified version of Lightbox v2.0 created with one thing in mind, size reduction. Litebox utilizes the 3kb javascript library moo.fx in association with prototype.lite, giving us the basic tools we need to make this work and you the ability to expand.

Website: http://www.doknowevil.net/litebox/

Most of the sites that I’ve featured recently that have to do with content visualization have really been about deep discovery. If you take that notion and apply it to a search engine you have mnemo map. With mnemo you can search Yahoo!, flickr, and YouTube by tags, synonyms and translations for any search term. mnemo, “combines the technologies of social networking, search engines and other data sources to help you formulate search queries and find really relevant information”. I have to say the site is a very refreshing way to search! Thanks. “

Application Program Interfaces are, broadly speaking, tools for building software applications. An operating system API might help you build applications with a consistent interface, but Web APIs are mostly about giving you access to data. Even Web APIs aren’t a new idea. Google’s search API has been available via SOAP since 2002, and there’s definitely older services than that. However, the recent growth in Web API availability has been fuelled by two recent developments. The first, which I’ve already mentioned, was a philosophical change in the way that data is handled. The second was the introduction of AJAX. Again, not a new idea, or even a new technology, but sometimes it’s all about timing.

Website: http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/ajax/go-forth-and-api

Lovelines is one of the most unique content visualization ideas I’ve seen recently. “Using a data collection engine created by the artists for their recent collaboration, We Feel Fine – wefeelfine.org, Lovelines examines thousands of blogs every few minutes to find expressions of love and hate, posted by all manner of people. When it can, Lovelines identifies and saves the age, gender, and geographical location of the person who wrote the post, and then presents that information along with the post.” Lovelines shows it’s data in words, pictures and superlatives. Words and pictures present individual examples of love and hate. Superlatives provides a daily zeitgeist of the most loved and hated things. All in all a very amazing content visualization of how the blogosphere feels about love and hate on a up to the minute basis. “

When I first started posting about AJAX over a year ago, many of the posts I found were about definitions, theory or examples. Today, most of the links that I find are tutorials and I applaud this. The following is a list of what I consider to be the best and most helpful AJAX tutorials I’ve found in the last two months. “Please let me know through email or a comment if you know of any other great AJAX tutorials and I’ll be glad to post them. Also special thanks to all of the folks who produced all of these great free learning experiences.”AJAX and API Tutorials rnGo forth and APIrnApplication Program Interfaces are, broadly speaking, tools for building software applications. An operating system API might help you build applications with a consistent interface, but Web APIs are mostly …