they repeatedly use to be preprogrammed for them—and that's exactly what

Ajax libraries do for them. They reduce the pain of handling cross-browser

inconsistencies, they add useful language features, and provide sophisticated

functionality. Of these, Prototype is the most popular JavaScript and Ajax framework

for low-level coding. Scriptaculous builds on Prototype to provide popular

high-level user interface features such as animation, drag and drop, and prebuilt

widgets. Together, they free the developer up to concentrate on building

the application. They make a rich user experience easy to achieve.

This book guides the reader through the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries

feature-by-feature. In just 350 pages, it shows over 100 small working examples

that help readers explore the libraries, and they develop a web-based image

gallery that teaches them how to use Prototype and Scriptaculous in the

real-world.