Building the AJAX Drag-and-Drop Sortable List Application

One thing that sets this application apart from other applications we’ve built in this book is that in this case, we are going to use two external JavaScript frameworks: Prototype and script.aculo.us.

“Prototype is a JavaScript framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.” It was created by Sam Stephenson and is quickly becoming the JavaScript framework, because of its great functionality.

Note

Prototype is distributed under an MIT-style license and it can be downloaded from http://prototype.conio.net.

If you want to learn more about Prototype, check out the tutorial on http://www.particletree.com/features/quick-guide-to-prototype.

The Prototype features are:

• Complete object-orientation

• Utility functions

• Form helper functions

• AJAX support

• Periodical executer

Another pioneer of JavaScript development is Thomas Fuchs, the man who built the great JavaScript library—script.aculo.us—a library that provides spectacular visual...