specializing in digital media technologies

Although I don't normally do this, per a reader request, I've made the book's examples available to be seen and used here. The book has three primary examples, each in an Ajax and non-Ajax form. The pages are:

dept_form.html

This page returns all of the employees in a selected department.

add_employee.html

This page uses Ajax to add an employee to the database (note: the version running on this site does not actually execute the INSERT query that updates the database.)

search_form.html

This page provides a simple search to retrieve employees by last name.

There's no navigation within or among the pages. You'll need to click Back to return to this page to see another example. To run one of the examples without Ajax (to see what that'd be like for visitors that can't use the Ajax version), disable JavaScript in your Web browser.

Search This Book!

Newsletter #16 Sent

Newsletter #16 just went out today after a long delay. It's a bigger one but there's lots of good stuff in there. You can read it online at http://www.dmcinsights.com/newsletter.php if you're not subscribed to receive it via email.
(October 23, 2008)

Ruby: Visual QuickStart Guide Complete!

I'm very happy to announce that I've completed my Ruby: Visual QuickStart Guide. The book should be available in about three weeks or so (around early November 2008). The book turned out well, I think, and it should hopefully be a nice addition to the relatively small catalog of Ruby books that are available. In particular, I think that the Ruby on Rails chapter is really nice. I was able to develop a real-world example that demonstrates many aspects of the Rails framework. It also covers Rails 2.1, which has some significant changes from the 1.x version of Rails. More news about this book to come in future newsletters and on this site!
(October 7, 2008)

Newsletter #15 Released

Newsletter #15 went out in early August but I've been remiss in posting this update about it. It's relatively short, with most of the discussion on the business side of creating your own business. You can read it online at http://dmcinsights.com/newsletter.php. The next newsletter should go out in a few days.
(September 2, 2008)

more news...