I am having a hard time finding web designers (UI/UX/graphics types) who know how to work with Rails views. And there are plenty of times I would like to be working on back end functionality when instead I'm stuck fooling around with moving something on a web page 10 pixels to the left.
So I'm trying to make a useful tutorial to help non-programmer designers feel comfortable with the entire flow of working on the front end of a Rails application. Besides this sample app to work on, it will contain screencasts for the more interesting parts. Hopefully.
This version is Rails 2.3.x-based, because I have legacy apps to deal with :-) and suspect there's a market for people to work on others as well. Once this version is fleshed out, though, I'll start on a second version to use 3.1.x and introduce asset pipeline, etc.
-
what is Ruby on Rails and why is working with it different than creating static pages, or using PHP, or ...
-
setting up a local Rails environment
-
introduction to git, the most common version control system
-
checking an example application out of a git respository
-
exploring the standard Rails directories and files
-
introduction to "ERB", the language used in Rails view templates
-
preparing the application to run ; introduction to gems and bundler
-
running the application
-
make a change to a view
-
confirm successful
-
check change into repository
If you're interested in contributing, or knowing when the tutorial is ready to test drive, or anything else, you can contact me at hassan AT webtuitive DOT com .