Introduction

Ruby for Web Designers is written specifically for designers and developers who know HTML and want to learn how to write code. Each chapter introduces a programming concept by building part of a web page in Ruby. If you have experience with HTML and CSS, the examples in this book will make sense.

About the Book

This book is not a tutorial for building web applications. There are already tons of those. If you want to build a blog as quickly as possible without gaining any general programming knowledge, stop reading now. This book is not for you. If you want to learn more about object-oriented programming, read on.

Rather than show you how to build an application, we’re going to take apart a web page and look at how its structure can be used to understand various object-oriented programming and software design concepts. Better yet, we’re going to do it using one of the most exciting languages around: Ruby.

Goals

The main goal of this book is to provide a basic understanding of object-oriented programming concepts that can be used as a springboard for continuing your journey into programming. If you gain an appreciation of how programming can be used to solve problems along the way, I have done my job.

Prerequisites

The only real prerequisites for this book are the desire to learn how to code and a familiarity with HTML and CSS.

Some sections of the book reference topics related to front-end web development including the markdown text format and CSS pre-processors. Such references are included to provide additional examples that some web designers will find familiar. Experience with these technologies is not necessary.

Required Technology

Reading this book should serve as a useful tool in itself. However, following along by writing Ruby code on your own computer is strongly recommended. All you need is a computer capable of running Ruby and a text editor.

Let’s get started. Your great aunt will be calling you to fix her printer in no time!