Over at Ajaxian they have a new podcast which is an interview with Thomas Fuchs, the creator of the Script.aculo.us library . Before hearing the interview I didn't know that Script.aculo.us is based on the Prototype library included with Rails. Having said that though I want to make it clear that this JavaScript library does have to run with Rails and can be included in any web application.

Thomas Fuchs describes the Script.aculo.us within the first few minutes of the interview. He calls it a JavaScript library that can be used for HTML effects and AJAX. That is a pretty down to earth description that I can easily understand and it is much appreciated by me.

One drawback I've found with Script.aculo.us is the lack of documentation. Once again this is talked about in the interview. On positive note the book Agile Development with Ruby on Rails has a chapter on AJAX that lays out a number of things included in the Prototype library. In my opinion that reference will take people a long way along in getting going with this stuff. I fully realize not everyone is using Rails and once again Script.aculo.us does not need to run with it. I only mention the book here because I believe it is a good reference to get started with this stuff, but it probably doesn't make much sense to but an entire book for a single chapter reference.