Prototype is a JavaScript framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications. It offers a familiar class-style OO framework, extensive Ajax support, higher-order programming constructs, and easy DOM manipulation.

Prototype currently targets the following platforms:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows, version 6.0 and higher
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and higher
• Apple Safari 2.0.4 and higher
• Opera 9.25 and higher
• Chrome 1.0 and higher

To use Prototype in your application, download the latest release from the Prototype web site (http://prototypejs.org/download) and copy dist/prototype.js to a suitable location. Then include it in your HTML like so:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/path/to/prototype.js"></script>

prototype.js is a composite file generated from many source files in the src/ directory. To build Prototype, you'll need:

• a copy of the Prototype source tree, either from a distribution tarball or from the Git repository (see below)
• Ruby 1.8.2 or higher (http://www.ruby-lang.org/)
• Rake--Ruby Make (http://rake.rubyforge.org/)
• RDoc, if your Ruby distribution does not include it

From the root Prototype directory:

• rake dist will preprocess the Prototype source using Sprockets and generate the composite dist/prototype.js
• rake package will create a distribution tarball in the pkg/ directory

Check out the Prototype source with

$ git clone git://github.com/sstephenson/prototype.git
$ cd prototype
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update vendor/sprockets vendor/pdoc vendor/unittest_js

Find out how to contribute: http://prototypejs.org/contribute.

Please see the online Prototype API: http://api.prototypejs.org.