These are some of my (Ryan Bates) favorite gems to use for various tasks:
- JavaScript: jQuery with jquery-rails
- Pagination: Kaminari
- Testing: RSpec, Cucumber and Capybara
- Factories: Factory Girl
- Authentication: Nifty Generators and Omniauth
- Authorization: CanCan
- File Attachments: Carrierwave
- HTML/XML Parsing: Nokogiri