I’ve been working with JavaScript quite a bit lately. It’s been part of my skill set for years, but largely for simple DOM manipulation, validation, alerts and the like. With the advent of AJAX, popular libraries that abstract cross-browser constraints, and widespread adoption of JSON as a payload format, JavaScript seems more than ever to be poised for prime time. Add to this the growing number of server-side implementations like Node.js, and JavaScript represents possibly the most important language in web development today.
So, I’ve been digging deeper into client-side application development with JavaScript, and learning a lot in the process of moving from server-side and classical OO development. Libraries such as jQuery, Prototype, and MooTools started to pique my interest a few years ago, and jQuery in particular has become part of my standard toolbox these days. Its clean, closure-based, highly extensible design has made it extremely popular and for good reason.
Recently, jQuery got a huge boost when Microsoft started supporting the library, both by bundling it with Visual Studio and now by contributing directly to the jQuery community with three official jQuery plugins: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/10/04/jquery-templates-data-link-and-globalization-accepted-as-official-jquery-plugins.aspx
Two of these plugins, Templates and DataLink, got me started on a proof of concept at work combining them with ASP.NET MVC 3 to serve JSON payloads to the client application. From there I started digging deeper into JavaScript itself, looking at some more advanced concepts including implementing some of the classic GoF patterns within the context of JavaScript.
In coming posts I’ll share some of what I’ve learned along the way, hoping to shed some light on the ubiquitous but largely underestimated language that is JavaScript.
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