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Closure: The Definitive Guide
 
 
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Closure: The Definitive Guide [Paperback]

Michael Bolin (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

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Book Description

September 24, 2010

If you're ready to use Closure to build rich web applications with JavaScript, this hands-on guide has precisely what you need to learn this suite of tools in depth. Closure makes it easy for experienced JavaScript developers to write and maintain large and complex codebases -- as Google has demonstrated by using Closure with Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps.

Author and Closure contributor Michael Bolin has included numerous code examples and best practices, as well as valuable information not available publicly until now. You'll learn all about Closure's Library, Compiler, Templates, testing framework, and Inspector -- including how to minify JavaScript code with the Compiler, and why the combination of the Compiler and the Library is what sets Closure apart from other JavaScript toolkits.

  • Learn how the Compiler significantly reduces the amount of JavaScript users have to download when visiting your site
  • Discover several ways to use the Compiler as part of your build process
  • Learn about type expressions, primitives, and common utilities
  • Understand how Closure emulates classes and class-based inheritance
  • Use Closure Templates on the server and the client from either JavaScript or Java
  • Test and debug your JavaScript code, even when it's compiled

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Bolin is a former Google engineer who spent his four years there working on Google Calendar, Google Tasks, and the Closure Compiler. As a frontend developer, he used the Closure Tools suite on a daily basis and made a number of contributions to it. His last project at Google was to open-source the Closure Compiler. He is a blogger, often writing about web development, and graduated with both Computer Science and Mathematics degrees from MIT.


Product Details

  • Paperback: 592 pages
  • Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (September 24, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1449381871
  • ISBN-13: 978-1449381875
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.1 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read Closure: The Definitive Guide as part of O'Reilly's rough cuts program, and I can honestly say that the book is one of the best technical books I've read in quite some time. It's clear that the author sought to leave no stone unturned in writing this book; he succeeded brilliantly. His writing style is concise but not at all confusing, leading to a great book that lends itself just as well to sit-down reading as it does a reference guide.

This book is definitely targeted towards developers, not managers. You should have at least some experience with JavaScript and the DOM before reading this. The author thankfully doesn't rehash the basics of such material before digging into Closure, but he also doesn't make the assumption that you need to have written a book on JavaScript in order to understand how to use everything. After you read the introduction chapter, you can safely skip some parts and come back to them later as you begin to understand Closure's design patterns. I thoroughly read most chapters and just skimmed others, which was great because it let me get familiar with the material without getting bogged down in all the details present in such an immense SDK.

Closure is most likely overkill if you're just building one-off websites, but if you want to build something more, do yourself a favor and buy this book and read it. Don't sell yourself short. Otherwise you'll be doomed to blindly throwing jQuery, MooTools, Prototype, or the like onto your canvas and hoping it'll work just as well for your large app -- it won't. Soon after you begin developing with Closure and reading this book, you'll experience the joy and relief that only a proper JavaScript TOOLKIT can provide.

Overall, this is a really great book that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to any front-end developer who is tasked with building a web application that they want to be fast, browser-agnostic, and bug free.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a good reference and description of what the closure library is about. I think it fails as a guide to putting it all together into an application though. I was dissapointed that the chapter on user interface components really only partially covered buttons and a combobox in 16 pages while there's a whole 49 page chapter on the editor which I don't really care about. It is a good book though and explains a lot about how the compiler works and how to avoid pitfalls. The plovr tool the author created is awesome and makes using Closure much, much easier, especially on Windows. I would have given this book 5 stars if it either included a longer chapter on ui components or had an example that showed how to bring it all together.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Great introduction to Closure: explains the core concepts behind the why and the how of Closure without getting bogged down in the API details. Unlike many other technical books of the kind, this one can actually be read from start to finish and every chapter is well worth it. You'll learn the design principles and motivations behind the Closure compiler, the many ways you can lean on the compiler to help you manage your Javascript codebase, and also take a look under the hood to learn how to extend it and customize it for your own project.

Of course, Closure is more than just the compiler, so you'll learn how to use Soy / Closure Templates, as well as many other supporting tools. At this time, the only large omission is Closure Stylesheets - likely released after the publication. If you're curious about Closure, or joining a project, which is using it currently, then this is your shortest path from zero to mastery.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Definitive Book
This is definitive. This book covers it all and covers it very well. I am excited to get throught the book and start using Closure on mopre projects. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Edgar martinez
Helpful - detailed
Helpful and detailed introduction to closure and java script. Good working examples and set up instructions. Excellent intro. Points out many important details. Worth re-reading.
Published 8 months ago by Eric
Great resource for the most powerful JS framework out there
This book has been an invaluable resource in developing and improving the frontend code for our (funded) startup. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Nicholas Baum
Worth reading
Good book, well-packed with information and examples. Complexity of the toolkit dawns on you when reading introduction but Michael does a good job explaining it bit by bit. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Oleksandr Tymoshenko
Sadly, unrelated to breaking up...
I thought I'd get some kind of relief from reading this. But no, it's about some computer thing. Sad. Guess I'll have to go back to stalking...
Published 16 months ago by D. Turner
Highly recommended guide to Closure
Google Closure is a set of libraries and tools for developing large Javascript applications with minimal errors. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Fawad Halim
THE CLOSURE!!!!!
Are you already familiar with the JavaScript language and tools? If you are, then this book is for you. Read more
Published 17 months ago by John R. Vacca
"Closure: The Definitive Guide" by Michael Bolin does a nice job
"Closure: The Definitive Guide" by Michael Bolin does a nice job on explaining a battle-tested, very complex tool that helps maintaining very complex JavaScript codebases... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Ricardo Bánffy
Just Great!
This book changed everything to me, related to JavaScript. Google Closure go beyond my expectation - ending with cross-browser problems and giving a great compression to . Read more
Published 18 months ago by T. W. Freres
good but not definitive
The coverage of the library part of Closure is not as definitive as one expects from books with that title. Read more
Published 19 months ago by rks
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