JavaScript Web Applications and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more


or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime Free Trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn More
Kindle Edition
 
   
Sell Back Your Copy
For a $5.31 Gift Card
Trade in
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
JavaScript Web Applications
 
 
Start reading JavaScript Web Applications on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

JavaScript Web Applications [Paperback]

Alex MacCaw (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)

List Price: $34.99
Price: $22.31 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $12.68 (36%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it delivered Monday, May 21? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition $15.39  
Paperback $22.31  

Book Description

August 30, 2011

Building rich JavaScript applications that bring a desktop experience to the Web requires moving state from the server to the client side—not a simple task. This hands-on book takes proficient JavaScript developers through all the steps necessary to create state-of-the-art applications, including structure, templating, frameworks, communicating with the server, and many other issues.

Throughout the book, you'll work with real-world example applications to help you grasp the concepts involved. Learn how to create JavaScript applications that offer a more responsive and improved experience.

  • Use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, and learn how to manage dependencies inside your application
  • Get an introduction to templating and data binding
  • Learn about loading remote data, Ajax, and cross-domain requests
  • Create realtime applications with WebSockets and Node.js
  • Accept dropped files and upload data with progress indicators
  • Use major frameworks and libraries, including jQuery, Spine, and Backbone
  • Write tests and use the console to debug your applications
  • Get deployment best practices, such as caching and minification

Frequently Bought Together

JavaScript Web Applications + JavaScript Patterns + JavaScript: The Good Parts
Price For All Three: $60.09

Show availability and shipping details

Buy the selected items together
  • In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • JavaScript Patterns $19.79

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • JavaScript: The Good Parts $17.99

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details



Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alex MacCaw is a Ruby/JavaScript developer & entrepreneur. He has written a JavaScript framework, Spine and developed major applications including Taskforce and Socialmod, as well as a host of open source work. He speaks at Ruby/Rails conferences in NYC, SF and Berlin. In addition to programming he is currently traveling round the world with a Nikon D90 and surfboard.


Product Details

  • Paperback: 282 pages
  • Publisher: O'Reilly Media (August 30, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 144930351X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1449303518
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
JavaScript reloaded September 11, 2011
Format:Paperback
Being a Java Swing developer for many years, I was never a fan of JavaScript. There were no mature tools and frameworks a few years ago. Straight DOM programming was just error-prone and difficult to debug. Over the last few years, JavaScript has come back with a big bang, thanks to a lot of companies, among them, Google. This book is for people, like me, who gave up on JavaScript years ago because of a poor model but need to know new frameworks that help in writing concise, readable code, and also help design scalable and robust architecture, not to mention, using JavaScript with a large team that could be geographically spread out.

Frankly, this book won't teach you the basics of JavaScript. There are plenty of other books for that and the author mentions this up front. However, in my opinionion, the author does a great job of teaching how to use the simplified and concise form of JavaScript, sticking to OO way of doing it. He starts with MVC (and who doesn't love MVC!), events, models, data, controller, state, view, and templating. The examples are mostly in JQuery which is also my framework of choice for JavaScript development.

No real-time discussion of JavaScript is complete without the mention of WebSockets, Node.js, and Socket.IO. The author does a great job of explaining this in chapter 8. He also provides an example of how to make your applications look faster (perceived speed) as compared to actual speed. The later chapters focus on testing and debugging, deploying, and an overview of the Spine, Backbone, and JavaScriptMVC libraries. Appendix at the end of the book provide a JQuery primer and a reference to CSS extensions and CSS3.

I cannot say that after reading this book, I have fallen in love with JavaScript since I am a big fan of Adobe Flex. However, I have many JavaScript projects under my belt and this book is a valuable resource for me to ensure that my apps scale well and that my offshore resources use the sandbox model to avoid tight coupling and ensure reusability.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
44 of 59 people found the following review helpful
Word of Caution August 31, 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Alex (the author) wrote Spine and is an accomplished JavaScript expert. This book is for his peers, not for web developers looking for design patterns to help tame the client-side tangle. If this desciption is already beginning to sound familiar, focus your efforts on consuming a library like Spine or KnockoutJS and save your hard earned dollars for books that provide applied guidance.

In the preface, Alex indicates that the key prequisite for getting benefit from this book is modest JavaScript experience up to and including JQuery. I've been using JQuery for years and have an intermediate understanding of core JavaScript. I am not a JavaScript expert, I'm a JavaScript application developer. If your experience is similar to mine, you may want to go elsewhere for advancing your skills. I respectfully submit that you must be a JavaScript expert to benefit from this book.

On the other hand, if you are a JavaScript expert and you would like to design and build your own MVC JavaScript library, this book is for you.

IMHO, this book is for 1 in 100 developers - the elite who work for Yahoo or similar software vendor.

I'm humbled by programmers like Alex and truly appreciate their efforts. Sincere apologies and best wishes to Mr. MacCaw.
Was this review helpful to you?
15 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The world is moving away from server-side templating and there are all kinds of new gizmos out there that shove the application logic to the client. This book gives you a pretty good idea of what libraries and frameworks are available to help you make the switch as well as what their strengths and weaknesses are. Several of the projects covered are unfortunately quite terrible, and I got the impression that they were included only so that the author could avoid accusations of bias toward his own Spine.js.

You do need to know JavaScript and not just jQuery party tricks you copy and paste off of stackoverflow, but I wouldn't say that its audience is limited to elite programmers who work at Yahoo. Actually, I wouldn't say that any elite programmers work at Yahoo anymore, period.
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent Primer for the Budding JavaScript Architect
I began developing in JavaScript just over a year ago. The company I'm working for had announced a brand new product that was to be web-based, and with not a single web developer... Read more
Published 1 day ago by Cody Sand
Fantastic Intermediate JavaScript book!
This is not a book for fresh, new beginning coders. That said, this is the perfect book for anyone who has experience coding and you want to get into JS, or anyone who has been in... Read more
Published 2 days ago by Haelix
Worth its weight in Gold
This book is a an absolute must read if your serious about Javascript ( and you should be). Its targeted towards developers with an understanding of the basics of Javascript... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Sid
Excellet book
If you are looking for a way to properly structure JS-code in your project this is the book to get. I spent quite some time reviewing JS-frameworks like Spine, Knockout, Ember,... Read more
Published 14 days ago by eirikhm
Provides the fundamentals for JavaScript MVC frameworks
JavaScript Web Applications by Alex MacCaw illustrates the building blocks for a JavaScript MVC framework. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mark Lai
Perfect intro to Javascript web apps
After only three weeks into owning the book, this is already among the most dog-eared books in my collection. Read more
Published 2 months ago by GradualStudent
Javascript Web Applications
This book has a fast pace, no thoroughly introduction of MVC, I think this is justified. MVC has been explained a lot of times the last decade. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Jeroen Oliemans
Good but un-necessarily hard going
Great idea for a book and much of the content is first class. Make sure you've read JavaScript the Good Parts and/or JavaScript Patterns and have learned the basics of JQuery... Read more
Published 7 months ago by C. Jack
Just the book I needed
JavaScript Web Applications is not a book for beginners. In fact, you need to have been doing a fair share of JavaScript development to benefit from it. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Gabriel Svennerberg
Valuable beyond just MVC as a resource for intermediate-level JS
I have been using Backbone.js, in CoffeeScript, in my professional work, and I love it. The Spine framework for JavaScript MVC apps caught my eye shortly after I started using... Read more
Published 7 months ago by C. Smith
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums



So You'd Like to...

Create a guide


Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject