Resources to Get You Up to Speed in Ember.js You've probably noticed a lot of chatter lately about the Ember.js framework and rightfully so. It aims to make it substantially easier to build single-page web apps by abstracting a lot of the complexities for writing scalable and maintainable MVC-based code. And developers are jumping on-board in droves. Over the last year, the project and the framework have evolved quite a bit and while it's just now reaching a very stable point in its life, the frequent changes to the API over the last year has left quite a bit of outdated documentation. The net effect is that if you pick the wrong learning resource, you could end up with a bad experience because the tutorial doesn't match the current state of the framework. This happened to me as I was ramping up and I want to ease your ramp up time by listing out some great resources for learning Ember. The Resources Nettuts' Ember Series Nettuts' Free "Let’s Learn Ember" Course Emberjs.com Ember Discussion Forum EmberWatch Ember 101 Video Series
Building Apps With the Yeoman Workflow Trick question. It's not a thing. It's this guy: Basically, he wears a top hat, lives in your computer, and waits for you to tell him what kind of application you wish to create. As an example, scaffolding a web application would look something like this: The first thing that comes to mind is OMG so dreamy. All we did was tell him what we wanted and he replied with specific questions to give us even more control. Let's go back a step, though. He's a person with feelings and opinions, but he's very easy to work with. Let's take a second to break apart what that yo webapp command, from the previous screenshot really did. This is an OS X, Linux, and Windows friendly system-wide command that scours your hard drive for any installed "generators," then gives them control based on the next argument: This is actually a separate plug-in, or "generator," called generator-webapp. Something important to take away from this is, it's the generator-webapp module that prompts us with questions. Did it?
Required JavaScript Reading I'm asked regularly about books and online resources to get up to speed on JavaScript. Seems like everyone wants to get in on the JS action and with good reason; it's a great language to know if you're interested in exciting career opportunities. It's also pretty fun to play with. With JavaScript's increased popularity, the number of books, blogs and tutorials about the language have grown exponentially and while I can't possibly know all of them, I've found some gems which I really like and would like to share those with you. Books Note that I'm only listing books that I've read and can recommend. Professional JavaScript for Web Developers by Nicholas Zakas This continues to be my most recommended book. It's a complete reference written in a very accessible way that guides you from the basics to advanced JavaScript features. JavaScript Patterns by Stoyan Stefanov Stoyan is one of the best JavaScript developers in the world, having worked on large-scale sites at Yahoo! Freebies Blogs DailyJS
Toward Modern Web Apps with ECMAScript 6 ECMAScript, the official name for the language we all know as JavaScript, has enjoyed tremendous success over the last couple of years. With convergent standard support, performance boosts from modern JavaScript engines, as well as its foray into the server-side stack, ECMAScript has gained significant traction and redefined the scope of HTML5 applications. The final requirement for world domination is the modernization of its syntax and run-time, which is coming in ECMAScript 6 and is the subject of this post. To understand the language progress within ECMAScript 6, first we need to understand how it is developed. The official ECMAScript specification, also known as ECMA-262, is defined by a standard body called Ecma International. The TC39 group within ECMA is responsible for formalizing the language specification (TC stands for Technical Committee). The ECMAScript 6 specification is still in the draft stage. “I Can See Clearly Now” The use of the second argument, y, can be confusing.
TodoMVC Important Considerations When Building Single Page Web Apps Single page web applications - or SPAs, as they are commonly referred to - are quickly becoming the de facto standard for web app development. The fact that a major part of the app runs inside a single web page makes it very interesting and appealing, and the accelerated growth of browser capabilities pushes us closer to the day, when all apps run entirely in the browser. Technically, most web pages already are SPAs; it's the complexity of a page that differentiates a web page from a web app. In my opinion, a page becomes an app when you incorporate workflows, CRUD operations, and state management around certain tasks. You're working with a SPA when each of these tasks take place on the same page (using AJAX for client/server communication, of course). Let's start with this common understanding, and dive into some of the more important things that should be considered when building SPAs. I will expand on each of the points above in the following sections. Picking an Application Framework
JavaScript’s Strict Mode and Why You Should Use It | Colin J. Ihrig's Blog Starting with ECMAScript 5, developers are able to place their code into a more constrained form of execution known as strict mode. Strict mode improves JavaScript code by enforcing better programming practices and eliminating some of the language’s insecure and ill-advised features. Strict mode is enabled by adding the following directive to your code: "use strict"; The “use strict”; directive can be used in two ways. The second way to enable strict mode is at the function level. function foo() { "use strict"; // this function is executed in strict mode } function bar() { // this function is executed in non-strict mode } One of the nice things about strict mode is its backward compatibility. JavaScript has an interesting way of handling variable declarations. function foo() { var x; var z; x = 1; y = 2; z = x + y; } Notice that only the variables ‘x’ and ‘z’ are declared using the var keyword. window.y = 2; ReferenceError: y is not defined function foo() { "use strict"; return this; }