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You may have definite ideas about writing code when working alone, but team development requires that everyone use the same approach. With the JavaScript practices in this book - including code style, programming tips, and automation - you will learn how to write maintainable code that other team members can easily understand, adapt, and extend.
Author Nicholas Zakas assembled this collection of best practices as a front-end tech leader at Yahoo!, after completing his own journey from solo hacker to team player. He also includes rules recommended by other industry authorities. Use these tips and techniques to help your team set aside individual preferences and function at a higher level. Establish specific code conventions for your team Use tools such as JSLint and JSHint to keep your team on track Adopt style guidelines, such as basic formatting, to help your team produce uniform code Apply several programming practices to solve problems and improve code quality Create an automated JavaScript build system using a variety of utilities Integrate browser-based JavaScript testing with tools such as the YUI Test Selenium Driver
List of contents
Introduction
Preface
Style Guidelines
Chapter 1: Basic Formatting
Chapter 2: Comments
Chapter 3: Statements and Expressions
Chapter 4: Variables, Functions, and Operators
Programming Practices
Chapter 5: Loose Coupling of UI Layers
Chapter 6: Avoid Globals
Chapter 7: Event Handling
Chapter 8: Avoid Null Comparisons
Chapter 9: Separate Configuration Data from Code
Chapter 10: Throw Your Own Errors
Chapter 11: Don't Modify Objects You Don't Own
Chapter 12: Browser Detection
Automation
Chapter 13: File and Directory Structure
Chapter 14: Ant
Chapter 15: Validation
Chapter 16: Concatenation and Baking
Chapter 17: Minification and Compression
Chapter 18: Documentation
Chapter 19: Automated Testing
Chapter 20: Putting It Together
JavaScript Style Guide
JavaScript Tools
Colophon
About the author
Nicholas C. Zakas is a Web Software Engineer who specializes in user interface design and implementation for Web applications using JavaScript, Dynamic HTML, CSS, XML, and XSLT. He is currently principal front end engineer for the Yahoo! homepage and is a contributor to the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library, having written the Cookie Utility, Profiler, and YUI Test.Nicholas is the author of Professional JavaScript for Web Developers and a co-author on Professional Ajax, and has contributed to other books. He has also written several online articles for WebReference, Sitepoint, and the YUI Blog.Nicholas regularly gives talks about Web development, JavaScript, and best practices. He has given talks at companies such as Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Google, and NASA, and conferences such as the Ajax Experience, the Rich Web Experience, and Velocity.Through his writing and speaking, Nicholas seeks to teach others the valuable lessons he s learned while working on some of the most popular and demanding Web applications in the world.For more information on Nicholas: http://www.nczonline.net/about/
Summary
When you're writing code alone, you have a lot of leeway. But when you start writing code as part of a team, you need to think harder about the decisions you make. This book will help you do that.
