Front-End Book

Below I have listed a couple of JavaScript articles you should read to prepare for the awakening of JavaScript as the main web development tool. It doesnt matter if you consider yourself a .NET or Java-developer, if you do not learn JavaScript you will probably have a hard time finding a job within a couple of years if you would like to work with web development. And by the way: JavaScript-solutions today is not the same solutions you where scared with when you grew up.

Writing jQuery Plugins by jQuery Team

One of the strengths with the jQuery javascript library is the plugin framework that lets you easily create your own plugins. This article/HOWTO guides you in the art of writing jQuery Plugins

JavaScript Inheritance by John Resig

John Resig, creator of jQuery JavaScript Library has a nice article on how to simulate inheritance in JavaScript. This article is a good read for people who, by nature and religious reason, avoids JavaScript because the lack of inheritance and other must have OO-principles.

Event Driven JavaScript by Christian Heilmann

Christian Heilmann, Lead Developer at Yahoo!, has written a piece on JavaScript that dives into event driven javascript, custom events and planning your frontend application.

Simple Class Instantiation by John Resig

Another interesting article from John, focusing on Class Instantiation in JavaScript. Do not stop reading after the article, in the comments you find some interesting comments from a lot of people who are well known in the JavaScript-sphere, among them Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript.

JavaScript Closures by Richard Cornford

“A closure is formed by returning a function object that was created within an execution context of a function call from that function call and assigning a reference to that inner function to a property of another object.”

Closures are as cool as they are hard to get.

From Most Misunderstood to Worlds Most Popular Programming Language by Douglas Crockford

Douglas Crockford, architect at Yahoo! and introducer of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) as data interchange format between applications has a mixed emotion relationship to JavaScript, that makes his articles more interesting to read.

Conclusion

I believe that more than 50% of all web development will be made in JavaScript within 10 years. JavaScript is the language for Mashups and AJAX-solutions and we are not going to see fewer solutions based on that. Combine that with open API:s from data providers such as Google, Yahoo and Blogs.

JavaScript is here to stay, make sure you read these good and advanced articles from people who will build the foundation you will develop on tomorrow.