Developing Large Web Applications

Chapter 5. Large-Scale JavaScript

The behaviors supported by JavaScript in a web application form a distinct layer beyond the information architecture defined by HTML and the presentation defined by CSS. Although in many web applications it’s important to consider how the application would operate without the behavior layer (for reasons of accessibility, printing, and search engine optimization, for example), the widespread use of Ajax has made the behavior layer in many large web applications more important than ever. In many cases, the designs for large web applications have advanced to the point that user experience designers, product managers, and engineers will agree that certain parts of an application, or even the entire application, will only make sense with a fully functioning behavior layer. Think of Google Maps, in which tiles are requested from the server as you interact with the map. This application only makes sense with a strong layer dedicated to behavior using JavaScript.

JavaScript has been around for a long time, of course, but early web applications rarely made much use of its powerful object-oriented features. Most developers simply wrote functions to accomplish various tasks, paying little attention to JavaScript’s capabilities for developing systems of loosely coupled, highly encapsulated objects using prototype-based inheritance (see Chapter 2). A more advanced use of object-oriented JavaScript is an important aspect of achieving Tenet 5 from Chapter 1:

Tenet ...