Single Page Web Applications: JavaScript End-to-End (The Hard Stuff)




In the old days, when websites were steam powered and exploded regularly, the web was simple, but slow. As it evolved it became more powerful, but harder on servers and clients alike.

Today, we have the Single Page Application. Most web apps are now in the browsers themselves, and the web is becoming fluid, comfortable, and accessible from any device.

In this talk from HTML5 Dev Conf 3, Josh Powell and Mike Mikowski of snaplogic, teach you their SPA design approach, and then start exploring new techniques like structured JavaScript and responsive design. They also cover server-side JavaScript, NoSQL data stores, and new JavaScript frameworks.

Slides can be viewed here: http://html5devconf.com/archives/october2012/slides/Michael-S-Mikowski-Tuesday-2012-10-16-js4spa.pdf

** More videos on HTML5 development at http://marakana.com/s/

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36 responses to “Single Page Web Applications: JavaScript End-to-End (The Hard Stuff)”

  1. Dislike.
    This makes so many assumptions. Like for example that you're using a server technology and a SQL database. What about NoSQL? What about using a service?

    19:33 It also says that a Single Page Application is javascript on the front-end, on the back-end, and database. This slide should not exist. Please tell me how javascript is the database. Go head. And now that you did, tell me how you can have authentication and secure data in there too.

    20:34 You can have a ROR SPA. Those exist. And you don't actually spend any time transforming JSON to ActiveRecord and back. Theres no work in that. You have server logic there, and that is regardless of which stack you're using. That has to exist for your app to function how you like. Take a look at any ROR API and it will make sense.

    So. An SPA is Agnostic to the server technology. Thats why AngularJS and React are SPA libraries. MeteorJS is too, but its a Full-Stack framework that is SPA, which is what he is getting confused with.

    I also don't like this video because it has "The Hard Stuff" in the title. If its the hard stuff, don't start introducing what a SPA is from the complete beginning.

  2. Very useful tutorial about developing a single-page Web application that can be implemented with hundreds of content pages with all the functionality that an enterprise application needs to support thousands of users, 

  3. Excellent tutorial, finally someone who explains how hoisting works, the purpose of closers, and some clarity on scope.
    This video also genuinely illuminated to me why javascript is just such a catastrophically horrible language.  The syntax is pure and utter shit, just the ugliest fucking thing anyone is forced to lay their eyes upon.  But it is just as staggering how popular this miserably ugly language is, are people really that stupid and incompetent that they cant articulate why javascript should be used only when absolutely necessary? Rather than trying to turn it in to a front to back top to bottom full stack language?  Google must be fucking stupid to invest so much time, money and resources in to creating an interpreter for the back end to run javascript.
    It is just staggering.  But the tutorial is excellent.

  4. Disappointing that they glossed over the SPA stuff and spent so much time on general tutorial/practices stuff. IMHO it should have been the other way around, considering the title. But it wasn't bad as a tutorial.

  5. Because a lot of client-side developers neglect, or fail to understand some javascript fundamentals. If there was a video called "Understanding javascript global variables and function scope" you probably wouldn't have watched it. This is stuff you should understand even if you're using jQuery or another useful lib.

  6. totally agree, there arguments is just robish in general and most especially when josh said that it's easier to develop using javascript. The second thing is, I wouldnt be proud of the support for navigating back and forward, cuz using the mentioned solution you cannot add any page you like to the list of favorite pages.

  7. thats #1 reason everyone discounts CS. In theory it sounds messy, but in practice I have never found it to be a problem. Errors are never more than a line or 2 removed from the CS and its trivial to parse the compiled code bc it writes better js than any dev I know! All that said its really a null arg bc The Chrome DevTools support source mapping now. allowing to debug your original CS in the browser. The benefit is a simple abstraction to focus on biz logic not c-style 4loops and weird quirks.

  8. I'm confused as to why the one guy mentioned hating CoffeeScript in the beginning but then never clarified why — and they went on to talk about all the problems of JavaScript that could be easily solved by just using CoffeeScript. Good talk overall, though.

  9. Omg, I used to work for SnapLogic .. it's a small world. Nice prez. I'm currently digging in on Resig's Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja book but I'll try to have a look at your early access book … best of luck with it and nice work!

  10. I mean, the title is "Single Page Web Applications: JavaScript End-to-End (The Hard Stuff)", and you spend like half of the presentation talking about things like global variables, scope and execution context. I doubt that this is what people is looking for when watching this.

  11. In the second part you made only a very general introduction to Javascript, for more or less complex applications. It doesn't fit the title "Single page web applications". I expected more Ajax, serverside techniques, websockets / comet, etc. Patters and concrete examples.

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