Irish Android

He has now moved on to other things, but these videos are still around. They are like reading a novel - long form is still best. No sound bites here. Each video is over an hour long and there are 8 of them. I am only on the third at the moment, but am getting a huge amount out of them. If you are like most js developers and me you will be bludgeoning your way through whatever tasks you need to complete without knowing the details. JQuery et al insulate us from having to know this stuff right? Afraid not. There is no substitute for knowing the javascript in detail. These videos manage to do that.

These  slides are from Paul Irish. I thought I knew quite a few front end tools (maybe too many), but this  uncovered a heap more. It took me about 2 hours to watch the associated video and take a brief look at each some of the technologies mentioned. The vid is just over 30 minutes long, so info rich.

More predeployment JS help here. This tool  http://jslint.com/  is a great help. It is very fussy - in the way Java is, not sloppy the way JS allows. I have not managed to iron out all of the issues it came up with, but knowing they are there is a big help and will make my next project that bit neater.

This is a great tool:  http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home Shrinks and optimises your JS before you drop it onto production. Used by JQuery to produce their minified versions, so it has to be good.