Appendix. JavaScript that you need to know but might not!
This appendix covers
- Which JavaScript concepts are important for effectively using jQuery
- JavaScript Object basics
- How functions are first-class objects
- Determining (and controlling) what this means
- What’s a closure?
One of the great benefits that jQuery brings to our web applications is the ability to implement a great deal of scripting-enabled behavior without having to write a whole lot of script ourselves. jQuery handles the nuts-and-bolts details so that we can concentrate on the job of making our applications do what they need to do!
For the first few chapters in this book, we only needed rudimentary JavaScript skills to code and understand the examples. In the chapters on advanced topics such as event handling, animations, and Ajax, we must understand a handful of fundamental JavaScript concepts to make effective use of the jQuery library. You may find that a lot of things that you, perhaps, took for granted in JavaScript (or took on blind faith) will start to make more sense.
We’re not going to go into an exhaustive study of all JavaScript concepts here—that’s not the purpose of this book. The purpose of this book is to get us up and running with effective jQuery in the shortest time possible. To that end, this appendix will concentrate on the fundamental concepts that we need to make the most effective use of jQuery in our web applications.