Preface

When I started writing Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja years ago, in early 2008, I saw a real need: there were no books providing in-depth coverage of the most important parts of the JavaScript language (functions, closures, and prototypes), nor were there any books that covered the writing of cross-browser code. Unfortunately, the situation has not improved much, which is surprising.

More and more development energy is being put into new technologies, such as the ones coming out of HTML5 or the new versions of ECMAScript. But there isn’t any point to diving into new technologies, or using the hottest libraries, if you don’t have a proper understanding of the fundamental characteristics of the JavaScript language. While the future for browser development is bright, the reality is that most development needs to make sure that code continues to work in the majority of browsers and for the majority of potential users.

Even though this book has been under development for a long time, thankfully it is not out of date. The book has been given a solid set of revisions by my coauthor, Bear Bibeault. He’s made sure that the material will continue to be relevant for a long time to come.