Javascript

My Top 6 JavaScript Book Picks!

Published Aug 11, 2022

Updated Feb 13, 2023

4 min read

This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may be relevant but please refer to the relevant official documentation or available resources for the latest information.

There is a lot of great content out there to help you understand JavaScript better. But sometimes it is hard to know which resources to look into and invest your time in.

In this article, I will list six of my favorite JavaScript books that have been staples in the community for many years. Some of these books are great for beginners while other books are more geared towards the experienced JavaScript developer.

You Don't Know JS Yet
JavaScript: The Good Parts
JavaScript and jQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Master the World's Most-Used Programming Language 7th Edition
Eloquent JavaScript
Learning JavaScript Design Patterns

You Don't Know JS Yet

Kyle Simpson is an experienced educator and software engineer who does a great job of diving into the intricate details of JavaScript. This is an ongoing series of books that covers JavaScript fundamentals, scope, closures, objects, classes, and more. The first book, You Don't Know JS Yet: Get Started, discusses what JavaScript is and covers important fundamentals. It also provides an overview on what to expect in the later books of the series.

The second book, You Don't Know JS Yet: Scope & Closures, dives deep into the different types of scope, closures and the module pattern. Kyle does a great job of removing the mystery behind how scope and closures really work in JavaScript.

These first two books are available for purchase at many popular online retailers and book stores. You can also read them for free on Kyle's GitHub repository. You can also see the progress for earlier drafts for the later books on Objects, class, types and more.

This book series is appropriate for all levels. Even if you are an experienced JavaScript developer, you can still learn about the intricate details of this language. You might also clear up any confusion on misconceptions for certain topics.

JavaScript: The Good Parts

In this book, Doug Crockford focuses on the "good" or elegant aspects of JavaScript. Doug goes in depth on JavaScript syntax, objects, functions, inheritance and more. The focus of this book is to only look at the "good" parts as defined by Doug Crockford and "unlearn" the bad parts of JavaScript. While others might disagree with what is considered "good" or "bad" in JavaScript, this is still a good book to read for all levels.

JavaScript: The Good Parts is available at any major online retailer or book store.

JavaScript and jQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development

If you are just starting out learning JavaScript, then I highly recommend this book by John Duckett. The mixtures of rich illustrations and text makes it easy to follow. All of the core JavaScript fundamentals are covered and hundreds of code examples are provided throughout. I really like John's use of visual infographics and diagrams to help introduce complex concepts. Even though this book was published before ES6, I still think this is valuable resources for beginners learning JavaScript fundamentals.

JavaScript and jQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development is available at any major online retailer or book store.

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Master the World's Most-Used Programming Language 7th Edition

This definitive guide has been a staple in the JavaScript community and is written by prolific author and programmer David Flanagan. This 2020 version covers core JavaScript fundamentals, classes, modules, iterators, web API's, generators, Promises, async/await, and more. There is also a section for Node and popular tools and language extensions for JavaScript developers. This guide is great for those looking to hone their JavaScript skills and have a deeper understanding of the language.

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Master the World's Most-Used Programming Language 7th Edition is available at any major online retailer or book store.

Eloquent JavaScript

Eloquent JavaScript is an in depth guide into the language, and Node.JS. Marijn Haverbeke covers core concepts including values, types, high order functions, asynchronous JavaScript, the Document Object Model, the Canvas API and more. There are also fun projects to build along the way including a platformer game, Pixel Art Editor and Skill sharing website.

This book is great if you have some familiarity with the language already and want a deeper understanding. It is also 100% free on https://eloquentjavascript.net/.

Learning JavaScript Design Patterns

If you are already familiar with JavaScript and want to learn more about design patterns, I suggest looking into this book. Addy Osmani divides the book into three parts: Design patterns, Rendering patterns, and Performance patterns. Some of the patterns covered include the module pattern, Hooks pattern, Prototype pattern, and more. There are a lot of rich code examples and sandboxes allowing users to play around with the code.

You can access the entire book for free on https://www.patterns.dev/posts/classic-design-patterns/.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed that list of JavaScript books worth your time. There is always something to learn with JavaScript, and I hope it will help you grown in your career.

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

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About the author(s)

Jessica Wilkins
Jessica Wilkins is a classical musician turned Software Engineer. Prior to joining the tech industry, she spent her time running her own sheet music company (JDW Sheet Music) as well as performing and teaching in Los Angeles, CA. She enjoys working with React and TypeScript. She is also a prolific technical writer for freeCodeCamp.
@codergirl1991 @jdwilkin4

The HTML Dialog Element: Enhancing Accessibility and Ease of Use

The HTML Dialog Element: Enhancing Accessibility and Ease of Use Dialogs are a common component added to applications, whether on the web or in native applications. Traditionally there has not been a standard way of implementing these on the web, resulting in many ad-hoc implementations that don’t act consistently across different web applications. Often, commonly expected features are missing from dialogs due to the complexity of implementing them. However, web browsers now offer a standard dialog element. Why use the dialog element? The native dialog element streamlines the implementation of dialogs, modals, and other kinds of non-modal dialogs. It does this by implementing many of the features needed by dialogs for you that are already baked into the browser. This is helpful as it reduces the burden on the developer when making their applications accessible by ensuring that user expectations concerning interaction are met, and it can also potentially simplify the implementation of dialogs in general. Basic usage Adding a dialog using the new tag can be achieved with just a few lines of code. ` However, adding the dialog alone won’t do anything to the page. It will show up only once you call the .showModal() method against it. ` Then if you want to close it you can call the .close() method on the dialog, or press the escape key to close it, just like most other modals work. Also, note how a backdrop appears that darkens the rest of the page and prevents you from interacting with it. Neat! Accessibility and focus management Correctly handling focus is important when making your web applications accessible to all users. Typically you have to move the current focus to the active dialog when showing them, but with the dialog element that’s done for you. By default, the focus will be set on the first focusable element in the dialog. You can optionally change which element receives focus first by setting the autofocus attribute on the element you want the focus to start on, as seen in the previous example where that attribute was added to the close element. Using the .showModal() method to open the dialog also implicitly adds the dialog ARIA role to the dialog element. This helps screen readers understand that a modal has appeared and the screen so it can act accordingly. Adding forms to dialogs Forms can also be added to dialogs, and there’s even a special method value for them. If you add a element with the method set to dialog then the form will have some different behaviors that differ from the standard get and post form methods. First off, no external HTTP request will be made with this new method. What will happen instead is that when the form gets submitted, the returnValue property on the form element will be set to the value of the submit button in the form. So given this example form: ` The form element with the example-form id will have its returnValue set to Submit. In addition to that, the dialog will close immediately after the submit event is done being handled, though not before automatic form validation is done. If this fails then the invalid event will be emitted. You may have already noticed one caveat to all of this. You might not want the form to close automatically when the submit handler is done running. If you perform an asynchronous request with an API or server you may want to wait for a response and show any errors that occur before dismissing the dialog. In this case, you can call event.preventDefault() in the submit event listener like so: ` Once your desired response comes back from the server, you can close it manually by using the .close() method on the dialog. Enhancing the backdrop The backdrop behind the dialog is a mostly translucent gray background by default. However, that backdrop is fully customizable using the ::backdrop pseudo-element. With it, you can set a background-color to any value you want, including gradients, images, etc. You may also want to make clicking the backdrop dismiss the modal, as this is a commonly implemented feature of them. By default, the <dialog> element doesn’t do this for us. There are a couple of changes that we can make to the dialog to get this working. First, an event listener is needed so that we know when the user clicks away from the dialog. ` Alone this event listener looks strange. It appears to dismiss the dialog whenever the dialog is clicked, not the backdrop. That’s the opposite of what we want to do. Unfortunately, you cannot listen for a click event on the backdrop as it is considered to be part of the dialog itself. Adding this event listener by itself will effectively make clicking anywhere on the page dismiss the dialog. To correct for this we need to wrap the contents of the dialog content with another element that will effectively mask the dialog and receive the click instead. A simple element can do! ` Even this isn’t perfect though as the contents of the div may have elements with margins in them that will push the div down, resulting in clicks close to the edges of the dialog to dismiss it. This can be resolved by adding a couple of styles the the wrapping div that will make the margin stay contained within the wrapper element. The dialog element itself also has some default padding that will exacerbate this issue. ` The wrapping div can be made into an inline-block element to contain the margin, and by moving the padding from the parent dialog to the wrapper, clicks made in the padded portions of the dialog will now interact with the wrapper element instead ensuring it won’t be dismissed. Conclusion Using the dialog element offers significant advantages for creating dialogs and modals by simplifying implementation with reasonable default behavior, enhancing accessibility for users that need assistive technologies such as screen readers by using automatic ARIA role assignment, tailored support for form elements, and flexible styling options....

Oct 25, 2024

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The Journey To Making A New Framework: TanStack Start with Tanner Linsley

Danny Thompson, Director of Technology at This Dot Labs, talks with Tanner Linsley, Creator of TanStack, about his latest project, TanStack Start. They discuss the challenges of existing frameworks like Next.js and Remix, the development of TanStack Router, and the future of React Server Components. Tanner also explains how caching strategies and fine-grained invalidation can transform the user experience. Chapters - - Introduction & Tanner’s Background (00:00) - Going Full-Time on TanStack (01:00) - The Birth of TanStack Router (02:21) - Why Build Another Framework? (04:00) - React Server Components: Potential & Limitations (07:05) - Fine-Grained Cache Invalidation & UX (09:02) - Parallel Data Fetching in Routing (13:39) - TanStack Start: Alpha & Future Plans (16:41) - Where to Learn More About TanStack (18:48) Find Tanner Linsley on Social Media Twitter: https://x.com/tannerlinsley Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tannerlinsley/ Github: https://github.com/tannerlinsley TanStack: https://tanstack.com/ Sponsored by Wix Studio...

Oct 9, 2024

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Introducing the New Serverless, GraphQL, Apollo Server, and Contentful Starter kit

Introducing the new Serverless, GraphQL, Apollo Server, and Contentful Starter kit The team at This Dot Labs has released a brand new starter kit which includes the Serverless Framework, GraphQL, Apollo Server and Contentful configured and ready to go. This article will walk through how to set up the new kit, the key technologies used, and reasons why you would consider using this kit. Table of Contents - How to get started setting up the kit - Generate the project - Setup Contentful access - Setting up Docker - Starting the local server - How to Create the Technology Model in Contentful - How to seed the database with demo data - How to work with the migration scripts - Technologies included in this starter kit - Why use GraphQL? - Why use Contentful? - Why use Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)? - Why use Apollo Server? - Why use the Serverless Framework? - Why use Redis? - Why use the Jest testing framework? - Project structure - How to deploy your application - What can this starter kit be used for? - Conclusion How to get started setting up the kit Generate the project In the command line, you will need to start the starter.dev CLI by running the npx @this-dot/create-starter command. You can then select the Serverless Framework, Apollo Server, and Contentful CMS kit and name your new project. Then you will need to cd into your new project directory and install the dependencies using the tool of your choice (npm, yarn, or pnpm). Next, you will need to Run cp .env.example .env to copy the contents of the .env.example file into the .env file. Setup Contentful access You will first need to create an account on Contentful, if you don't have one already. Once you are logged in, you will need to create a new space. From there, go to Settings -> API keys and click on the Content Management Tokens tab. Next, click on the Generate personal token button and give your token a name. Copy your new Personal Access Token, and add it to the CONTENTFUL_CONTENT_MANAGEMENT_API_TOKEN variable. Then, go to Settings -> General settings to get the CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID. The last step is to add those CONTENTFUL_CONTENT_MANAGEMENT_API_TOKEN and CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID values to your .env file. Setting up Docker You will first need to install Docker Desktop if you don't have it installed already. Once installed, you can start up the Docker container with the npm run infrastructure:up command. Starting the local server While the Docker container is running, open up a new tab in the terminal and run npm run dev to start the development server. Open your browser to http://localhost:3000/dev/graphql to open up Apollo server. How to Create the Technology Model in Contentful To get started with the example model, you will first need to create the model in Contentful. 1. Log into your Contentful account 2. Click on the Content Model tab 3. Click on the Design your Content Modal button if this is your first modal 4. Create a new model called Technology 5. Add three new text fields called displayName, description and url 6. Save your new model How to seed the database with demo data This starter kit comes with a seeding script that pre-populates data for the Technology Content type. In the command line, run npm run db:seed which will add three new data entries into Contentful. If you want to see the results from seeding the database, you can execute a small GraphQL query using Apollo server. First, make sure Docker, and the local server(npm run dev) are running, and then navigate to http://localhost:3000/dev/graphql. Add the following query: ` When you run the query, you should see the following output. ` How to work with the migration scripts Migrations are a way to make changes to your content models and entries. This starter kit comes with a couple of migration scripts that you can study and run to make changes to the demo Technology model. These migration scripts are located in the scripts/migration directory. To get started, you will need to first install the contentful-cli. ` You can then login to Contentful using the contentful-cli. ` You will then need to choose the Contentful space where the Technology model is located. ` If you want to modify the existing demo content type, you can run the second migration script from the starter kit. ` If you want to build out more content models using the CLI, you can study the example code in the /scripts/migrations/01-create-technology-contentType.js file. From there, you can create a new migration file, and run the above contentful space migration command. If you want to learn more about migration in Contentful, then please check out the documentation. Technologies included in this starter kit Why use GraphQL? GraphQL is a query language for your API and it makes it easy to query all of the data you need in a single request. This starter kit uses GraphQL to query the data from our Contentful space. Why use Contentful? Contentful is a headless CMS that makes it easy to create and manage structured data. We have integrated Contentful into this starter kit to make it easy for you to create new entries in the database. Why use Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)? Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a queuing service that allows you to decouple your components and process and store messages in a scalable way. In this starter kit, an SQS message is sent by the APIGatewayProxyHandler using the sendMessage function, which is then stored in a queue called DemoJobQueue. The SQS handler sqs-handler polls this queue, and processes any message received. ` Why use Apollo Server? Apollo Server is a production-ready GraphQL server that works with any GraphQL client, and data source. When you run npm run dev and open the browser to http://localhost:3000/dev/graphql, you will be able to start querying your Contentful data in no time. Why use the Serverless Framework? The Serverless Framework is used to help auto-scale your application by using AWS Lambda functions. In the starter kit, you will find a serverless.yml file, which acts as a configuration for the CLI and allows you to deploy your code to your chosen provider. This starter kit also includes the following plugins: - serverless-offline - allows us to deploy our application locally to speed up development cycles. - serverless-plugin-typescript - allows the use of TypeScript with zero-config. - serverless-dotenv-plugin - preloads function environment variables into the Serverless Framework. Why use Redis? Redis is an open-source in-memory data store that stores data in the server memory. This starter kit uses Redis to cache the data to reduce the API response times and rate limiting. When you make a new request, those new requests will be retrieved from the Redis cache. Why use the Jest testing framework? Jest is a popular testing framework that works well for creating unit tests. You can see some example test files under the src/schema/technology directory. You can use the npm run test command to run all of the tests. Project structure Inside the src directory, you will find the following structure: ` This given structure makes it easy to find all of the code and tests related to that specific component. This structure also follows the single responsibility principle which means that each file has a single purpose. How to deploy your application The Serverless Framework needs access to your cloud provider account so that it can create and manage resources on your behalf. You can follow the guide to get started. Steps to get started: 1. Sign up for an AWS account 2. Create an IAM User and Access Key 3. Export your AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID & AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY credentials. ` 4. Deploy your application on AWS Lambda: ` 5. To deploy a single function, run: ` To stop your Serverless application, run: ` For more information on Serverless deployment, check out this article. What can this starter kit be used for? This starter kit is very versatile, and can be used with a front-end application for a variety of situations. Here are some examples: - personal developer blog - small e-commerce application Conclusion In this article, we looked at how we can get started using the Serverless, GraphQL, Apollo Server, and Contentful Starter kit. We also looked at the different technologies used in the kit, and why they were chosen. Lastly, we looked at how to deploy our application using AWS. I hope you enjoy working with our new starter kit!...

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Learning Paths for Next.JS Developers with Ankita Kulkarni

In this video, Rob Ocel and co-hosts Tracy Lee, Adam Rackis, and Danny Thompson talk with tech educator Ankita Kulkarni about her journey from engineering leader to full-time educator. Ankita shares insights on teaching Next.js, bridging practical knowledge gaps, and helping developers tackle real-world challenges. They discuss Next.js as a React-based framework, its benefits, and the challenges it presents for beginners. Chapters - Introduction to the Podcast and Guests 00:01 - Meet Ankita Kulkarni, Tech Educator 00:26 - Ankita's Transition to Full-Time Education 01:41 - Teaching Practical Knowledge in Next.js 03:19 - Effective Methods for Teaching Next.js 05:27 - Challenges of Being a Full-Time Educator 07:48 - Balancing Broad and Specific Examples 09:54 - Embracing Mistakes as a Teaching Tool 12:13 - Pair Programming and Mentorship 14:00 - Discussion on Next.js and Framework Adoption 16:48 - Advantages and Challenges of Next.js 18:12 - Choosing the Right Framework for Your Needs 20:35 - Impact of Next.js in React Documentation 22:26 - Learning Paths for New Developers 23:24 - The Rise of Full-Stack Web Development 25:09 - Benefits of Frameworks Abstracting Complexity 26:27 - OpenNext and Deployment Flexibility 28:06 - Ankita's Excitement for New Next.js Features 30:35 - The Future of Next.js Without Vercel 32:16 - Final Thoughts and Where to Find Everyone Online 34:21 Follow Ankita Kulkarni on Social Media Twitter: https://x.com/kulkarniankita9 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kulkarniankita Sponsored by This Dot: thisdot.co...

Nov 12, 2024

2 mins

NextJSJavaScript

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My Top 6 JavaScript Book Picks!

Table of contents

You Don't Know JS Yet

JavaScript: The Good Parts

JavaScript and jQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Master the World's Most-Used Programming Language 7th Edition

Eloquent JavaScript

Learning JavaScript Design Patterns

Conclusion

Jessica Wilkins

You might also like

The HTML Dialog Element: Enhancing Accessibility and Ease of Use

The Journey To Making A New Framework: TanStack Start with Tanner Linsley

Introducing the New Serverless, GraphQL, Apollo Server, and Contentful Starter kit

Learning Paths for Next.JS Developers with Ankita Kulkarni

Let's innovate together!

You might also like

The HTML Dialog Element: Enhancing Accessibility and Ease of Use

The Journey To Making A New Framework: TanStack Start with Tanner Linsley

Introducing the New Serverless, GraphQL, Apollo Server, and Contentful Starter kit

Learning Paths for Next.JS Developers with Ankita Kulkarni