Beyond jQuery gives you the confidence to abandon your jQuery crutches and walk freely with the power of the "web API" and JavaScript! Learn about the most important concepts surrounding web development as the mystic powers of jQuery are explained, allowing you to forgo this seemingly quintessential library in your software projects. Beyond jQuery doesn't just throw code at you - everything is explained in detail from the perspective of a jQuery developer.
jQuery is often injected into web applications and libraries without any real thought, seemingly out of habit or fear. Many web developers don't seem to know exactly when they need to use jQuery, and when they don't - it has become a standard step for many when setting up a new library or web application. But relying solely on jQuery as your window to the web leaves large gaps in your knowledge. This in turn results in frustration when the abstraction that jQuery provides "leaks" and exposes you to the native aspects of the browser.
This book aims to educate you and help you solve common problems without depending on jQuery. It will give you more confidence to embrace the power of the web API and standardized JavaScript. Along the way, you'll discover why it is so important to gain a solid understanding of the underpinnings of the web. This book includes chapters on DOM manipulation, data storage and retrieval, styling and CSS, AJAX requests, events, asynchronous operations, and much more. Cutting edge web and JavaScript specifications, such as the Fetch API, Promises, WeakMap, and Async Functions, are also discussed.
Check out the comprehensive web application at github.com/Beyond-jQuery/exercise which was developed for "Beyond jQuery" readers that covers many of the concepts discussed in this book.
Ray Nicholus is a software developer for Widen, and has been heavily involved in web development for years. He has spent a great deal of time contributing to the open source software movement, focusing on JavaScript, front-end development, and developer education. His open source contributions range from large and popular open source projects, to small and focused libraries and educational materials. He is a believer in FOSS, and has even written about the topic, such as in his post on Medium.com that detailed his decision to release Fine Uploader, a popular commercially-licensed JavaScript library, to the FOSS community.
Since 2012 he has been the lead developer and product manager of the Fine Uploader organization, which is known as for its uniquely-featured JavaScript file upload library. His involvement outside of Fine Uploader has included creation of other popular libraries dealing with web components, video and image manipulation, and educational code collections, such as the notable fullstack-react project.
He has presented to students at the University of Wisconsin and DePaul about careers in software development, and many professional developers regarding the mysteries of CORS, automated testing, the File API, web components, agile development, accessibility, software architecture, and uploading files directly to S3 from the browser. He also organized and taught a JavaScript 101 class targeted at interested professionals.
Some of his other notable writing includes the precursor to this book, the "You Don't Need jQuery" series, and a number of articles that help developers integrate file uploading capabilities into their projects. He was featured in an article in Fortune Magazine based on his experiences with Google Glass in the workplace.
He lives in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, with his wife Kat, and his son Ray IV. They are known to spend long stretches of time in Thailand (especially in the Udon Thani area) where a portion of this book was written.
