Hands-On JavaScript High Performance

An example-driven guide covering modern web app development techniques and emerging technologies such as WebAssembly, Service Workers, and Svelte.js to build faster, secure, and scalable apps

Key Features

• Discover effective techniques for accessing DOM, minimizing painting, and using a V8 engine to optimize JavaScript
• Understand what makes the web tick and create apps that look and feel like native desktop applications
• Explore modern JavaScript frameworks like Svelte.js for building next-gen web apps

Book Description

High-performance web development is all about cutting through the complexities in different layers of a web app and building services and APIs that improve the speed and performance of your apps on the browser. With emerging web technologies, building scalable websites and sustainable web apps is smoother than ever.

This book starts by taking you through the web frontend, popular web development practices, and the latest version of ES and JavaScript. You'll work with Node.js and learn how to build web apps without a framework. The book consists of three hands-on examples that help you understand JavaScript applications at both the server-side and the client-side using Node.js and Svelte.js. Each chapter covers modern techniques such as DOM manipulation and V8 engine optimization to strengthen your understanding of the web. Finally, you'll delve into advanced topics such as CI/CD and how you can harness their capabilities to speed up your web development dramatically.

By the end of this web development book, you'll have understood how the JavaScript landscape has evolved, not just for the frontend but also for the backend, and be ready to use new tools and techniques to solve common web problems.

What you will learn

• Explore Vanilla JavaScript for optimizing the DOM, classes, and modules, and querying with jQuery
• Understand immutable and mutable code and develop faster web apps
• Delve into Svelte.js and use it to build a complete real-time Todo app
• Build apps to work offline by caching calls using service workers
• Write C++ native code and call the WebAssembly module with JavaScript to run it on a browser
• Implement CircleCI for continuous integration in deploying your web apps

Who this book is for

This JavaScript book is for web developers, C/C++ programmers, and anyone who wants to build robust web applications using advanced web technologies. This book assumes a good grasp of Vanilla JavaScript and an understanding of web development tools, such as Chrome Developer tools or Mozilla's developer tools.

Table of Contents

1. Tools for High Performance on the Web
2. Immutability versus Mutability - The Balance between Safety and Speed
3. Vanilla Land - Looking at the Modern Web
4. Practical Example - A Look at Svelte and Being Vanilla
5. Switching Contexts - No DOM, Different Vanilla
6. Message Passing - Learning about the Different Types
7. Streams - Understanding Streams and Non-Blocking I/O
8. Data Formats - Looking at Different Data Types Other Than JSON
9. Practical Example - Building a Static Server
10. Workers - Learning about Dedicated and Shared Workers
11. Service Workers - Caching and Making Things Faster
12. Building and Deploying a Full Web Application
13. WebAssembly - A Brief Look into Native Code on the Web

Justin Scherer has been professionally developing JavaScript applications for over 10 years. On top of this, he has worked in a variety of fields ranging from embedded systems to high-performance cluster applications. Justin has led development teams that utilize JavaScript on the web and on the server. He currently works for a large financial institution where he is leading the charge on developing highly performant front-end and middleware using JavaScript.

On his off time, he has a handful of hobbies: playing the piano, going to concerts, repairing watches, reading, and spending time with his wife. His mind is constantly wandering to new areas where technology, especially web technology could prove useful.