Foreword

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee launched the world’s first website, which ran on a program he named the WorldWideWeb. Two years later, he would release the source code for the WorldWideWeb and the world itself would never be the same. You can still see that first web page at info.cern.ch.

Since 1991, the web has experienced unprecedented popularity. At 24 years old, it’s still the most widely used technology in the world. It runs on all operating systems, all hardware platforms, and nearly all mobile devices in some form or fashion. The program that makes this all possible is the almighty web browser.

Traditionally, web browsers were simply middlemen. They would fetch data from a server, display it, take data back to the server, and get more data to display. But today’s web browsers, while still true to the original principals of the web, are far more complex than anyone could ever have imagined back then.

The humble browser has graduated into a full-fledged runtime for applications of all sizes. These are applications that don’t have to be installed, can be accessed from anywhere, and run everywhere. This is the holy grail for developers. Being able to deploy one codebase that runs everywhere and is always up to date is an opportunity too good to pass up. No other technology can make this boast.

Riding on the success of the web platform is the ubiquity of JavaScript—a language created in 10 days that’s now the most used programming language in the world. Developers have embraced JavaScript, and that has opened up doors to new types of applications that we never would have dreamed possible in a web browser.

These new applications, often called single-page applications (SPAs), run almost entirely in the browser, and they introduce a whole new set of principles, patterns, and problems. The broad appeal of the web has resulted in a Cambrian explosion of Java-Script and CSS frameworks; so many that it is daunting at best to try to find the needle of success in the haystack of frameworks.

That, dear reader, is why this book is so important.

For the past four years, I’ve worked at Telerik as a developer advocate focusing on the Kendo UI JavaScript library. I’ve watched countless JavaScript frameworks come and go. The hype reaches critical mass, and then the next big thing shows up, and the developers who are actually building solutions on these fads are left to pick up the pieces. It often leaves me wondering when it will settle down and we can focus on the one “right way” to build this new generation of rich client applications.

The raw truth is that there is no “right way” to do anything. There is only the way that works for your project and your skill set. There is only the way that makes you most productive and, ultimately, most successful.

In order to find that way in the world of SPAs, it’s imperative to understand the fundamental principles behind the SPA concept itself. Learning a framework will not be sufficient and will ultimately leave you short and wanting more. A deep understanding of the core concepts on which a successful SPA rests will enable you to make the right decisions with confidence and to know how to build the last 20% when your JavaScript framework of choice takes you only 80% of the way there.

This book will be your guide. It’s for experts and novices alike. While reading it, I found myself learning basics that I had hastily glossed over, as well as getting new insight into terminology that I thought I had a good grasp of but only partially (and in some cases incorrectly) understood. The insight and explanations contained in these pages are not just academic but also practical and hands-on, showing you how to build an SPA and addressing real-world implementations head-on while discussing relevant SPA frameworks.

I’m generally skeptical of books that try to tackle a concept as big as that of SPAs, but this is one of the few reads that somehow manages to take a very complex topic and break it down into easily understandable and digestible pieces.

It is without hesitation that I provide my full recommendation for this book—each and every page.

BURKE HOLLAND

DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPER RELATIONS

TELERIK