Closure: The Definitive Guide
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Customer Review
Great technical book on a must-have toolkit
I read Closure: The Definitive Guide as part of O'Reilly's rough cuts program, and I can honestly say that the book is one of the best technical books I've read in quite some time. It's clear that the author sought to leave no stone unturned in writing this book; he succeeded brilliantly. His writing style is concise but not at all confusing, leading to a great book that lends itself just as well to sit-down reading as it does a reference guide.This book is definitely targeted towards developers, not managers. You should have at least some experience with JavaScript and the DOM before reading this. The author thankfully doesn't rehash the basics of such material before digging into Closure, but he also doesn't make the assumption that you need to have written a book on JavaScript in order to understand how to use everything. After you read the introduction chapter, you can safely skip some parts and come back to them later as you begin to understand Closure's design...
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The why, the how, and practical examples
Great introduction to Closure: explains the core concepts behind the why and the how of Closure without getting bogged down in the API details. Unlike many other technical books of the kind, this one can actually be read from start to finish and every chapter is well worth it. You'll learn the design principles and motivations behind the Closure compiler, the many ways you can lean on the compiler to help you manage your Javascript codebase, and also take a look under the hood to learn how to extend it and customize it for your own project.Of course, Closure is more than just the compiler, so you'll learn how to use Soy / Closure Templates, as well as many other supporting tools. At this time, the only large omission is Closure Stylesheets - likely released after the publication. If you're curious about Closure, or joining a project, which is using it currently, then this is your shortest path from zero to mastery.
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Product Description
If you're ready to use Closure to build rich web applications with JavaScript, this hands-on guide has precisely what you need to learn this suite of tools in depth. Closure makes it easy for experienced JavaScript developers to write and maintain large and complex codebases -- as Google has demonstrated by using Closure with Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps.
Author and Closure contributor Michael Bolin has included numerous code examples and best practices, as well as valuable information not available publicly until now. You'll learn all about Closure's Library, Compiler, Templates, testing framework, and Inspector -- including how to minify JavaScript code with the Compiler, and why the combination of the Compiler and the Library is what sets Closure apart from other JavaScript toolkits.
- Learn how the Compiler significantly reduces the amount of JavaScript users have to download when visiting your site
- Discover several ways to use the Compiler as part of your build process
- Learn about type expressions, primitives, and common utilities
- Understand how Closure emulates classes and class-based inheritance
- Use Closure Templates on the server and the client from either JavaScript or Java
- Test and debug your JavaScript code, even when it's compiled
Any other closure books?
This book is a good reference and description of what the closure library is about. I think it fails as a guide to putting it all together into an application though. I was dissapointed that the chapter on user interface components really only partially covered buttons and a combobox in 16 pages while there's a whole 49 page chapter on the editor which I don't really care about. It is a good book though and explains a lot about how the compiler works and how to avoid pitfalls. The plovr tool the author created is awesome and makes using Closure much, much easier, especially on Windows. I would have given this book 5 stars if it either included a longer chapter on ui components or had an example that showed how to bring it all together.
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