Pro Grunt.js gets you quickly up-to-speed with this popular JavaScript-based task runner. Author James Cryer takes you from initial installation all the way through to authoring successful plugins.

Beginning Amazon Web Services with Node.js teaches any novice Node.js developer to configure, deploy, and maintain scalable small to large scale Node.js applications in Amazon Web Services. Hosting a Node.js application in a production environment usually means turning to PaaS hosting, but this approach brings problems. Deploying Node.js directly to AWS solves the problems you encounter in these situations, enabling you to cut out the middle man. You will begin with a basic RESTful web service in Node.js, using the popular Express.js framework, pre-built and ready to run in your local environment. You will be introduced to the most powerful tools in AWS, and learn how to configure your project to take advantage of them. You will be guided through the steps of getting the various key components to work together on AWS. Through code samples using the AWS JavaScript SDK and tutorials in the AWS console, you will gain the knowledge to incorporate secure user authentication, server auto-scaling, a load balancer, CDN, customized caching behavior, and outage monitoring.

If you want to write beautiful, structured, and maintainable JavaScript code, this guide shows you how to apply both classical and modern design patterns to the language. The patterns in this book provide reusable code solutions to common problems in software design, and give you a shared vocabulary for describing solutions to others.

If you want to achieve JavaScript’s full potential, it is critical to understand its nature, history, and limitations. This book sets the stage by covering JavaScript from its very beginning to the present-day incarnations that include support for the DOM and Ajax. It also shows you how to extend this powerful language to meet specific needs and create seamless client-server communication without intermediaries such as Java or hidden frames.

Responding to reader feedback, the author has thoroughly revamped the book with more step-by-step coverage of JavaScript basics, an exclusive focus on Internet Explorer, and many complete sample scripts. Updated to cover JavaScript 1.5, the latest release of this popular Web scripting language. Using lots of examples, including a sample working Web site, the book shows how to create dynamic and interactive pages, build entire sites, and automate pages.

JavaScript is a scripting language that enables you to enhance static web applications by providing dynamic, personalized, and interactive content. This improves the experience of visitors to your site and makes it more likely that they will visit again. You must have seen the flashy drop-down menus, moving text, and changing content that are now widespread on web sites—they are enabled through JavaScript. Supported by all the major browsers, JavaScript is the language of choice on the Web. It can even be used outside web applications—to automate administrative tasks, for example.