Learning Node.js, Second Edition

2. A Closer Look at JavaScript

Chances are, if you are reading this book, you have worked with JavaScript in the past. Perhaps you have worked on or written a web application that uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and you have written some code to make the client more dynamic and interactive, either directly by manipulating the browser Document Object Model (DOM) or by using a framework such as jQuery or Prototype to hide some of the messier details for you. You might have even found working with JavaScript a reasonably frustrating experience and spent a lot of time fighting the different browsers’ incompatibilities, and it is also quite possible that you have never really studied the JavaScript language apart from the most basic of language features, ...