Douglas Crockford explains the new strict mode introduced in the 5th edition of ECMAScript. It is an opt-in mode that repairs or removes some of the language's most problematic features such as: function scoping, implied global variables and global leakage, read-only variable failures, octal defaults and function arguments.
Svend Tofte discussed currying JavaScript functions, which he describes as a way to partially evaluate functions. Its a function that returns another function. In an example, one function either adds together two numbers, or if only one parameter is sent, returns a function that can be called later to supply the second number.
Tim describes another two different approaches to using the Module Pattern (a way of creating Singletons). The first example takes advantage of the natural indentation to clearly see which methods are private and which are public. The second is a curried function, a function that returns another function.
Christian Heilmann offers another incremental improvement to the Module Pattern, and calls it the Revealing Module Pattern. This defines an anonymous object that contains a list of methods and properties that are publicly available. Christian notes that this method also allows you to set up a public property that's privately generated by a method. Christian's improvement makes it quickly clear which properties and methods are public.
As web pages become more and more like applications, code performance becomes more and more important. This article looks at a number of performance issues to avoid, in EcmaScript, DOM and AJAX requests. Covers eval, the with keyword, try/catch in performance-critical code, global variables, implicit object conversion, string concatenation, primitive operations over function calls, repainting and reflowing documents, modifying elements, using XPath.
First in a series of talks from Douglas Crockford about the JavaScript language. These talks cover the JavaScript language, from the history, the language, advanced features, platforms, standards and programming style. Talks about inheritance, using functions to build objects, closures, as well as the basic JavaScript syntax. Also covers code conventions. JavaScript is a language that requires discipline.