Sencha Notes

A nice little post about memory management in JavaScript, especially in less-ideal environments like Internet Explorer. Also a great example of some of the automatic optimization you get from using a JavaScript framework like Ext JS.

Mike Loukides, VP of Content Strategy for O’Reilly Media:

Web servers, rich web client libraries, HTML5, databases, even JavaScript-based languages: I see JavaScript everywhere. If you have avoided JavaScript, this is the year to learn it. There’s no excuse — and if you don’t, you risk being left behind.

A new piece from InfoWorld about the resurgence in popularity for JavaScript on the server, with new technologies like Node.js, Jaxer, EJScript, RingoJS, and AppengineJS.

Today, we’re overwhelmingly, insanely, ridiculously excited to introduce Sencha Touch, the first HTML5 framework for mobile devices. We think it’s the first cross-platform framework that builds web apps that make sense for mobile devices. It comes with a comprehensive UI widget library, complete touch event management with CSS transitions and an extensive data package.

Ed Spencer, lead Ext JS architect, tackles the nuances and quirks of JavaScript with remarkable aplomb in this challenging quiz designed by Nicholas Zakas:

Quizzes like this are great for getting your teeth into some of the guts of JavaScript, but don’t mistake them for a good way to write code. The point is to demonstrate how quirky JS code can be unless you write it in a sensible way.