JavaScript: exploring new frontiers

While previous generations of programmers (e.g. lovers of FORTRAN and COBOL) have scoffed at JavaScript, now JavaScript is fully established as a technology of choice for front-end development.

ECMAScript standardization of advanced features enable the power of cloud applications similar to (and in some case exceeding) that of desktop.

Here are some of the highlights of this progress:

While many of the best features of ES2015/ES2016+ can not yet be used in production directly, we strive to structure our projects in ways that take advantage of gradual standards adoption across frontend platforms.

Site load optimization is an increasing concern as frontend developers desire to bring more media heavy content runs counter to mobile device limitations and to search engine load time SEO penalties. Javascript-based DOM optimization based on device identification, timing and client interactions is a flexible and powerful solution.

While AJAX has been a great contribution to making the Internet more interactive in the last decade, websockets are emerging as an even greater way to bring interactivity, flexibility and fluidity to both fronend interfaces and backend processing.