News hit the papers that on February 12^th, Microsoft is force feeding all IE6 installs an upgrade to IE7!That’s one less browser we have to develop for. This is awesome news since I still have to test for bugs in IE6.

If you’re like me and refused to learn JavaScript for whatever reason, I think now’s the sweet spot to really dive in and learn this powerful language and harness the power of the DOM.

“Until now we have largely been able to get away with it. We have copied and pasted when we need a certain bit of functionality and most of us haven’t had to build anything too complex that required Javascript. However, I believe that time is over. If you don’t know Javascript inside out in 2008 then I think it will really start to damage your career.” - Paul Boag

Why it took me so long to learn JavaScript

Being a Web developer, I carry many hats when it comes to programming on the web. Throughout the years, I taught myself pretty much all modern programming and mark up languages except one - JavaScript.

I don’t know why that was. Well… actually I do. I had bad experience with JavaScript from the get go.

Ever since early 2005 when Adobe Imageready dominated the web with poorly implemented JavaScript rollovers and random IE pop up errors that would sometimes crash your browser, I just thought JavaScript plain ol’ sucked. Pretty much like how Mike feels about Flash, I felt the same way about JavaScript.

Say hello to unobtrusive JavaScript, separating out behavior from markup. Ha, old news right? Yeah, but not for all of us. I took me a few years to catch on to this as for a first bad experience will surely keep one away for a while. But I kept hearing this buzzword unobtrusive, and finally late last year I started checking it out. I came to learn that it was just the people who developed, or better yet, the software that spits out JavaScript that makes it so inaccessible.

Last year I bought two JavaScript books:

• JavaScript Bible 5^th Edition and, (seems to be a newer 2007 version but received some bad reviews)
• Dom Scripting

I needed a strong foundation on JavaScript and a layman’s introductory to this unobtrusive way of coding JavaScript and something else I could reference to during midnight coding runs. These two books proved to be amazing at helping me get started although I still do some Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V from time to time because I’m lazy :).

FIVE reasons Explained why you should learn JavaScript:

1. Unobtrusive JavaScript
   One of the main reasons I’m learner JavaScript now is because of unobtrusive JavaScript. Knowing the do’s and don’ts on how to craft proper JavaScript will save you and your code a lot of debugging and stress.
2. AJAX became a standard
   Let’s face it. This Web2.0 hype has raised the standards as far what users expect from a web application. You really can’t build an app and expect it to succeed if you don’t add some AJAX to spice it up. Users have grown accustom to not waiting for pages to load. AJAX is truly something you should consider adding under your belt.
3. Better control of Websites, Blogs, or Web Apps
   You can only go so far when it comes to using a server-side language to adding some behavior to your page. With JavaScript, you have better control of the page that you can control the page. Being able to do form validation before data hits the server is an added security bonus. Add some unobtrusive JavaScript to the mix and you’ll be a happy camper.
   
4. It gets even easier with frameworks
   Learned JavaScript? Great, now boost up your productivity adding awesome frameworks to your work flow. Popular frameworks like jQuery, MooTools, Prototype, and Script.aculo.us are a no brainer, all that’s left is choosing one that’s best for your needs.
5. Object-Oriented
   Learning the hard way, I found out that yes, JavaScript is in fact an OOP Language. What does that mean to you? Well, let’s just say that if JavaScript wasn’t OOP, neither of us would be able to do this: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, nuff said. Know that it’s also easier to update parts of a script instead of having to rewrite the whole thing.

Conclusion

I’m finally getting more into JavaScript lately, most particularly to add AJAX. Once I grasp JavaScript enough to make some interesting stuff, I’ll continue on to learn a framework or two. Expect some more post on JavaScript and a lot more practical articles that could apply to WordPress in the future.