Knockout-ES5 is a plugin for Knockout that uses JavaScript getters and setters to hide observables behind object properties, allowing your application code to use standard syntax to work with them. Basically, it gets rid of the observable parentheses:

Take a look at the following code:

var latestOrder = this.orders()[this.orders().length - 1];
latestOrder.isShipped(true);

The preceding code becomes this:

var latestOrder = this.orders[this.orders.length - 1];
latestOrder.isShipped = true;

If you remember the Durandal observable plugin, it's very similar; they even came out around the same time. The biggest difference between the two is that Durandal's observable plugin performs deep object conversion, and Knockout ES5 performs shallow conversion.

To convert a viewmodel's properties to observables, call ko.track:

function Person(init) {
   var self = this,
      data = init || {};

   self.name = data.name || '';
   self.age = data.age || '';
self.alive = data.alive !== undefined ? data...