In this chapter, we will take a look at web application development from the frontend perspective, specifically with a Single Page Application (SPA), also referred to as thick client apps. With SPA, a large chunk of the presentation layer is off-loaded to the browser, and the browser is responsible for rendering pages, handling navigation, and making data calls to an API.
In this chapter, we will cover:
What exactly a single page application is
Why use a frontend framework such as Backbone.js, Ember.js, or Angular.js
Popular frontend development tools such as Grunt, Gulp, Browserify, SAAS, and Handlebars
Test-driven development on the frontend