Preface

One of the hardest problems to solve when we build the user interface is to synchronize data that developers manage behind the scenes, in the code, and data that is shown to the user. The first step that developers made was to separate the presentation and the logic. That separation allowed developers to manage both sides better and separately. But communication between these two layers still became hard. That was because JavaScript was considered a non-important language and we used to use it just for validation. Then jQuery gave us a clue about how powerful this language could be. But still data was managed in the server and we just displayed static presentations. That makes the user experience poor and slow.

Over the last few years, a new kind of architectural pattern has emerged. It is called the MVVM pattern. Libraries and frameworks that use this kind of pattern make it easy for developers to synchronize views and data. One of these libraries is Knockout, and the framework that uses Knockout is named Durandal.

Knockout is a fast and cross-browser-compatible library that helps us to develop client-side applications with a better user experience.

Developers don't need to worry any more about data synchronization. Knockout binds our code to the HTML elements showing the state of our code to the user in real time.

This dynamic binding makes us forget about coding synchronization, and we can focus our effort on coding the important features of our application.

Nowadays, managing these kinds of frameworks is a must for front-end developers. In this book, you will learn the basics of Knockout and Durandal and we will go into the best design practices and patterns of JavaScript.

If you want to improve the user experience of your applications and create fully operative frontend applications, Knockout and Durandal should be your choice.