The Problem with Native JavaScript APIs

Nicholas C. Zakas

Jul 2012 · "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

3.7

156 reviews

Ebook

Pages

Eligible

About this ebook

Many features inspired by popular JavaScript libraries are now available as native JavaScript APIs in today’s powerful browsers. While that may seem convenient given all of the JavaScript you need to write, relying on these APIs will only make code maintenance more difficult in the long run.

In this report, Nicholas Zakas—consultant and former front-end tech leader at Yahoo!—provides a case study to show how different browsers can develop native APIs for the same specification and still end up with different interpretations. You’ll discover how these APIs can tie your code to specific browsers, forcing you to upgrade application logic whenever new browsers and new browser versions are released.

Ratings and reviews

3.7

156 reviews

HEDMON Software & Media

September 26, 2015

Buen artículo, bien argumentado sobre las ventajas, o incluso, necesidad de utiliar librerías y no directamente la API de Javascript

Lance Jordan

February 2, 2016

A five minute read that makes a clear case which is implicit by the title.

Joseph Kinder

November 26, 2023

Great start to learning. it was very helpful.

About the author

Nicholas C. Zakas is a front-end consultant, author, and speaker. He worked at Yahoo! for almost five years, where he was front-end tech lead for the Yahoo! homepage and a contributor to the YUI library. He is the author of Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (Wrox, 2012), Professional Ajax (Wrox, 2007), and High Performance JavaScript(O’Reilly, 2010). Nicholas is a strong advocate for development best practices including progressive enhancement, accessibility, performance, scalability, and maintainability. He blogs regularly at http://www.nczonline.net/ and can be found on Twitter via @slicknet.

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