Thomas Fuchs
Hi, I'm Thomas Fuchs. I'm the author of Zepto.js, of script.aculo.us, and I'm a Ruby on Rails core alumnus. With Amy Hoy I'm building cheerful software, like Noko Time Tracking and Every Time Zone and write books like Retinafy.me.
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JavaScript Rocks! Performance ebook is final

September 24th, 2009

Our book is ready for your download pleasure! And it’s packed full of info on all the tricks we use to make our apps and sites fast and snappy.

Co-written by Amy Hoy and me, it’s over 300 pages and is actually three books and our DOM Monster, a bookmarklet-based cross-browser performance evaluation tool.

Part 1: Dude, Where’s My Performance?

Get started with knowing what this is all about, why it is important and how to measure performance and master all the tools.

Part 2: Loadtime, or, The Land of Unicorn Tears

Loadtime is a sad time, a time of of enormous, slow-loading assets; of maxed-out request queues; of bloated, waddling DOMs. Of limp white screens. Most of the world’s worst web performance woes? They live and breed in Loadtime.

Part 3: Runtime, Cuz Tuning Loops Is Hardcore

See how to write slicker, sexier, faster JavaScript from the get-go. Micro-optimize without being premature. Learn the kinds of ridiculous optimization tactics that Gentoo tuner boys can only dream of. And yes, we’re teaching you how to unroll loops.

We’re totally framework-agnostic, so everything’s applicable to any and all JavaScript code out there! Whether you use Prototype, or jQuery or dojo, you’ll find that our tuning tricks can help speed things up!

And… introducing…. the… DOM Monster! See for yourself!

We’ve an introductory price for the first 500 copies we sell of $39, after that it will go up to $49!

P.S. After the great success of our JavaScript Master Class in Washington, DC, we’ve decided to do a Master Class in Europe, too. We’ll announce details soon!

Want JavaScript performance? You got it!

January 21st, 2009

We’ve just released the beta of the JavaScript performance book we’ve been writing on for a while (we is my wife Amy Hoy and me!).

JavaScript rocks!

Without further ado:

  • More than a hundred pages on JavaScript loading performance and optimization techniques
  • The DOM Monster, a bookmarklet-based DOM analyzer, that tells you about performance problems of your page (from the perspective of the DOM, not the the network)
  • Free updates (it’s still beta, but pretty much complete anyway!)

You can also grab a table of contents at the site for the ebook.

I really hope you enjoy the ebook, and that it contains tons of stuff that you can use. Again, no matter what kind of JavaScript framework you use, the techniques described are universally usable.

Grab your copy today!

JavaScript Rocks! Performance eBook

January 17th, 2009

Coming soon from yours truly and Amy Hoy!

As a special thank you for my regular readers (you!), sign up for the announcement email and get $5 off the regular price when the beta book is out!

The book will cover all sorts of topics around JavaScript performance, from perceptive loading performance all the way down to selecting between if and case statements.

It’s library/framework agnostic, so whether you use Prototype, jQuery, Mootools or any other libs, you’ll find that you’ll be able to provide faster-loading, better performing JavaScript to your users.

I’d like the web to be a better (and faster-loading!) place—and this ebook will help you get your sites literally up to speed with all the knowledge I’ve accumulated in years and years of web development and JavaScript programming.

So head over to http://javascriptrocks.com, sign up for the discount and you’ll soon will hold our beta release of the ebook in your (virtual) hands!

Free “Jumpstart Credit Card Processing” guide ebook

January 15th, 2009

The cheat sheet we extracted from freckle time tracking for Ruby Advent is now growing into a real ebook, so we’ve put it up on it’s own domain. Head over to http://jumpstartcc.com/ to grab your copy of our free guide.

Free Jumpstart Credit Card processing ebook

P.S. We’re also planning some updates to it, so if you like to stay informed about new releases of it, sign up for our email announce list.

Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us book hot off the presses

July 21st, 2008

Practical Prototype and script.aculo.usPrototype Core team member Andrew Dupont’s new book Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us is now available, and it’s a super no-nonsense guide to getting up to speed with the libraries, fast.

Andrew, being a UI developer by heart, doesn’t mess around and gives you hands-on examples for just about everything you can do with the “fraternal twins” Prototype and script.aculo.us.

You’ll learn how to really use all those fancy Prototype collection helpers (like each, detect, select, reject, partition, etc.), master the cool new custom events system, and seriously mess with the DOM; and how’ll see how Prototype can help you with everyday programming tasks with its extensions to functional programming and OOP. Plus of course how to make the most of Ajax and JSON. Last but not least, visual effects are explained, and also how they work by taking advantage of the DOM and how web browsers render websites.

The very interesting closing chapter shows you why things are as they are in Prototype, and will help you read the source code—and write JavaScript, Prototype-style.