Atlas: Making Client-Side JavaScript Easier

Summary

In this chapter, you began looking at the power of JavaScript in Atlas. You learned about the extensions to JavaScript implemented in the Atlas.js library that allow you to use true object orientation within your JavaScript, enabling such technologies such as inheritance, namespaces, and interfaces. Through hands-on coding, you saw how these features work and how you can use them to make JavaScript easier to code, debug, and maintain. Additionally, you looked at the JavaScript features that automatically encapsulate asynchronous web service calls from your browser application. You saw how to implement and consume a web service as well as how to wire up the asynchronous call to it. Comparing the complexity of this call to the Ajax code in Chapter 1, you can see it is accomplishing a more complex task (a SOAP call to a web service as opposed to a straight HTTP GET) with less code and in an easier-to-read and easier-to-maintain manner.

From here you can begin to see the value that Atlas brings to Ajax-style applications. In the following chapters, you will start looking into the libraries of controls that Atlas offers, including looking at the client-side controls in Chapters 4 and 5.