DEPLOYMENT

Perhaps the most important part of any JavaScript solution is the final deployment to the website or web application in production. You've done a lot of work before this point, architecting and optimizing a solution for general consumption. It's time to move out of the development environment and into the web, where real users can interact with it. Before you do so, however, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed.

Build Process

One of the most important things you can do to ready JavaScript code for deployment is to develop some type of build process around it. The typical pattern for developing software is write-compile-test, in that you write the code, compile it, and then run it to ensure that it works. Because JavaScript is not a compiled language, the pattern often becomes write-test, where the code you write is the same code you test in the browser. The problem with this approach is that it's not optimal; the code you write should not...