Name: Responsible JavaScript
Author: Jeremy Wagner
ISBN: 978-1-952616-11-2

foreword by Estelle Weyl

Learn how to use JavaScript responsibly and create resilient experiences that are more accessible and inclusive.

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JavaScript plays a powerful role in creating rich interactive experiences. But its power comes at a cost: longer load times, sluggish pages, and inaccessible content. The more we rely on client-side rendering, the more likely we are to exclude visitors with older devices, slower connections, or those who have disabled JavaScript altogether.

If we want people to fully experience the sites we have worked so hard to craft, then we must be judicious in our use of JavaScript. In thoughtful detail, Jeremy Wagner shows how JavaScript can be used to progressively enhance server-side functionality, while improving speed and access for more visitors. By centering user needs every step of the way—from toolchains to metrics to testing—we can all contribute to a more inclusive, accessible, and resilient web.

This book explores:

How framework choices directly impact user experience outcomes
Techniques for loading JavaScript and effectively navigating modern toolchains
How to mitigate performance disruption from third-party JavaScript
Using Service Worker technology to create more resilient experiences

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Jeremy’s clear and straight-to-the-point style shines throughout this book, explaining dense subjects approachably. Anyone wanting to write JavaScript well should read this book.

Olu Niyi-Awosusi

JavaScript developer at Oddbird

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Jeremy breaks down the technology that powers the modern web, and offers reliable techniques for creating robust, resilient user-facing experiences—experience that could be the difference between someone getting what they need, or being left out in the cold.

Eric Bailey

Designer and A11Y Project maintainer

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Responsible JavaScript is a refreshingly pragmatic and motivational read, offering a blunt but deft reminder that our work comes with heavy responsibility. Do yourself—and, more importantly, your users—a favor: read this book and help us all start building better software today.

Suz Hinton

Senior software engineer for developer tools at Stripe

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About the Author

Jeremy Wagner is more of a writer than a web developer, but he does both anyway. On top of making websites for longer than he thought probable, he has written for A List Apart, CSS-Tricks, and Smashing Magazine. Jeremy will someday relocate to the remote wilderness where sand has not yet been taught to think. Until then, he continues to reside in Minnesota’s Twin Cities with his wife and stepdaughters, bemoaning the existence of strip malls.