Types of JavaScript in WordPress

The WordPress of today includes many JavaScript methods and frameworks, each with a specific role in the codebase. Watch Jason Coleman’s talk on the variety of JavaScript in WordPress, presented at WordCamp Lancaster 2019.

Want a more detailed guide?

Jason Coleman, CEO and Lead Developer of Paid Memberships Pro recently presented an interesting talk at WordCamp Lancaster. The talk was about the are various types of JavaScript frameworks that are commonly found in WordPress. How to identify these frameworks and when to use them. The link to the detailed companion article of this talk is located at the end of this blog post.

JavaScript in WordPress – A brief look at what’s in the article.

Learn JavaScript, deeply – Matt Mullenweg

I think Matt meant for PHP developers to learn JavaScript and for us to learn vanilla JavaScript in particular so we could program with it regardless of framework. Learning JavaScript deeply was important because, over the next few years, framework development continued quickly. Every year a different library, framework, or flavor of JS would become popular.
Vanilla JavaScript developed quickly as well with the base language itself gaining new features. Different browsers adopted the new features at different rates, requiring polyfill solutions, requiring compilers and package managers. I honestly don’t know how new developers pick this stuff up. The JavaScript landscape seems very confusing right now. Maybe it’s more confusing for folks like me who have been using JavaScript since 1995.

“A Wild JavaScript Appears: Understanding The Many Ways JS is Used with WordPress” is a companion article to this talk. The article outlines the types of JavaScript covered in this talk and provides a link to code examples referenced. The article will help guide you through 10 or so examples of JavaScript that you will see when working with WordPress.