@c  This document is part of the ease.js manual
@c  Copyright (c) 2011 Mike Gerwitz
@c    Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
@c    under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3
@c    or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
@c    with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
@c    Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU
@c    Free Documentation License''.

@node About
@unnumbered About ease.js

ease.js is a collection of @uref{http://commonjs.org, CommonJS} modules intended
to ``ease'' the transition into JavaScript from other Object-Oriented languages.
It provides an intuitive means of achieving classical inheritance and has
planned support for traits/mixins, function overloading and more.

Current support includes:
@itemize @bullet
@item Simple and intuitive class definitions
@item Classical inheritance
@item Abstract classes and methods
@item Interfaces
@item Visibility (public, protected and private members)
@end itemize

While the current focus of the project is Object-Oriented design, it is likely
that ease.js will expand to other paradigms in the future.

@section History
ease.js was initially developed for use at Mike's place of employment in order to
move the familiar concept of Object Oriented development over to JavaScript for
use in robust web applications. JavaScript lacks basic core principals of Object
Oriented development, the most major of which is proper encapsulation.

The library would be required to work both server and client-side, supporting
all major web browsers as far back as Internet Explorer 6. Since it would be
used in a production system and would be used to develop a core business
application, it must also work flawlessly. This meant heavy unit testing.

The solution was to develop a library that would first work server-side. The
software of choice for server-side JavaScript was @uref{http://nodejs.org,
Node.js}. Node uses the CommonJS format for modules. This provided an intuitive
means of modularizing the code without use of an Object Oriented development
style (the closest other option would be Prototypal). ease.js was first
developed to work on Node.js.

Moving the code over to the browser is not a difficult concept, since the entire
library relied only on standard JavaScript. A couple important factors had to be
taken into account, mainly that CommonJS modules don't simply ``work''
client-side without some type of wrapper, not all browsers support ECMAScript 5
and the assertion system used for tests is a Node.js module.

This involved writing a simple script to concatenate all the modules and
appropriately wrap them in closures, thereby solving the CommonJS issue. The
required assertions were ported over to the client. The only issue was then
ECMAScript 5 support, which with a little thought, the browser could gracefully
fall back on by sacrificing certain features but leaving the core functionality
relatively unscathed. This provides a proper cross-browser implementation and,
very importantly, allows the unit tests to be run both server and client side.
One can then be confident that ease.js will operate on both the server and a
wide range of web browsers without having to maintain separate tests for each.

Needless to say, the development was successful and the project has been used in
production long before v0.1.0-pre was even conceived. It was thought at the
beginning of the project that versions would be unnecessary, due to its relative
simplicity and fairly basic feature set. The project has since evolved past its
original specification and hopes to introduce a number of exciting features in
the future.

The project is owned and developed independently by Mike Gerwitz. There is no
ownership by his employer.