High Performance JavaScript

Web software engineer Nicholas C. Zakas shows readers how to take textbook JavaScript examples and accelerate them via a variety of optimization tips and tricks. Discussions span from improving load and execution times to data access, DOM scripting, UI interactions, preprocessing, and caching. Profilers and debugging tools such as Firebug, Fidler, YSlow, and dynaTrace are also demonstrated. Performance gains of 30% or more are not uncommon for even the most basic of techniques demonstrated in High Performance JavaScript.

Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites

Authors Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher offer 50 big ideas on how to successfully scale web sites (visit the book's website for the full list — there's even a free Scalability Rules Android app available for download on the site). Topics in Scalability Rules include caching, cloning, database management, fault tolerance, replication, split data sets, statelessness, asynchronous communication, and message buses. The principles are accompanied by a variety of recommendations to help anyone looking for ways to scale and manage a high-demand web property.

The Software IP Detective's Handbook: Measurement, Comparison, and Infringement Detection

Bob Zeidman's The Software IP Detective's Handbook helps readers understand the complexities surrounding and detection mechanisms for software intellectual property, forensics, and a variety of other legal and technical considerations. Using various code analysis and tracking approaches, Zeidman shows you how to detect and protect your work from intellectual property theft.

The Rails 3 Way

The Rails 3 Way explores every notable aspect of RoR, and while it may take an occasional re-reading of a chapter, determined learners will gain substantial insight into the workings of the Rails framework. Starting with the Rails environments and configurations, the book covers all aspects of Rails development, from the Bundler, app settings, REST in Rails, migrations, associations, validations and advanced features like chaining scopes, callbacks, observers, and Single-Table Inheritance (STI). Session management, authentication and XML, and Rails caching and performance practices are also dissected.

The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with Rspec, Cucumber, and Friends

Rapidly becoming the de facto replacement for the standard Test::Unit built into Ruby on Rails, RSpec is taking the Ruby community by storm. Learning the nuances that this new testing syntax and framework have to offer takes some practice. The RSpec Book shows developers the various facets of what RSpec has to offer. The book also covers Cucumber, one of the most popular Behavior Driven Development (BDD) frameworks built on top of RSpec.