MarionetteJS Screencasts And Videos
There’s been a lot of movement with MarionetteJS and screencasts in the last few months – enough that I decided to add a new “videos” section to the website this weekend. It’s a short list right now, but I expect it to be growing over time.
BackboneRails.com
Brian Mann has been hard at work over the last few months, producing a comprehensive set of screencasts that cover just about everything you need to know, to build large-scale Backbone applications on top of Ruby on Rails, using CoffeeScript.
I’ve been reviewing and providing feedback on these since he started, and I’m very excited about seeing this series finally released! This is by far the most complete resource on building Backbone and Marionette applications, at this point. I highly recommend checking out the free episodes and purchasing the screencast bundle to get all of the MarionetteJS awesomeness.
The current releases include 5 episodes with 3 of them being free. There’s a 6th episode on the way, and a new series building a complete application from the ground up is already being produced (I’ve seen some of the pre-release material, and it’s awesome).
Even if you’re not using Ruby on Rails, these screencasts are well worth the money. They show and tell when, where and why you want to use the various parts of Marionette, not just how to use them.
Tekpub
Rob Conery released the final episode of his “Playing With Backbone” screencast series. Episode #10 takes the existing “Congo” app that Rob built throughout the series, and migrates it from his custom Backbone views over to MarionetteJS, with my help. Better still, Rob has made this episode free for everyone to view!
You have three options for viewing it:
I’m particularly excited about this content as it shows one of the most powerful features of Marionette: the ability to bring it in to your existing Backbone app, one piece at a time. This has been a goal of Marionette since the beginning, keeping the core Backbone philosophy of providing many building blocks that you can use as you see fit – and I think we pulled it off quite successfully.
Tuts+
Tuts+ Premium has a good series on “Advanced Backbone Patterns And Practices“, with a free episode that covers an introduction to Marionette. This episode focuses on bring the most value to your Backbone app, quickly, by looking at the various views that Marionette provides, along with Regions to display the views in the DOM.
The majority of this series is paid, but there are a few free ones including the MarionetteJS episode. It’s a great episode but it’s only 10 minutes. So you can expect it to give you an idea of what Marionette can do for your app, without getting too in-depth.
Atlanta JavaScript Meetup
Brian Mann (the same from BackboneRails.com) did a dual-header JavaScript meetup with Pamela Fox back in October of 2012. Pamela talks a about the lessons learned in using Backbone on projects with her team, and Brian then introduces Marionette and shows a little bit about what it can do for your Backbone apps.
The material in this presentation formed the basis for much of the BackboneRails series that Brian is producing. The entire recording is well worth watching, even if you have to split it up over a few viewing sessions. Pamela’s info on Backbone’s pitfalls and patterns are necessary lessons to learn when working with Backbone, and Brian goes on to show how many of these problem areas are handled for you with Marionette.
My Own Screencasts
My WatchMeCode screencasts have been lacking updates recently, but they are not dead. I’ve been rather busy with my new job, but I am getting back in to the screencasting business. In fact, I’m working on a couple of screencast series for Kendo UI now. I’ll be mixing my own WatchMeCode episodes in to the schedule as well. At some point in the future, this will include MarionetteJS screencast, but I’m not sure when or exactly what topics will be covered. The community is doing an amazing job of producing MarionetteJS material, though, so be sure to pay attention as we’re moving fast!