Question

I see many tutorials initializing Backbone Models/Views after jQuery loaded. Why is that? Can’t you define it before?

For example link

jQuery ->

  class ListView extends Backbone.View

    el: $ 'body'

    initialize: ->
      _.bindAll @
      @counter = 0
      @render()

You could define the classes before document loads and initialize views/models after document loads?

---

Also I see Models/Views defined under window why is that?

window.TodoView = Backbone.View.extend
  ...

Answer 1

Why initialize a View after jQuery?

From the main Backbone page;

Backbone’s only hard dependency is Underscore.js ( > 1.3.1). For RESTful persistence, history support via Backbone.Router and DOM manipulation with Backbone.View, include json2.js, and either jQuery (> 1.4.2) or Zepto.

[Emphasis mine]

So that’s the dependency right there.

Models/Views defined under window?

It simplifies these little tutorial examples – everything has access to window, so it makes a useful (if messy) dumping ground for globals (ctors, variables, functions, etc).

IMO, for larger (non-demo) projects, you should be using something like RequireJS.