Learning JavaScript... Should I skip straight to the good stuff (the frameworks)?

Posted by Grogs on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Grogs
Published on 2009-07-08T01:21:37Z Indexed on 2010/05/08 0:58 UTC
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JavaScript

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jQuery

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gwt

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frameworks

I learnt HTML/CSS a good few years back, then PHP a little later. I've recently become interesting in web development again, just started playing with frameworks like Django and RoR. I'm curious as to how much time/effort I should spend learning straight JS before looking at frameworks. I've been reading through a let of articles called Mastering AJAX by Brett McLaughlin which seems quite good, but I'm seeing a lot of stuff (such as cross browser compatibility - even for things like XMLHttpRequest) coming up which look like they would be non-issues if using a framework.

So, should I keep reading through these articles and try to build stuff using basic JS, or should I just start looking into jQuery and the like?

Also, I've been watching a few videos regarding GWT from Google I/O. I've been learning Java over the last year, built a few medium sized apps in it. I'm wondering if GWT is something that's worth going straight to, along with gQuery?

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