wp.awesome! WordPress JS helpers

It is pretty hard to miss the cool new Media Modal that came to WordPress core in 3.5. Backbone and Underscores are exciting additions that allow more scalable Javascript creation, both on the front and back end of the system. These are major additions to the code base and real wins across the board. Along with these great tools came some other, smaller utilities and helpers that make the life of a WordPress Javascript developer just a bit easier; however, they have received almost no attention. Most developers I’ve spoken to don’t even know they exist. So let’s explore just some of the hidden wonders in the wp object: wp.ajax, wp.template, wp.shortcode, and wp.html.