Merge pull request #862 from braydonf/docs/browser-builds

Docs: Added documentation about building a browser bundle. Closes #716

docs/guide/browser.md

@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+title: Browser Builds
+description: Guide to writing modules and optimizing browser bundles.
+---
+
+# Browser Builds
+
+When developing a module that will need to work in a browser and does not use the entire Bitcore namespace, it's recommended to narrow the scope of the requires to the particular modules that are needed. It will produce a smaller browser bundle as it will only include the JavaScript that is nessessary. Below is a quick tutorial that will use three modules.
+
+## Tutorial
+
+**Step 1**: Require Bitcore Modules
+
+Here we require specific Bitcore modules that will be used in a `index.js` file:
+
+```javascript
+
+var PrivateKey = require('bitcore/lib/privatekey');
+var PublicKey = require('bitcore/lib/publickey');
+var Address = require('bitcore/lib/address');
+
+// the rest of the module here
+
+```
+
+**Step 2**: Browserifying
+
+Next we will generate a browser bundle using [browserify](https://www.npmjs.com/package/browserify) by running the command:
+
+```bash
+browserify index.js -o index.browser.js
+```
+
+This will output a file `index.browser.js` at around 700KB *(the entire Bitcore namespace is around 2MB)*.
+
+**Step 3**: Uglifying
+
+This can be further optimized by using [uglifyjs](https://www.npmjs.com/package/uglify-js), and running the command:
+
+```bash
+uglifyjs index.browser.js --compress --mangle -o index.browser.min.js
+```
+
+The resulting file `index.browser.min.js` in this case should be less than 300KB.
+
+## Modules
+
+Here is a list of some of the common modules:
+
+```javascript
+var Address = require('bitcore/lib/address');
+var Block = require('bitcore/lib/block');
+var BlockHeader = require('bitcore/lib/blockheader');
+var HDPrivateKey = require('bitcore/lib/hdprivatekey');
+var HDPublicKey = require('bitcore/lib/hdpublickey');
+var PaymentProtocol = require('bitcore/lib/paymentprotocol');
+var PrivateKey = require('bitcore/lib/privatekey');
+var PublicKey = require('bitcore/lib/publickey');
+var Script = require('bitcore/lib/script');
+var Transaction = require('bitcore/lib/transaction');
+var URI = require('bitcore/lib/uri');
+var Unit = require('bitcore/lib/unit');
+```
+
+For more informatation about each of the modules please see the [Bitcore Documentation](index.md).

docs/guide/index.md

@@ -35,6 +35,9 @@ To get started, just `npm install bitcore` or `bower install bitcore`.
 * [Encoding](encoding.md)
 * [ECIES](ecies.md)
 
+## Module Development
+* [Browser Builds](browser.md)
+
 # Examples 
 
 ## Create a Private Key