As a web-based technology book, Backbone Essentials requires very little, only some form of text editor and web browser. Backbone itself is compatible with almost all browsers, including Internet Explorer 7 and up, though a modern web browser is recommended. Similarly, while you can write Backbone code using a plain text editor, we recommend instead using a modern IDE such as Sublime, Eclipse, or WebStorm, as it can provide many useful features to aid development.

Of course to use Backbone you'll need to download (and include in your HTML) the library itself, which can be found at http://www.backbonejs.com. In addition, you'll also need to download Backbone's two dependencies: jQuery (http://www.jquery.com) and Underscore (http://www.underscorejs.org/). Technically only Underscore is required, but you'll want jQuery also to be able to take advantage of Backbone's View class.

Once you have an editor, browser, and all three libraries downloaded and included in your HTML, you're ready to get started using Backbone.