Following-up from our previous posting, we’ve got some more Ajax Experience videos. This post’s theme is JavaScript and JSON:
Advanced Animation & Physics in JavaScript with Paul Bakaus
Forget about Web standards and go way beyond the usual capabilities of Web scripting languages. Learn how to create stunning effects using canvas/svg/vml, how to control animated graphics in JavaScript, and how to merge all kinds of standards and technologies to create a whole new world of possibilities. Using Paul’s latest project as an example, he shows you how to adapt the things he talks about into new projects, featuring his new JavaScript game engine. Paul demonstrates how to control animated graphics in the browser, how to scale and rotate elements smoothly, and how to combine canvas, svg and filters with CSS to adapt new standards in browsers that don’t support them. See how to move physics from the real world to the Web browser. In this session you learn how to: Create a walking animated character; Replicate new standards using existing technologies; Combine new standards to create a new experience.
Adv JavaScript: Closures, Prototypes, Demystified with Stoyan Stefanov
The times when JavaScript was just a toy language for making image rollovers and other, more irritating effects, are fortunately long gone. Today developers build much more sophisticated and complex applications be they for the Web (GMail), the desktop (Firefox extensions) or the server. JavaScript’s prototypal nature makes its object-oriented features really different than “classical” languages like Java and C++, and we have to make sure we use the right tool the right way. In this talk you’ll learn about JavaScript’s most commonly misunderstood features and how you could put them to a good use.
Practical Functional JavaScript with Oliver Steele
This session covers how to use functional programming with JavaScript in real-life applications to implement client-side asynchronous processing, scheduling, and concurrency. These are complex areas that are difficult to think about or implement using straight object-oriented techniques, and become simpler with a handful of idioms that this talk demonstrates. Ajax developers (JavaScript or ActionScript) who are building applications that feature both ambient and reactive functionality, and that perform sophisticated tasks such as precompute display state or prefetch data, will benefit from this session. This session provides: A firmer understanding of closures and when to use them; Insight into implementing time-based and threadlike client-side behavior in the browser.
Applied JSON: HTTP REST, Ajax Databases & Beyond with Kris Zip
JSON has proven to be a very easy to use, yet immensely powerful data interchange protocol. However, by itself JSON lacks a number of important expressibility capabilities and efficient client/server data interaction must usually be customized. This session looks at how we can use various open specifications built on JSON to standardize and automate this interaction. We examine REST JSON, JSPON, and JSONPath. We also explore the capabilities of Ajax-accessible REST databases. The dynamic nature of non-relational databases can provide significant benefits for rapidly developing applications and providing JavaScript object persistence. Client-side code can directly participate in database interaction, simplifying the typical Web application stack. CouchDB, Persevere, and ActiveResource utilize a JSON REST interface. In this session, we learn how to interact with these simple interfaces and how to use JSONPath as a query language for JSON data stores. We see how these dynamic databases utilize JavaScript on the server for a consistent client/server JavaScript environment. We look at how Ajax databases affect security and provide an infrastructure for more secure Web applications. Finally, we cover JSON Referencing conventions as a mechanism for further expressing duplicate, circular, and cross-site referencing. Via a live demonstration, see how to use the Persevere open source tools to utilize these extensions to provide RESTful storage and server-side JavaScript. In this session you learn how to: Query JSON data with JSONPath; Use Persevere to provide a powerful persistence object store for JavaScript; Understand how JSON and the JSPON browser interacts with the Persevere object server; Employ JSON extensions and tools to enable open communication formats that can be used for rich and robust serialized object interaction between clients and servers with full object graph descriptiveness.
JSON SOA-based Client/Server App Dev with Kris Zip
JSON has proven to be a very easy to use, yet immensely powerful data interchange protocol. However, by itself JSON lacks a number of important expressibility capabilities and efficient client/server data interaction must usually be customized. This session looks at how we can use various open specifications built on JSON to standardize and
automate this interaction.
We examine REST JSON, JSPON, and JSONPath. We also explore the capabilities of Ajax-accessible REST databases. The dynamic nature of non-relational databases can
provide significant benefits for rapidly developing applications and providing JavaScript object persistence. Client-side code can directly participate in database interaction, simplifying the typical Web application stack. CouchDB, Persevere, and ActiveResource utilize a JSON REST interface. In this session, we learn how to interact with these simple interfaces and how to use JSONPath as a query language for JSON data stores.
We see how these dynamic databases utilize JavaScript on the server for a consistent client/server JavaScript environment. We look at how Ajax databases affect security and provide an infrastructure for more secure Web applications. Finally, we cover JSON Referencing conventions as a mechanism for further expressing duplicate, circular, and cross-site referencing. Via a live demonstration, see how to use the Persevere open source tools to utilize these extensions to provide RESTful storage and server-side JavaScript.
In this session you learn how to:
Query JSON data with JSONPath;
Use Persevere to provide a powerful persistence object store for JavaScript;
Understand how JSON and the JSPON browser interacts with the Persevere object server;
Employ JSON extensions and tools to enable open communication formats that can be used for rich and robust serialized object interaction between clients and servers with full object graph descriptiveness.
Thanks to the folks at Adobe, we’ve got video of pretty much every session from the Ajax Experience 2008 that we can share on-line, free of charge. We’ll release them over the next week or so in batches. What better way to spend your New Year’s holiday than curled up with a laptop learning about software?
Even Faster Web Sites with Steve Souders
In this session you learn: How to make your Web sites 25-50% faster; The impact of iframes on your Web site, including blank iframes; How inline scripts block rendering in the entire page and downloads; What you might be doing with stylesheets that make your pages twice as slow; The various techniques for dynamically loading JavaScript, and how they vary in how they affect the browser.
Advanced Web App Security with Joe Walker
The security landscape is changing dramatically from month to month. Unless you are aware of CSRF, Anti-DNS Pinning, Javascript highjacking, and the many ways to fool an XSS filter, it’s likely that your Web application is not secure. Attackers used to concentrate on ActiveX, but now Javascript, CSS and even simple HTML elements have are used against Web sites.
In this session, we reveal:
* Security challenges particular to a Web 2.0 world;
* Details of CSRF, Anti-DNS Pinning, JavaScript hijacking, fooling an XSS filter and more;
* How you can protect yourself, from both the point of view of site owners and users.
The 7 Habits for Exceptional Perf with Stoyan Stefanov and Nicole Sullivan
Improvements in Web site performance are similar to improvements in energy or fuel efficiency: We make great progress, yet we end up consuming more. Learn how to balance design and features with the need for speed. This session highlights Yahoo!’s latest research results and performance breakthroughs. Apple’s iPhone has changed the game for Web browsing on mobile devices. While the iPhone presents new and exciting opportunities for Web developers, it also provides a unique set of performance challenges. Solutions that reduce the number of components improve the user experience greatly by making pages load faster. In this session, we explore case studies that demonstrate how these solutions have accelerated the user experience on Yahoo!’s most prominent Web pages. In this session you learn: Performance optimizations that give you the biggest bang for your buck; Latest research results and performance breakthroughs discovered at Yahoo!; Apple iPhone’s cache characteristics; How to balance features with speed.
This was my favourite presentation of the year. Ben and I have given a lot of talks together, and to spice things up we created the presentation randomizer, a simple Ajax app that would sound a buzzer at random times. Why did we do this? When the buzzer went, we would have to instantly change presenter. “Who’s line is it anyway?” for geeks.
The presentation was recorded by Adobe, and Ted Patrick just pushed it live:
The Ajax revolution is complete: Sophisticated JavaScript user interfaces are nearly ubiquitous. Yet, the innovations in the Ajax community continue. Dion and Ben set the stage for the Ajax Experience by discussing the latest developments, including multithreaded JavaScript technology-powered UIs, robust offline storage, choosing the right Ajax/JavaScript technology framework, Ajax outside of the browser, and more.
Thanks again to the entire community that came out to The Ajax Experience. Without you, we wouldn’t have this opportunity.
At our Ajax Experience keynote this year, Dion and I coded up a simple little program that buzzed at random intervals every 10-120 seconds. Whenever it buzzed, one of us had to stop talking and the other would have to pick up right where the other guy left off. It definitely kept things fresh.
Quite a few folks asked us to release the code. It’s quite trivial; check it out.
We used SoundManager2 to play the buzzer sound; the rest is straight-forward.
We’ve heard a lot about optimizing CSS, HTML and JavaScript but one thing that is less talked about is how much extra information image editors put into image files. You might think you’ve done a great job optimizing your GIFs, PNGs and JPGs while still keeping them visually pleasing but when you use a text editor you’ll realize that there is quite a big amount of data you can save by removing information about the image editor used, the date the file was edited last and lots of other bits that really are redundant.
There are a lot of free tools that strip this information from the files for you and squeeze some extra optimization out of the file without affecting the look. The problem is that all of them are command-line based and you need to know how to use them. Stoyan Stefanov and Nicole Sullivan of the Yahoo exceptional performance team took all of these tools and their experience in using them and built one application that does all the optimizations for you in one go:
You can upload images, give it a URL or use smushit as a Firefox extension or bookmarklet. Smushit will show you how many bytes you can save by removing cruft from the images and gives you all the images as a zip file to replace them on your site.
Here’s a video of Stoyan and Nicole presenting Smushit.com at The Ajax Experience in Boston (sorry about the audio):
We recently raffled off a free pass to The Ajax Experience on Ajaxian.com. Congratulations to Brandon Aaskov, our official raffle winner! If you’re planning on attending The Ajax Experience in Boston, September 29 - October 1, there’s still time to register.
The raffle drew over 500 entries from all over the world. Considering the worldwide appeal of The Ajax Experience, which major city would you like us to consider for 2009? We look forward to hearing from you!
We talked a few months ago about something new we’re doing at the Ajax Experience this year: the “Framework Summit.” Basically, we’re providing space for Prototype, jQuery, and Dojo to hold their own half-day events on-site, and these events are free and open to the general public.
- State of jQuery (Rey Bango)
- Progressively Enhancing the User Experience Using jQuery (Karl Swedberg)
- An In-Depth Look at jQuery UI (Paul Bakaus)
- jQuery Team Code Review (jQuery Team)
Other Frameworks?
Some have asked why we didn’t also include Framework X, Y, and Z at the summit. We have a simple answer: we only had room for three frameworks so we choose the three most popular frameworks (according to every survey we’ve seen). If the concept is successful this time around, we hope to do it on a bigger scale next year.
Obviously we hope you can make it to the entire Ajax Experience event, but if you can’t do that, consider coming to one of the Framework Summit events. See you there!
That’s right, a free pass! We are raffling off one free pass to The Ajax Experience show in Boston, September 29 – October 1. That means that you can attend the $1495 event for free, courtesy of Ajaxian.com.
There’s no catch. We are giving away one free pass to The Ajax Experience. The free pass only includes entrance to the event, so if you don’t call Boston home, you still have to cover your own travel and hotel.
How to enter: Click here and enter your information in the form by Friday, September 5th. Please make sure to enter a working email address. Then we will pick one name out of a hat and one of you will receive a free pass.
We look forward to seeing you at The Ajax Experience next month!
The $100 early bird discount for The Ajax Experience expires today, August 22! Don’t wait! Register now to reserve your spot at the lowest price.
The Ajax Experience conference takes place September 29 – October 1 in Boston. Register today to save $100 with the early bird rate.
The Ajax Experience is the original and most in-depth rich internet application conference featuring over 40 sessions with top industry experts on such topics as cross-browser compatibility, choosing the right framework, best practices on balancing Web 2.0 features with speed, and many more. See our full conference agenda for what we’ve lined up for 2008.
The best part of The Ajax Experience is being able to hear what others are working on and get a feel for where the community is headed.
We look forward to seeing you in Boston next month!
The Ajax Experience conference takes place September 29 – October 1 in Boston. Register today to save $100 with the early bird rate.
We’re pleased to announce that registration for The Ajax Experience is now open! The event is being held in Boston this year, from September 29 to October 1.
Mini-Events
In addition to the usual agenda full of interesting sessions and compelling content, we’re pleased to announce that concurrent with the Ajax Experience, several of the most popular Ajax frameworks will be holding “mini-events” that are both open to attendees and the general public. We’re giving space to representatives from Dojo, jQuery, and Prototype to hold half-day events focusing on their own frameworks. These events run at the same time as a special “introductory” track of content geared towards attendees who are new to Ajax.
We couldn’t be happier about how this has worked out and we hope both attendees and others who are able to attend enjoy these mini-events. More details coming soon.
Cross-Browser Keynote
Another interesting new feature of the show this year is a unique keynote we’re putting together with Peter-Paul Koch (ppk) of Quirksmode.org and folks from Dojo, jQuery, and Prototype. ppk is preparing a presentation detailing the top cross-browser compatibility issues facing Web developers today, and following his remarks, attendees will get briefings on how these popular Ajax frameworks help Web developers address the issues raised by ppk.
Every time we survey attendees and members of the community about what issues they care about most, cross-browser compatibility is either in the top slot or close to it. This should be a pretty cool dissemination of the best information on the topic.
It’s time to plan ahead. Today we’re announcing and opening the Call for Papers for the next Ajax Experience event–in September 2008.
For the past two years, we’ve put on two Ajax Experience events, the so-called West and East shows. For 2008, we think it’s time to consolidate them into one. After doing quite a bit of research with past attendees (and no small amount of internal debating) we’ve decided to hold our single event for 2008 in… Boston!
We’ve been extraordinarily pleased with the quality of the submissions of all of our past shows, so all we can say is, keep it up! The show will take place at Renaissance Waterfront Hotel in Boston, MA from September 29 - October 1, 2008. The Call for Papers closes on January 31, 2008. Approved speakers get a free pass to show and a stipend towards airfare and hotel. See our Call for Papers page for more details on how to submit a talk.
Kevin Survance, CTO of MapQuest, gave a keynote speech at the last Ajax Experience show. Kevin came to the company and basically transformed the entire team to create the new MapQuest beta.
MapQuest uses Ajax on a massive scale and also provides commercial Ajax APIs. In this keynote, Kevin shares lessons learned from recent MapQuest development projects and offers insight into opportunities for developers to profit from current industry and social trends.
This talk helps developers better articulate the business advantages of Ajax to management, and help management grill developers on whether their technical choices are the right ones. In addition, a starry-eyed vision of the future of application development will be presented, including a demo this time.
Bio: Alex Shvedof, COO and co-founder, Isomorphic Software is also one of the architects of the SmartClient Ajax platform. He has played various roles at hi-tech companies ranging from enterprise software architecture to system and network security. Alex co-founded Isomorphic in 2000 to make zero-install rich web applications a reality.
Today is the official start of the Ajax Experience East, but we did something a bit different this time around. Some people asked us to level set a little, so we put out some tutorial sessions a day before.
Marc Grabanski was at the tutorial sessions and he wrote up a nice synopsis of the talks given by Ben Galbraith, John Resig, and David Verba.
Marc finishes up posting the sessions that he think will be going too:
We have kicked into gear on day one, and I am having a great time mingling with the community as usual!
, The Ajax Experience
