Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
Category: Presentation
, Recording, The Ajax Experience
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.
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
Category: JavaScript, The Ajax Experience
Oliver Steele gave a great talk at The Ajax Experience this week on Practical Functional JavaScript.
For his talk, he ended up creating a samples application where you can run the code directly, very similar to what John Resig did in Learn JavaScript.
The samples take you through JavaScript world, stopping for:
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
Category: Fun, Presentation, The Ajax Experience
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.
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
Category: Performance, The Ajax Experience
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):
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
Category: The Ajax Experience
The Ajax Experience is coming up in a week and I wanted to share some exciting last minute developments:
1. Google Chrome. Google’s Ojan Vafai will be giving a keynote on their new browser. Obviously, this should be interesting. :-)
2. Opera. We’ve been trying to get them at the show from the beginning. Opera’s Anne van Kesteran presenting on “Opera and Ajax”.
3. Ext JS. We’ve got two great Ext JS talks! Jack Slocum is speaking on “Advanced CSS and Theming of Ext” and Aaron Conran will present “Hands-on Ext“.
4. Cappuccino / Objective-J. The folks behind the framework behind the impressive 280slides.com on-line presentation site are giving a lightning talk introducing their framework as well as a full-length presentation entitled “The Road to Cappuccino.”
5. Processing.js. John Resig’s port of Processing to JavaScript–Processing.js–is amazing. Come hear him talk about it in detail.
6. Hacking NetFlix. Bill Scott of NetFlix talks about their new rich open Ajax APIs. Hint: it’s not just about queue management and it’s pretty exciting stuff.
7. Episodes. Client-side performance guru Steve Souders has added another talk to his Ajax Experience quiver discussing an entirely new way to benchmark “Web 2.0″ applications.
And that’s just the new stuff! We’ve got plenty of other goodness in the agenda. Hope you can join us!
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Category: Conferences, The Ajax Experience
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!
Friday, August 29th, 2008
Category: Dojo, Prototype, The Ajax Experience, jQuery
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.
Since we announced the summit, the frameworks have created their agendas for their events for their events:
Dojo Developer Day:
- Welcome, Introductions (Alex Russell, Dylan Schiemann)
- Tutorial - Progressive Dojo (Peter Higgins)
- Presentation - DojoX GFX and FX (Matthew Russell)
- Presentation - Secrets of DojoX (Tom Trenka)
- Tutorial - Getting going … Zend + Dojo (Matthew O’Phinney)
- Tutorial - Dijit Layouts In and Out (Nikolai Onken)
- Tutorial - Reusable code, Widgeting (Peter Higgins)
- Community - Getting Involved (Peter Higgins, Nikolai Onken)
- Lightning Demos - What do you have? Show us.
Prototype Developer Day
- Welcome, Introductions (Prototype Core members)
- Contributing docs (Christophe Porteneuve)
- Contributing code (Andrew Dupont)
- Prototype & Performance
- Extended Q&A (Prototype Core members)
jQuery Developer Day
- 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!
Monday, August 25th, 2008
Category: Conferences, The Ajax Experience
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!
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Category: Conferences, The Ajax Experience
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.
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Category: The Ajax Experience
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.
Early Bird Registration Ends August 22…
…so stop on by and get yourself a seat at the show!
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
Category: The Ajax Experience
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.
See you there!
Monday, December 31st, 2007
Category: Presentation, Recording, The Ajax Experience
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.
Watch video of the keynote.
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
Category: Presentation, The Ajax Experience
Isomorphic Software, the company behind SmartClient, gave a talk at the recent TAE Boston, and we just published the video for all to see:
Abstract
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.
Watch the presentation.
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007
Category: Conferences, The Ajax Experience
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!
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
Category: The Ajax Experience
With the Ajax Experience East in Boston coming up just around the corner (Oct. 24 - 26, just about two weeks away), we thought we’d provide a few updates:
- Aptana founder Paul Colton will present best practices and pitfalls on developing with the iPhone and iPod Touch. And while we’re talking about talks from dev tool groups, we should mention that Michael Kaply will present on Eclipse’s Ajax Toolkit Framework.
- We’ve added a few new performance-related talks: Bob Buffone from Nexaweb will present on performance tuning large-scale Ajax apps, and Michael Carter will present a case study on using Comet for highly scalable apps.
- Flex and AIR keep right on evolving, and we’ve got Adobe’s Kevin Hoyt presenting on the very latest in AIR development.
- Google’s Nathan Naze, who’s currently working on the Google Book Search project, will discuss “Hybrid JavaScript”–his way of summarizing in two words an emerging set of techniques to extend browser capabilities in various creative ways using JavaScript itself, Flash, and even, yes… Java.
- We’ve added a new keynote: Kevin Survance, CTO of Mapquest, who will be sharing many Ajax lessons learned from experience running this massive web property. And, we should mention that the details of the previously announced Aza Raskin keynote are now on-line.
For more details on the other sessions this year, see the complete agenda.
Oh yes, and, the marketing hook: We’ve added tutorials this year; they’re included in the conference fee, but because we’re running these the day before the conference, we are limited in space. If you’re thinking about attending, register now to save yourself a seat! Supplies are limited! Chairs may run out! The developer hoards may beat you to it! Don’t be the only one left home!
;-)
Friday, September 21st, 2007
Category: The Ajax Experience
Here are the latest updates on the upcoming Ajax Experience East show in Boston Oct. 24-26:
- Next Friday, hotel rates go up and the iPhone Giveaway ends; register today! ;-)
- Speaking to Ajax audiences can be tricky; half of the group usually has a lot of Ajax experience, while the other half has little to none. To try and “level-set” a bit, we’ve introduced free, pre-show tutorials to the show this time around. Joining us to give ‘em are John Resig of jQuery and Mozilla fame and David Verba of Adaptive Path. However, space is running out fast (only 30 seats left), so you’ve got to reserve your seat quick!
- Aza Raskin, son of UI pioneer Jef Raskin, spoke at last year’s Boston show and did such a bang-up job that we’ve asked him to keynote at this year’s show. We’re really looking forward to his talk.
- Alex Russell of Dojo fame will be speaking on the upcoming Dojo 1.0 release and the importance of the open web.
- jQuery founder and Mozilla evangelist John Resig has added a “Future of JavaScript” to his talk line-up at the show.
- And more!
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