Patrick Lauke – Brave New World of HTML5
HTML5 was originally called Web Applications 1.0, but that doesn’t mean it’s only for scripters – there’s plenty for markup monkeys as well as JavaScript junkies.
Tag: coding
Remy Sharp – Browsers with wings: HTML5 APIs
HTML5 is all the rage with the cool kids, and although there’s a lot of focus on the new language, there’s plenty for web app developers with new JavaScript APIs both in the HTML5 spec and separated out as their own W3C specifications. This session will take you through demos and code and show off some of the outright crazy bleeding edge demos that are being produced today using the new JavaScript APIs. But it’s not all pie in the sky – plenty is useful today, some even in Internet Explorer!
Steve Souders – Even faster web sites
Web 2.0 is adding more and more content to our pages, especially features that are implemented in Ajax. But our web applications are evolving faster than the browsers that they run in. We don’t have to rely on or wait for the release of new browsers to make our web applications faster. In this session, Steve Souders discusses web performance best practices from his second book, Even Faster Web Sites. These time-saving techniques are used by the world’s most popular web sites to create a faster user experience, increase revenue, and reduce operating costs. Steve provides technical details about reducing the pain of JavaScript, as well as secrets for making your page load faster in emerging markets where network connectivity is a challenge.
Rob Mitchell & Mike Williams – Test your JavaScript
Mike Williams and Rob Mitchell will explain why you should test your JavaScript code, what to test, and how to go about it. They’ll talk about full-stack browser-based tests, as well as true unit tests, and explain where each are appropriate. They’ll also discuss integration of your tests into an automated build, and you’ll leave with a burning desire to try it out on your own projects.
Mark Stanton – Best practices for speeding up your site
As we pack our pages with AJAX and RIA goodness we often lose sight of the fact that the key to exceptional user experience is the responsiveness of your site. Inspired by the excellent work by Yahoo!’s Exceptional Performance team, this talk will have something that every site can benefit from. You will learn how to analyse what your end users are experiencing and how to reduce your load times by 25-50% using a range of simple techniques.
Dmitry Baranovskiy – Canvas
In this session, JavaScript ninja Dmitry Baranovskiy takes us into the heart and soul of Canvas, looking at what it does well, and not so well, how well it is supported, and how to use it in cross browser compatible ways. Developers with a good grasp of JavaScript will be able to add another dimension to their web solutions based on what they learn in this session.
Fergus Pitt & David Peterson – The mashed up playlist
The ABC launched three new socially networked digital radio websites: ABC Dig Music, ABC Jazz and ABC Country in July 2009. They are the first of several ABC projects involving content aggregation. As well as having slick, highly usable designs the music platform integrates with various sources including MusicBrainz, YouTube, Last.fm and Wikipedia. This aggregation functionality graphically illustrates the possibilities of Semantic Web technology for an editorial organisation such as the ABC.
Elliot Jay Stocks – Progressive enhancement
In the summer of ‘07 in a flood-soaked Oxford, England, Elliot appeared on stage for the very first time. His presentation, ‘Progressive Enhancement & Intentional Degradation’, looked at how to reward modern browsers with the latest CSS tricks and punish IE by dropping certain site features. Over two years later, what has changed? We’re starting to see the ideology of progressive enhancement — especially with CSS3 — spread throughout the web design community, but more work needs to be done.
Lachlan Hardy – The open web
The Open Web is an evolving term that encompasses technologies from web standards stalwarts like HTML, to almost-mainstream buzzwords such as OpenID, and on to emerging specifications like PortableContacts, but it’s more than that. It is a philosophy.
Doug Schepers – W3C and web standards big picture
Doug will talk about the technologies currently under development at W3C which we are likely to see in browsers now or in the near future, and will have demos of as many of them as possible. Some of these demos will be HTML5 demos, but also technologies from the WebApps WG, Device API and Policies WG, CSS, SVG, geolocation, etc. He will clear the air about HTML vs. XHTML, and why they are not as far apart as people think.
Mark Birbeck – Marking up content with RDFa
RDFa is at the cornerstone of the Browser Web and the Semantic Web. With RDFa, publishing data becomes as easy as publishing HTML, and can help web pages authors to join the linked data cloud and leverage all the URI-based data integration features brought by Semantic Web and Linking Open Data technologies.
In this introductory session primarily directed at those who author web content, Mark will touch a range of RDFa topics from its goals and how it came about, to its relationship to linked data and how it’s being used in some recent projects for UK Government web-sites.
Kevin Yank – CSS frameworks
With the proliferation and widespread adoption of JavaScript frameworks, smart developers have wondered if a similar approach to smoothing over the rough spots of CSS might work. Thus, CSS frameworks like Blueprint, YUI Library CSS Tools, Boilerplate, and many others were born. In this session, we will survey the landscape of CSS frameworks and consider how each of them deals with the unique challenge of creating generalised, reusable CSS styles.
Ben Galbraith – The state of developer tools
In this session, co-founder of Ajaxian.com, and The Ajax Experience conferences, and now head of Mozilla Foundation’s new Tools team Ben Galbraith will take us on an expedition through the developer tools landscape. Learn what’s out there, and what they can do to make you more productive, your sites and applications better and faster, and your life as a developer more enjoyable.
David Peterson – Semantic web for distributed social networks
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.
Hear how Drupal, Semantic MediaWiki and other bleeding edge tech were enlisted along with pixie dust, FOAF, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, Linked Data (basically all the Semantic Web stuff) to build a distributed social network. The focus will be not on evangelism (I don’t really care about that) but how disparate open source platforms can talk and work together. This stuff actually works and makes development more fluid. These technologies make local development easier, but when it is time to broaden your scope, classic search is still king. How can you leverage this? Newcomers such as Yahoo Searchmonkey can play an important role in the creation of a truly distributed information system.
Diana Mounter – Custom V CMS – don’t take sides
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 11.45am.
When I was introduced into the role of managing web projects, I naively believed a Content Management System would solve all my problems. Growing my little empire of content authors I had little idea of what was to come- before I knew it I had created a monster.
I went searching for a white knight to slay this monster and was tempted by the delights of custom builds, agile development, and ruby on rails. And off I went following the trail of breadcrumbs into the forest eating them as I went, but then oh, how do I get back to my old friend CMS? Hmmm.
This session will help you know how to make the choice between the sweet delights of custom builds and the faithful workhorse CMS. How to get them to play nice, grow gracefully, and present together as a seamless front-end user experience.
