Web Directions » coding http://www.webdirections.org Just another WordPress weblog Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:02:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Nicole Sullivan — CSS Power Toolshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/nicole-sullivan-css-power-tools/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/nicole-sullivan-css-power-tools/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:12:03 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3793 Photo of Nicole SullivanIn this session, you’ll learn about good tools that can make CSS development faster and maintenance easier.

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 14th.

Presentation slides

Session description

Let’s admit it, the tools for writing CSS aren’t very advanced. For the most part, the people who write tools don’t know about CSS and the people who know about CSS don’t write tools. Quite a conundrum! In this session, you’ll learn about good tools that can make development faster and maintenance easier. We’ll also talk a bit about where we can go from here. What tools do we need as sites are becoming more and more complex? We need to get beyond tools whose primary goal is to avoid hand-coding and realize that, as our techniques for writing CSS become more powerful, our tools can too! Session will include:

  • Validators
  • Preprocessors
  • Finding dead rules
  • Linting
  • CSS3 gradient tools
  • Performance measurement tools
  • Unit testing

About Nicole Sullivan

Photo of Nicole SullivanNicole is an evangelist, front-end performance consultant, CSS Ninja, and author. She started the Object-Oriented CSS open source project, which answers the question: how do you scale CSS for millions of visitors or thousands of pages? She also consulted with Facebook and the W3C, and is the co-creator of Smush.it, an image optimization service in the cloud. She is passionate about CSS, web standards, and scalable front-end architecture for large commercial websites.

She co-authored Even Faster Websites and blogs at stubbornella.org.

Follow Nicole on Twitter: @stubbornella

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/nicole-sullivan-css-power-tools/feed/ 0 Peter Mika — Making the Web searchablehttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/peter-mika-making-the-web-searchable/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/peter-mika-making-the-web-searchable/#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:07:14 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3850 Photo of Peter MikaIn this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines.

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 13th.

Presentation slides

Session description

The key idea of the Semantic Web is to make information on the Web easily consumable by machines. As machines start to understand web pages as sources of data that can be easily combined with other public data on the Web, the promise is that search on the Web will move well beyond the current paradigm of retrieving pages by keywords. Instead, search engines will start to answer complex queries based on the cumulative knowledge of the Web.

In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines. In particular, we discuss the RDFa and microdata standards of the W3C designed for marking up data in HTML pages. We look at the ways in which this information is currently used by search engines, including the latest schema.org collaboration between Bing, Google, and Yahoo!, which provides a basic set of vocabulary items understood by all three major search engines on the Web.

About Peter Mika

Photo of Peter MikaPeter Mika is a researcher and data architect at Yahoo! Research in Barcelona, working on the applications of semantic technology to Web search. He received his BS in computer science from Eotvos Lorand University and his MSc and PhD in computer science (summa cum laude) from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His interdisciplinary work in social networks and the Semantic Web earned him a Best Paper Award at the 2005 International Semantic Web Conference and a First Prize at the 2004 Semantic Web Challenge. From 2006 to 2009, he has been a co-chair of the Semantic Web Challenge. Mika is the youngest member elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Web Semantics. He is the author of the book ‘Social Networks and the Semantic Web’ (Springer, 2007). In 2008 he has been selected as one of “AI’s Ten to Watch” by the editorial board of the IEEE Intelligent Systems journal. Peter is a regular speaker at conferences.

Follow Peter on Twitter: @pmika

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/peter-mika-making-the-web-searchable/feed/ 0 Tom Hughes-Croucher — Up and Running with Node.jshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/tom-hughes-croucher-up-and-running-with-node-js/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/tom-hughes-croucher-up-and-running-with-node-js/#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:26:41 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3873 Photo of Tom Hughes-CroucherLearn how to build high performance Internet and web applications with Node.js.

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 14th.

Presentation slides

Session description

Learn how to build high performance Internet and web applications with Node.js. In is session Tom Hughes-Croucher will demonstrate how to quickly build a high performance chat server using Node.js. This live coding exercise will provide a real insight into what it looks like to build a project in server-side Javascript. We will also cover how to deploy Node applications in production and look at just how far Node can really scale… A million connections and beyond?

About Tom Hughes-Croucher

Photo of Tom Hughes-CroucherTom Hughes-Croucher is the Chief Evangelist at Joyent, sponsors of the Node.js project. Tom mostly spends his days helping companies build really exciting projects with Node and seeing just how far it will scale. Tom is also the author of the O’Reilly book “Up and running with Node.js”. Tom has worked for many well known organizations including Yahoo, NASA and Tesco.

Follow Tom on Twitter: @sh1mmer

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/tom-hughes-croucher-up-and-running-with-node-js/feed/ 0 Michael Honey & Tim Riley — Web or native? Smart choices for smartphone appshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/michael-honey-tim-riley-web-or-native-smart-choices-for-smartphone-apps/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/michael-honey-tim-riley-web-or-native-smart-choices-for-smartphone-apps/#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:16:18 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3845 Photo of Michael HoneyPhoto of Tim RileyIn this session, Michael Honey and Tim Riley answer the question “web or native?” from business, product design and development perspectives.]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 13th.

Presentation slides

Session description

Computers are increasingly being held in the hand rather than sitting atop lap or desk. We now have to consider how our products will work underneath a finger instead of a mouse cursor. Increasingly, too, those products are being delivered as native applications, capable of fully exploiting device capabilities. That has ramifications not only for the way those projects get built, but also how we structure the businesses that support them.

In this session, Michael Honey and Tim Riley answer the question “web or native?” from business, product design and development perspectives. They cover the current state of web technology on modern devices and compare it to what’s available through native development platforms. They’ll look at web, native and hybrid strategies successfully employed by Australian and international businesses, and share their own stories as mobile and web developers. Finally, they’ll offer practical guidance on picking a strategy for web or native development that best suits your needs — as either a developer or a client.

Tim and Michael are two of the partners behind Icelab, an Australian design and development studio. They’ve trod both the web and native paths through their client work, such as interactive touchscreens for museum exhibits, online photo galleries and mobile tour guides, and also their own projects, like Decaf Sucks, a coffee review community available on the web (optimised for both desktops and smartphones) and as a native iPhone app.

About Michael Honey

Photo of Michael HoneyMichael founded Icelab after a career as creative director and later, interactive director in an agency environment. He has fifteen years’ experience in design for screen, print, video and exhibition spaces, and has expertise in writing, programming, direction and post-production. He is an experienced coder, with a particular interest in algorithmic animation and datavisualisation. He is also experienced in the development of diagrammatic animations for cultural, engineering, scientific and architectural clients.

Michael’s interests include architecture, urbanism, and the environment.

Follow Michael on Twitter: @michaelhoney

About Tim Riley

Photo of Tim RileyTim is a partner at Australian design and development studio Icelab, where he builds excellent web and mobile applications using Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Cocoa, and occasionally out of popsicle sticks. On alternate days he runs Decaf Sucks, an online community for coffee reviews, and RentMonkey, which contains the greatest

on the Internet.

Tim is an active participant in the Australian web and iOS communities, as a regular speaker at the Sydney Ruby on Rails meetings, organiser of the Canberra Ruby Crew, and part of the Canberra Cocoaheads chapter. Tim loves coffee and hates gluten.

Follow Tim on Twitter:

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/michael-honey-tim-riley-web-or-native-smart-choices-for-smartphone-apps/feed/ 0 Julio Cesar Ody — CSS3 and Backbone.js for killer mobile appshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/julio-cesar-ody-css3-and-backbone-js-for-killer-mobile-apps/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/julio-cesar-ody-css3-and-backbone-js-for-killer-mobile-apps/#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:37:34 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3867 Photo of Julio Cesar OdyThis session will describe in length a boilerplate you can use for developing your own apps aimed at A grade mobile devices and tablets.

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 13th.

Session description

Learn how to build great looking and high performance mobile web applications leveraging CSS3 animations and Backbone.js, along with some cool use cases for geolocation and localStorage.

This session will describe in length a boilerplate you can use for developing your own apps aimed at A grade mobile devices and tablets.

About Julio Cesar Ody

Photo of Julio Cesar OdyJulio has been a full-stack software developer for the 12 years of his career, and during this time he went from being a GNU/Linux and Unix sysadmin, to a VoIP PBX architect, and finally a software developer.

Since moving to Australia from Brazil, he has worked on startups and companies building software and at the same time, stuck his nose as much as he can into the human side of the software equation, understanding developer productivity, how software companies work, and product development.

More recently he grew too interested in design for his own good, and began freelancing under the codename of Awesome By Design, writing a bunch of software which he open sourced on GitHub, giving presentations using his own presentation framework, and building software that not only does the job, but does so in style.

Follow Julio on Twitter: @julio_ody

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/julio-cesar-ody-css3-and-backbone-js-for-killer-mobile-apps/feed/ 0 Ben Birch — HTML5, PhoneGap and What’s Nexthttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/ben-birch-html5-phonegap-and-whats-next/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/ben-birch-html5-phonegap-and-whats-next/#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 01:40:56 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3858 Photo of Ben BirchIf this year is all about the mobile space maturing, then your web skills are where it’s at and a key player is PhoneGap, which supercharges your code and gets you into the app store(s).

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 14th.

Presentation slides

Session description

If this year is all about the mobile space maturing, then your web skills are where it’s at and a key player is PhoneGap, which supercharges your code and gets you into the app store(s).

We look at one small framework’s journey from birth at a 2 day hacking event to become the preeminent method for distributing packaged web apps on mobile devices. We will have a look at the all the goodies that PhoneGap provides, then peek inside and see how it integrates with the web stack. We will explore some of the pain points and work arounds. Then, we take a quick pass through the community and resources available. Finally, we finishing up with a look at where PhoneGap is going and explore the interesting places your web dev skills could take you in the next 12 months.

About Ben Birch

Photo of Ben BirchBen is Senior UI Engineer and Beer Baron at Aconex in Melbourne. About 5 years ago a revelation turned him from back end programming to concentrate full time on client side development. At Aconex he brought the rigours of testing to javascript and css well before it was easy and along the way built a lightweight UI framework. The same framework now drives jQuery Mobile using pure javascript.

By day he builds enterprise tablet apps on PhoneGap and by night he contributes to several open source projects and changes nappies. He is slightly over excited by all the awesome technology and rapid pace of change in the web space and it’s open and collaborative buzz.

Ben has a wife, two small kids and hangs out at #melbjs and on GitHub.

Follow Ben on Twitter: @mobz

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/ben-birch-html5-phonegap-and-whats-next/feed/ 1 Greg Rewis — Move it! CSS3 Transitions and Animationshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/greg-rewis-move-it-css3-transitions-and-animations/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/greg-rewis-move-it-css3-transitions-and-animations/#comments Sat, 05 Nov 2011 22:37:38 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3797 Photo of Greg RewisIn this session, we’ll take a look at all of the possibilities and explore what works and where — from the simplest effects, to creative usability enhancements including the combination of CSS with mobile Javascript frameworks.

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 14th.

Presentation slides

Session description

Since the early days of the web, the only reliable way to get movement on your site was through Flash, or more recently, Javascript. But now, with WebKit and Mozilla leading the way, transformations and transitions can be done with pure CSS, even on mobile devices. And for those in need of even more movement, CSS3 provides for keyframe-based animations. In this session, we’ll take a look at all of the possibilities and explore what works and where — from the simplest effects, to creative usability enhancements including the combination of CSS with mobile Javascript frameworks.

About Greg Rewis

Photo of Greg RewisGreg Rewis is the Principal Evangelist for Adobe Systems, focusing on Adobe’s open web products and technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript. With over 20 years of computer industry experience, Greg spends in excess of 200 days of the year on the road, talking with customers, giving product demonstrations at seminars, and speaking at industry conferences.

Greg has been passionate about the web since putting his first “home page” online in 1994. His career has taken him around the world, from the early days of desktop publishing, to a start-up in Hamburg, Germany, the glory days of the web at Macromedia and finally his current role at Adobe.

The original GoLive Cyberstudio Product Manager and former Dreamweaver Technical Product Manager, Greg is the co-author of “Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3″ and “Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4″ published by New Riders, as well as a regular contributor to industry publications.

Follow Greg on Twitter: @garazi

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/greg-rewis-move-it-css3-transitions-and-animations/feed/ 0 Damon Oehlman — HTML5 API Souphttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/damon-oehlman-html5-api-soup/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/damon-oehlman-html5-api-soup/#comments Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:22:31 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3768 Photo of Damon OehlmanIn this session we will explore ways you can implement and combine HTML APIs such as websockets, web workers, local storage, and geolocation to make awesome web apps.

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 14th.

Presentation slides

External slides.

Session description

Most jaw-dropping apps use multiple HTML5 APIs in creative ways, rather than a single API in isolation. In this session we will explore ways you can implement and combine HTML APIs such as websockets, web workers, local storage, and geolocation to make awesome web apps. Then just for fun we’ll look at how you can dish up something really special by throwing in ingredients like canvas, video and WebGL.

About Damon Oehlman

Photo of Damon OehlmanDamon Oehlman is an experienced web and mobile applications developer. He has worked with small and large companies to develop software solutions for desktop, web and most recently mobile devices. His first technical book, Pro Android Web Apps, was released earlier this year by Apress. Damon currently runs his own software development and consulting firm Sidelab, which specializes in cross-platform mobile solutions. Damon’s aptly titled tech blog Distractable offers a mix of articles, tutorials and other shiny things. He is a proud dad, husband and one day dreams of owning his own underground lair.

Follow Damon on Twitter: @damonoehlman

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/damon-oehlman-html5-api-soup/feed/ 0 Ryan Seddon — Remote debugging landscapehttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/ryan-seddon-remote-debugging-landscape/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/ryan-seddon-remote-debugging-landscape/#comments Sat, 22 Oct 2011 23:46:46 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3764 Photo of Ryan SeddonHow do we test the vast array of devices out there? And what tools can help us make this a painless experience?

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 13th.

Presentation slides

Session description

More and more as front-end developers we are presented with new challenges, with the explosion of the mobile web it has created a whole new territory. How do we test the vast array of devices out there? And what tools can help us make this a painless experience?

Testing web apps on mobile devices is a new challenge not yet fully explored. Let’s brush over the beginnings of web application testing and debugging and dive into current solutions for remote debugging. In this session we’ll cover what developers and browser vendors are doing to help tackle this problem, including some of the tools available to use today, and how some of these tools work internally and what the future may hold.

About Ryan Seddon

Photo of Ryan SeddonRyan Seddon is a Senior Front-end Developer from Melbourne Australia who has an unnatural obsession with JavaScript and the many places it runs. He also loves to tinker with any new web technology he can get his hands on and loves diving into specs and code to figure out more.

In his spare time he’s either playing basketball, writing for his blog thecssninja.com or committing code to github.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @ryanseddon

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/ryan-seddon-remote-debugging-landscape/feed/ 0 Addy Osmani — Scalable JavaScript Design Patternshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/addy-osmani-scalable-javascript-design-patterns/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/addy-osmani-scalable-javascript-design-patterns/#comments Sat, 22 Oct 2011 23:32:57 +0000 Guy Leech http://www.webdirections.org/?p=3762 Photo of Addy OsmaniWould you like to learn how to organize your JavaScript applications so they can scale? Be able to write apps that support switching out Dojo or jQuery without rewriting a line of code?

]]> Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 13th.

Presentation slides

Session description

Would you like to learn how to organize your JavaScript applications so they can scale? Be able to write apps that support switching out Dojo or jQuery without rewriting a line of code? Application architecture is one of those aspects to development where minor problems can lead to major issues later on if it isn’t done right.

Developers writing client-side apps these days usually use a combination of MVC, modules, widgets, plugins and frameworks for theirs. Whilst this works great for apps that are built at a smaller-scale, what happens when your project really starts to grow?. In this talk, I’ll be presenting an effective set of design patterns for large-scale JavaScript application architecture that have previously been used at both AOL and Yahoo amongst others to develop scalable applications.

You’ll learn how to keep your application logic truly decoupled, build modules that can exist on their own independently so they can be easily dropped into other projects and future-proof your code in case you need to switch to a different DOM library in the future.

About Addy Osmani

Photo of Addy OsmaniAddy Osmani is a popular JavaScript blogger and a UI Developer for AOL based in London, England. He is also a member of the jQuery [Bug Triage/Docs/Front-end] teams where he assists with bugs, documentation and community updates. His free book, ‘Essential JavaScript Design Patterns’ has been downloaded over 200,000 times in the past year and continues to be expanded in his spare time.

For more on Addy’s work, check out his blog AddyOsmani.com for tutorials, his G+ page for his community updates and magazines such as .net for his thoughts and commentaries.

Follow Addy on Twitter: @addy_osmani

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/addy-osmani-scalable-javascript-design-patterns/feed/ 0