Patrick Lee - One paper clip, a box of matches, and some JavaScript
Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.
Whoever you are, if you’re writing JavaScript, there’s some aspect of your development that you would love to change if you had the chance. But the reality is you’ll never find yourself working in this ideal environment: dealing with legacy browsers, platforms and content management systems will be your constant as a developer. Patrick Lee is going to show you some tools and techniques that will help you make your peace with this fact.
This session will explore how you can find ways to do the cool stuff you really want to do with JavaScript whilst working in the real world. And you won’t even have to sell your soul in the process.
How does the way we build user experiences change when we incorporate Ajaxian techiques? How can we delight our user, make their experience seem magical, diminish the frustration that often comes with sites and applications?
While elections can be exciting times, the underlying data - swings, booth counts, and the like is probably only riveting to psephological tragics. Yet the ABC’s election web site managed to take this raw data and make it attractive, compelling and interactive.
When Version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is finally released, the status of Javascript will be quite different to that assigned to it in Version 1.0 back in 1999. Back then, Javascript was to “degrade gracefully”. Currently AJAX offers increased usability for visual users, but may detract from accessibility. In future, use of JavaScript will be encouraged but, of course, must enhance rather than detract from accessibility. During this presentation, Andrew and Grant will demonstrate how Javascript, when implemented well, offers enhanced accessibility. By way of balance, they will also present examples of scripting that causes problems. Importantly, they will provide corrections to the errant coding.
Forms. We all have to make ‘em, but few of us love ‘em. Aaron Gustafson believes that this is because we don’t understand them. In this session, we will explore forms from top to bottom, examining how they work and how their components can be incorporated with other elements to maximize accessibility, improve semantics, and allow for more flexible styling. You’ll get to see the complete picture with forms, including error, warning and formatting messages, styling and its implications, as well as best practices for manipulation with Javascript and Ajax.
Adding JavaScript to your portfolio used to mean more work. Thanks to the wide range of APIs springing up from the likes of Google (Mail, Maps, Ads, Calendar, Search, etc.), Yahoo! (Flickr, Maps, Search, etc.) and Microsoft (Virtual Earth), JavaScript can actually save you a lot of work these days. JavaScript veterans Cameron Adams (The Man In Blue) and Kevin Yank (SitePoint) will take a whirlwind (and somewhat irreverant) tour of the "free stuff" you get from JavaScript today, and the creative things people are doing with it.