Ah yes,
it’s been a while since I wrote the last post and I planned to write something about the second day @jsconfeu a little sooner. But a lot of work (a lot JS work actually ;-) ) kept me away from doing so. Anyway - here we go.
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The second day (with not that big hangover as at the first day) started with some Webdesign topics presented by Amy Hoy (@amyhoy). She’s really a nice guy and “hanging around” with the author of script.aculo.us Thomas Fuchs. Basically she was talking about good and fancy design and presented some awesome websites.
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Next was Kyle Simpson and LAB.js. LAB.js is a script loader which can be used to load scripts in parallel. Also the JavaScript files or libraries are being preprocessed what means optimized. That is avoiding heavy loading times and therefore increasing the page speed. One main problem is the usage of domready for example in jQuery lt 1.3.2 because this is not handabale by LAB.js because of the principle architecture (the same issue is with older prototype versions). I am using LAB.js in various projects and have really good results.
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Then we heard Ruben Daniels and Mike Deboer. These guy’s presented ajax.org (actually also sponsor of jsconfeu) with a online game like SIMS. Two people can play the game together and seeing, what the other is doing … yes you’re right - sounds like Google Wave. I asked Mike what he is thinking about Google Wave. They like it a lot because people now are starting to want stuff like Google Wave. The guy’s refactored the code now the third time in eight years … cool!
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jQuery offers a really nice UI (user interface) library. Jörn Zaffer is the main contributor of jQuery UI plugins and showed us, how easy it is to code a web application in less than 45 minutes. I am not using any UI libraries like YUI or also DOJO but it’s worth to check it out.
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Next was Nicole Sullivan presenting object oriented CSS. Huh? Actually Nicole was speaking about how to really write CSS. She presented a lot of do’s and don’t do’s what was really helpful to bring that into mind again. She has made a approach to make CSS even better and therfor made some suggestions for the CSS Working Group. You can check that out at here website and at slide share.
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Then the topic was awesome node.js by Ryan Dahl. node.js is used to code serverside javascript applications. It uses the V8 JavaScript engine from Google. Ryan presented an IRC chat completely based on node.js and a big woooohhhhh was going through the crowd. For his awesome work the people honored him with standing ovations. AWESOME!!!!
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Tobie Langel is one of the core developers from the prototype JavaScript library. He presented a JavaScript Unit Testing framework called Evidence. He explained the principal mechanisms and usage. Really nice.
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Then Steve Souders from Yahoo and one well known website performance guru held a talk about … yes … performance. There are many way’s of increasing the loading speed of websites. Basically he was complaining a little about big websites like CNN and others, why they need to load over 2 to 3 seconds. He showed also different statistics for different browsers like IE, FF or Chrome. It was very interesting and I think I will buy his books. One thing I will keep in mind is his introduction about the awesomenes of jsconfeu. He said he can’t remember a conference, where a speaker was receiving standing ovations. In his mind this gesture shows that the crowed is just highly interested, respectful and peaceful with other ideas, people and software. I like that!
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The last talk was held by John Resig the author of jQuery. He was speaking about unit testing JavaScript. Unfortunately I had to leave the talk because my train back to Hamburg was not waiting for me.
jsconfeu in Berlin was super awesome. The people wer super and the speakers with their talks hust awesome. A big thanks goes to Jan, Malte and Holger for their work. I will definitely attend next year.