Session Descriptions

Rock Star Website Animations

Websites started out as simple online brochures. Today, websites offer a far more rich user interface that captivates and encourages the interaction of a potential customer. In this session, you will learn how to take an ordinary, static website and add animations to not only make it a more engaging, entertaining experience, but utilize them as visual cues to notify the user of areas that need attention. Animations come in all shapes, sizes, colors and fades. You simply need a little JavaScript sugar mixed in to make your website rock!

TARGET AUDIENCE: Web Developers of All Levels, however, some JavaScript Knowledge is required.

Lizard Brain Web Design

"There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone." (Bjarne Stroustrup)

The "lizard brain" is the oldest part of the human brain -- the part responsible for autonomic functions like breathing, heart rate, and navigating websites. OK, maybe not that last part, but your website should be easy to use. Stupid easy. Lizard brain easy. Any time your user spends figuring out how to do something -- even for a split second -- is wasted time due to poor design. Inspired by Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think", this talk answers the question, "Why is that website so hard to use?"

Solr: Adding Lucene Search to your Website

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it." (George Moore)

Without search capabilities, the web wouldn't be nearly as useful as it is today. Public websites have the luxury of letting Google do the indexing for them. For business applications that run behind the firewall, you need to go the extra step yourself. Lucene is an incredibly powerful open source indexing library. Solr makes it trivial to roll out Lucene by offering RESTful and JSON-based interfaces.

Web 2.0 Checklist: Deconstructing Modern Websites

"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned." (Antonio Gramsci)

There are plenty of sarcastic "Web 2.0" checklists out there -- be perpetually in BETA, when in doubt add rounded corners, etc. While we can all laugh at the superficial aspects of the Web 2.0 revolution, there are plenty of serious aspects to it as well. Is your website mash-up friendly or hostile? Do you tell your visitors when things change (via RSS or Atom syndication), or do you expect them to check in daily for updates? Is your website a silo or a part of a larger ecosystem?

Extreme Web Productivity with Spring Roo

Spring Roo, a new and innovative developer productivity tool, delivers outstanding productivity gains to any class of Java application, and in particular Java web applications built on the proven Spring stack. In seconds you can effortlessly add web capabilities to your enterprise applications, including RESTful MVC backends, Selenium-powered integration tests, Security, Web Flow, Ajax, and Flex. Join Keith Donald - founding member of the Spring Team - to discover more about these killer productivity features.

Advanced Selenium

This session discusses advanced Selenium techniques for testing web applications. It discusses techniques for both TestRunner and Remote Control Selenium, including data driven tests, creating branch points, testing Ajax applications, creating flexible tests, integration with continuous integration, and tons more. This session takes Selenium to the next level, showing how to handle complex, real world scenarios in Selenium.

Testing with Selenium

Selenium is the premiere open source user acceptance testing tool for web applications. This session covers all the basics you need to become proficient using Selenium, including setup, actions, assertions, and customization. I cover the basics of both TestRunner and Remote Control Selenium, discussing where each is important. I also show automation tools like the SeleniumIDE for recording tests.

Web Punchlist

When you buy a new house, you tour the new property with the builder with a punchlist, finding all the fit and finish things that aren't quite right yet. You've built your web site, and it all seems to be working. Where's the punchlist for your web site? This session gives you just that: a checklist you can use to verify that your web application is ready for occupation.

GWT fu, Part 1

Learn to implement web applications with GWT.

Prerequisite: Familiarity with a component-based framework, preferably a desktop application framework

GWT fu, Part 2

Learn to do amazing stuff with GWT.

Prerequisite: GWT fu, Part 1 is not a prerequisite for this session, but it will help if you have some familiarity with GWT.

CSS for Developers

While CSS might be the Web's Lingua Franca of presentation and design, it's the Front End Developer who finds that he or she has to optimize CSS documents, manage multiple CSS documents across any number of actual Web pages, ensure that conflicts and errors are properly addressed and effectively work with multiple browser hacks, conditional comments and scripts related to browser compatibility.

HTML5 Killed XHTML2 (and the Mysterious Future of Markup)

It's late 2009. A deep silence runs through the hallowed halls of the W3C. I slip into a stairwell and watch through the window as the well-formed corpse of XHTML2 is wheeled slowly down the hall by hooded academics. Murder? Suicide? A million thoughts run through my mind even as my gut tells me the truth: It's HTML5 that's done in XHTML2. The evidence, I can show you. But what are the reasons for this shocking - some even say tragic - crime?

Open Web: Standards for a Rich Web Experience

While some are in the corner of the ring Flexing their muscles, others are shining in the silver lights that illuminate the contendors. A murmer goes up through the crowd as a mystery contender comes in, resplendent in a star trek t-shirt and comfy in crocks and shorts. Who the heck is this underfed kid, and just what have they done that makes 'em worthy of going for the knockout?

Web Standards for Web Applications: Half Day Seminar

For many years the web standards movement focused its energies on best practices for web sites. Few of us, if any, could have foreseen the rapid emergence of applications on the Web. As the Web moves more and more toward rich experiences, shared APIs and a myriad of open source and proprietary options, it makes for an exciting and innovative time! However, what happens when applications are built without consideration for universal access, scalability, maintenance, and innovative evolution?

To get a thoughtful reevaluation of how we work in the context of the web application, Molly will demonstrate how using best practices and standards provides us with a stable platform, upon which we can begin an application's evolution and nurture it for a long, healthy, creative and innovative lifecycle. You'll learn to choose the right infrastructure and framework, whether you're using web standards models (such as DOM and multi-modal CSS), the Adobe model (of Flex, Flash, and Actionscript), the Microsoft model (of Silverlight and XAML), or others.

An Introduction to MooTools 2.0

MooTools is a fully featured JavaScript Development Framework. This session is a high-level introduction for users who are curious about the framework or who are new to it.

Choosing Between Two Great JavaScript Frameworks: jQuery and MooTools Compared

For individuals new to JavaScript and the numerous frameworks available, choosing one can be daunting. jQuery adoption has quickly taken off over the past two years or so and it continues to attract new users of the framework. MooTools has been around for roughly the same amount of time but presents a steeper learning curve.

Programming to Patterns

The JavaScript frameworks make it increasingly easy to write highly expressive and concise functionality that enhances an HTML component, but the power of JavaScript's somewhat hidden inheritance model shouldn't be lost in that power. As programmers gain greater control over user experience design, it's more important than ever to write functionality that is reusable, scalable, and as cheap to maintain as possible without affecting performance. Architecting nearly everything you author into objects that can be extended and reused presents a lot of benefits. T

Building SOFEA Applications with Grails and GWT

In early 2009, Matt participated in a major enhancement of a high-traffic well-known internet site. The company wanted to quickly re-architect their site and use a modern Ajax framework to do it with. An Ajax Framework evaluation was done to help the team choose the best framework for their skillset. The application was built with a SOFEA architecture using GWT on the frontend and Grails/REST on the backend.

Comparing Kick-Ass Web Frameworks

What's the best Web Framework? It's a question developers often ask when they begin they begin a new project. This session will take a cynical look at four web frameworks that make developers happy: Rails, Grails, GWT and Flex.

The Present and Future of Web App Design

The sudden rise of Ajax kicked off the Web 2.0 revolution, catching a lot of people by surprise and leaving companies scrambling to catch up. Designers can now create more compelling user experiences, enabling people to communicate and contribute as never before. Web technologies and great design are finally able to come together and provide users with web applications that are fast, easy to use, and available everywhere from their desktop to their pocket.

Building Desktop-Class Web Applications with Cappuccino and Atlas

An in-depth look at creating web applications using the Cappuccino framework and Atlas development environment.

Introduction to Objective-J and Cappuccino

Learn the fundamentals of creating advanced web applications with the Objective-J programming language and Cappuccino framework.

Programming to Patterns

The JavaScript frameworks make it increasingly easy to write highly expressive and concise functionality that enhances an HTML component, but the power of JavaScript's somewhat hidden inheritance model shouldn't be lost in that power. As programmers gain greater control over user experience design, it's more important than ever to write functionality that is reusable, scalable, and as cheap to maintain as possible without affecting performance. Architecting nearly everything you author into objects that can be extended and reused presents a lot of benefits. T

Comet and the Real-time Web

Sometimes Ajax isn't fast enough. For applications with frequent updates or large amounts of data transit such as chat or real-time data display, Comet is the answer.

Introduction to the Dojo Toolkit

The Dojo Toolkit is a robust toolkit for creating JavaScript-based web applications. I

Large-Scale Ajax Application Architectures

When your web application goes beyond the simple inclusion of a few lines of script and becomes a full-fledged application, there are a variety of strategies and patterns to consider that vary based on a number of factors:

• type of application
• network characteristics
• approach to APIs and the type of application you are delivering, the network and server

Now What?

The past few years have seen a massive proliferation of platforms and approaches to developing web applications. Life used to be simple: target two browsers and you were done.

Ajax Library Smack down: Prototype vs. jQuery

Ajax is everywhere, from the local newspaper to sites that the CEO surfs. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't rocket science, especially with the right library.

CSS For Developers

By now, developers know they aren't supposed to use tables for layout but despite good intentions, most look at CSS as a black art. While schooled in algorithms and data structures, when it comes to CSS, most of us just copy, paste and pray. This talk will remove some of the mystery surrounding styling web applications. We'll cover the basics and show you how libraries like YUI can make things even easier.

Deconstructing Prototype

By now, most developers have (re)discovered the much maligned JavaScript language and the plethora of top notch libraries have helped make this grey beard of web programming accessible to a new generation of developers. While many are content to simply rely on others, we can learn an awful lot about how to write better JavaScript by taking a look under the hood.

Hacking Your Brain for Fun and Profit

The single most important tool in any developers toolbox isn't a fancy IDE or some spiffy new language - it's our brain. Despite ever faster processors with multiple cores and expanding amounts of RAM, we haven't yet created a computer to rival the ultra lightweight one we carry around in our skulls - in this session we'll learn how to make the most of it. We'll talk about why multitasking is a myth, the difference between the left and the right side of your brain, the importance of flow and why exercise is good for more than just your waist line.

JavaScript Beyond the Basics

JavaScript is one of the most widely used languages around and yet its also one of the most misunderstood. With Ajaxified UIs becoming the norm, this humble language is once again at the forefront.

Pragmatic Usability (aka, Software Engineer's Guide to Usability)

While some companies have the luxury of a full time usability team, most of us have to make do on our own. Sure, it might be easier (and more comfortable) to focus on all the hip back end goodness, but if your user interface makes users yack, your product is doomed.

Testing the Web Layer

While your project might have nearly 100% code coverage on the server tier, many projects ignore testing the web layer. With more and more code being pushed to the browser, a lack of tests for the client code begs for trouble.

Designing for Interesting Moments

Did you know that there are at least 16 different moments of interaction during drag and drop? And that there are at least a half-dozen elements on the page that conspire with these points in time to form a drag and drop interaction? With almost all user interactions there are lots of interesting moments that you can use to enhance the user experience -- or worse to create confusion in the user's mind.

These are conveniently summarized in six over-arching design principles.

Input where you output. Require a light footprint. Maintain flow. Invite interaction. Show transitions Be reactive. This talk goes hand-in-hand with Bill Scott & Theresa Neil's book, Designing Web Interfaces and will provide you with dozens of clear take-aways for designing rich interactions on the web.

Enterprise Security API library from OWASP

When it comes to cross cutting software concerns, we expect to have or build a common framework or utility to solve this problem. This concept is represented well in the Java world with the loj4j framework, which abstracts the concern of logging, where it logs and the management of logging. The one cross cutting software concern which seems for most applications to be piecemeal is that of security. Security concerns include certification generation, SSL, protection from SQL Injection, protection from XSS, user authorization and authentication. Each of these separate concerns tend to have there own standards and libraries and leaves it as an exercise for the development team to cobble together a solution which includes multiple needs.... until now... Enterprise Security API library from OWASP.

XSS-Proof

Companies have focused for years to solidify the back-end infrastructure in defense against hacking attempts. Most companies however are forced to open up many ports including port 80 (http) for users to access web applications among other resources. This has lead to web attacks growing to be the #1 classification of hacker attacks today. In this space Cross Site Scripting (XSS) is the #1 ranked vulnerability affecting a large number of sites. This evolution requires that the understanding of securing an application move beyond sys admins and incorporate all aspects of system delivery for the protection of a system and system resources.

RDFA : Weaving Richness and Meaning in the Web

The human web is reasonably well in hand by now. We are getting pretty good at building systems that people find valuable and entertaining. We have not spent as much time concerned about our software friends. There is a ton a rich content available on the web that is too difficult to extract in automated ways using just XHTML, the meta tag and microformats. This talk will introduce you to some emerging technologies from the Semantic Web camp to enrich your web pages with useful information for both automated extraction and improved browsing experiences.

REST : Information-Driven Architectures for the 21st Century

There is a shift going on in the Enterprise. While still used and useful, the promises of the SOAP/WSDL/UDDI Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) stack have failed to live up to their promise. A new vision of linked information is enveloping online and Enterprise users. The REST architectural style is squarely behind this thinking as a way of achieving low-cost, flexible integration, increased data security, greater scalability and long-term migration strategies.

If you have dismissed REST as a toy or are unfamiliar with it, you owe it to yourself to see what is so interesting about this way of doing things.

SPARQL : Querying the Web of Data

The human-friendly Web is about nicely-formatted, accessible content for users to browse. There are emerging Data Webs (both public and private) that rely on technologies from the Semantic Web stack to link increasingly rich connections between various data sources. SPARQL and RDF are the main tools for expressing and using this connectivity. This talk will introduce you to one of these topics and the practical and accessible aspects of employing them on the Web and in the Enterprise.

Getting people to come to consensus on common models and schemas is usually the hardest part of any data integration strategies. These technologies help lower the bar on both the technical and social costs of stepping up your integration strategies.

The Semantic Web : The Future, Now

Just as the world is feeling comfortable with the Web, Tim Berners-Lee et al inform us that what we have seen so far is just the beginning. His original plans at CERN were larger and grander. The Semantic Web is a vision of machine-processable documents and metadata to improve search, knowledge discovery and data integration and management. The only problem is that there is no such thing. There is no Semantic Web, just the Web we have that is increasingly semantics-enabled.

Forget the hype. Come learn how the technologies of this vision are being used today on the Web and in the Enterprise by more people than you might think.

Collaborative real-time RIA

In this session, learn to craft and create collaborative rich internet applications, that are responsive and updated in real-time for streamlined decision making and business intelligence harnessing. Understand how in-time communication can smoothen information exchange, reduce errors and increase productivity.

Flex and Hibernate

A complete journey into the challenges and solutions for effective integration of Flex and Hibernate.

Flexing up Java

Combine BlazeDS to create robust scalable enterprise applications that leverage Flex and Java.

Object Inheritance and other Diabolical JavaScript

Presented by Mike Wilcox and Bob Byron

Warning: JavaScript Warriors only; leave that spaghetti code at home! The truly adventurous will learn how to apply the arguments from your sub class to your base class constructor. We'll explore prototypal inheritance techniques and the syntactic sugar to make it easy. Then we'll create a sleek and sexy class constructor that creates powerful and extensible classes, allowing for code reuse and increased productivity.

TARGET AUDIENCE - Medium to Advanced JavaScript Developers

Stocker - Advanced Dojo Made Easy

Presented by Mike Wilcox and Bob Byron

Today's users are demanding that your website be more interactive than ever, and deliver fresh information instantly in different formats. Enter Stocker — a SitePen demo application with a dual display of faux stock information continuously streamed from the server. It uses the most advanced and complex components in Dojo which have been abstracted with simple APIs that allows them to be plugged into your application quickly and easily. Install the Persevere server and write server-side JavaScript that you can connect to with CometD, all in just minutes. Use the extremely popular DojoX Grid and vector graphics Charts that integrate seamlessly with Dojo Data. Then wrap it all up in a complex layout entirely handled by Dijit!

TARGET AUDIENCE - Web Developers of all levels, management interested in learning new technologies or a potential Dojo integration.

That's Not Flash? Native Browser Vector Graphics

Browsers can move images around on the screen, but they can't draw without Flash or one of those other plugins, right? Today's browsers — Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and yes, even Internet Explorer — all have Vector Graphics implementations. But Is SVG really possible in Internet Explorer? What are the benefits of SVG over Flash? And what the heck is a vector graphic anyway?

See liquid layouts never before possible in a web browser that are fully interactive, squash and stretch, and have physical properties — all without Flash Player or any other plugin. Vector graphic markup is a simple, familiar language, and the DojoX GFX package creates a cross-browser abstraction which allows for advanced techniques and dazzling effects.

TARGET AUDIENCE - Web Developers of all levels, management interested in learning new technologies

The Firebug Smackdown

Presented by Mike Wilcox and Bob Byron

Even the newest browsers can create a hostile environment for developers. Today's AJAX applications create dynamic HTML you won't see with View Source. CSS is harder than it looks. XmlHttpRequests are happening in the background.

Firebug is currently the developer's choice for debugging web sites and today's more powerful web applications. It goes much deeper than logging your messages and avoiding the use of alert(). In the Firebug Smackdown you have a ring side seat to witness a series of lightning rounds where Mike Wilcox and Bob Byron go head to head taking turns battling each other with their large repertoire of debugging and development, covering all sections of Firebug: Console, HTML, CSS, Script, DOM, Net, and more!

TARGET AUDIENCE - Web Developers of all skill levels

Advanced jQuery UI: Build Your Own Widgets

jQuery UI makes it easy to create web user interfaces as rich as traditional desktop applications. It's a growing suite of interfaces, widgets, and effects that can make an advanced web UI with drag-and-drop, animation, and standard UI design.

jQuery UI supports all major web browsers, and is as easy to use as

$("Hello, World").dialog();

Not only does jQuery UI provide a suite of tested and documented cross-browser UI components, but it provides a simple mechanism for creating your own UI Widgets, to encapsulate user interfaces and interactions, so custom interface coding is abstracted away and reusable.

Learning jQuery UI and the jQuery UI CSS Framework

jQuery UI, built on top of jQuery, is a complete set of behaviors and components that can be used in building Rich Internet Applications. Behaviors and components included in jQuery UI include drag-and-drop, resizing, mouse-sorting, mouse-selecting (click-select, shift-select, ctrl-select, lasso select), dialogs, sliders, tabs, trees, grids, toolbars and menus.

Each component adheres to a consistent standard across API, design, behavior and theming. This minimizes the surprise and makes learning all of them as easy as learning one. Just as with jQuery, there is a plugin system in jQuery UI that allows users to easily modify/extend existing components, as well as create your own.

jQuery UI also includes a powerful and flexible CSS framework. The jQuery UI CSS Framework, the first CSS framework to focus on UI widgets rather than web page design and layout, brings consistency to a web User Interface, while allowing developers of all levels of design experience to customize and tweak it to fit an existing or a new site design.

jQuery

jQuery is one of the most popular and easy to use JavaScript frameworks. jQuery is an open source library that simplifies DOM manipulation, event handling, Ajax, and animation. The jQuery core is lean and light, while having the power and extensibility to support a rich plugin ecosystem. It also sports a concise and elegant API that is a joy to behold and use.