An article I wrote for siliconvalleywatcher just got published. It’s a general wrap-up of the AJAX summit.
Month: May 2005
Big-up to bigempty
Bigempty’s coverage of the AJAX conference has been superb.
AJAX summit continued 3
Day two of the O’reilly/Adaptive Path AJAX confab in SF started as a continuation of day 1, with a series of presenters showing off their latest AJAX tricks.
AJAX summit continued 2
More from the AJAX summit
David Heinemeier Hansson just gave a nice overview of the AJAX-related features of the ruby on rails API. It’s impossible to evaluate an API without using it (at least for me), but this stuff looks pretty neat! The basic idea seems to be minimizing the complexity of the code on the client (since cross-platform javascript development is such hell). They use .innerHtml to rewrite the html that displays to the user, and keep html generation server side. Cinematic UI effects (like fading) are baked into the API. David is a funny guy. He REALLY hates DOM-based javascripting!
AJAX summit continued
Many of the morning presenters were presenting little web tweaks: tactical improvements to a site that make it just a little bit faster, easier, or have a clearer workflow. Technorati and Flickr both showed the minor improvements that they have made to their sites. These tweaks sound like they were a LOT of work to do. This is a big problem with AJAX: doing it “right” (for all browsers) means taking on a lot of technical complexity.
Oreilly AJAX summit
I’m at the Oreilly AJAX summit today and tomorrow (speaking later today).
Here’s the speaker list and the wiki.
Right now Jesse James Garrett has just wrapped up the keynote. No surprises so far
Javascript Accordian Widget wanted
Anyone know of a good javascript accordian widget? I may need one for an upcoming project. Treeviews seem plentiful, accordians are a little harder to find…
Time management for anarchists
I found a great little fake powerpoint presentation called Time Management for anarchists (the movie). It’s really good and quite funny. Non-powerpoint version here.
SCRUM time
Paul Graham: Hiring is obsolete
Paul Graham
(lisp enthusiast, successful tech entrepreneur and author of the excellent book Hackers and Painters) is speaking at Berkeley tonight.
If you miss “Hiring is obsolete“, you can catch him 2 days later at PARC, for “How to Sell A Startup” (Note: the PARC talk costs 25$, the Berkeley talk is free). If you miss that, you can console yourself by reading some of his excellent essays.
jonathanboutelle.com 