Development Track | Web Directions South 2010

Development Track

Steve Souders can make your web site even faster; Max Wheeler says it’s all about location, location, geolo­cation; Ben Schwartz is building a better web with HTML5; Paul Hagon can enrich your large data set and Patrick Lee intro­duces us to server-​​side JavaScript.

Location, location, geolocation

Presenter: Max Wheeler

Phones with GPS are now widely available and the growing support for the JavaScript geolo­cation API means location based services aren’t restricted to the realm of native appli­ca­tions. Now is the time to learn how to take advantage of this infor­mation and add provide your users with the best personal and contextual experience.

This session will take you through building a location-​​based mobile app using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Including cross-​​platform tech­niques for figuring out where your users are, and providing graceful fall­backs options for devices that don’t have geolo­cation support (or users that don’t want to tell you exactly). You’ll learn about geocoding to a physical address (and the other way around) and look at how to build a mobile-​​friendly map with local points of interest.

JavaScript Sprachraum

Delve deep into JavaScript

Presenter: Patrick Lee

Despite being an option on web servers as early as 1995 with Netscape’s LiveWire, JavaScript has long been regarded as a language only of the browser.

Approaching sweet sixteen JavaScript has evolved in the community and gained accep­tance as a general purpose programming language.

In this session Patrick will be looking at JavaScript outside of the browser, focusing on how to use it for web server appli­ca­tions. Starting with the old in Helma and progressing through various usages to the most new and exciting with node.js, Patrick will talk about why JavaScript on the server matters right now and show you how to get started using it.

Enriching large data sets

The ins and outs of APIs and RDFa

Presenter: Paul Hagon

Libraries contain masses of beau­ti­fully struc­tured data collected over many years. But these records may have their flaws and might now want to be used in ways, such as location based services, that weren’t imagined 30 years ago. How can we use existing API’s and web services to enrich this data to enable it to be used in a variety of ways. This data also needs to be exposed for others to use and build upon. With the recent release of the Government response to the Web 2.0 task­force, how can insti­tu­tions comply with these recom­men­da­tions by providing their data in usable forms for the public. What’s involved in building an API into our resources and how can our data be given more meaning through semantic linkages like RDFa?

Even Faster Web Sites

Presenter: Steve Souders

Web 2.0 is adding more and more content to our pages, espe­cially features that are imple­mented in Ajax. But our web appli­ca­tions are evolving faster than the browsers that they run in. We don’t have to rely on or wait for the release of new browsers to make our web appli­ca­tions faster. In this session, Steve Souders discusses web perfor­mance best prac­tices from his second book, Even Faster Web Sites. These time-​​saving tech­niques are used by the world’s most popular web sites to create a faster user expe­rience, increase revenue, and reduce oper­ating costs. Steve provides tech­nical details about reducing the pain of JavaScript, as well as secrets for making your page load faster in emerging markets where network connec­tivity is a challenge.

Building a better web with HTML5

Presenter: Ben Schwarz

Devices have caught up; That is, our tech­nology dreams from the mid 90’s have finally been realised. However since this time, HTML has lay dormant. We’ve been through a decade of tech wasteland. It’s time to change the status quo and take back the web.

During my session we’ll look at where the future of HTML lies, including new struc­tural elements. You’ll also grasp an intro­duction to asso­ciated tech­nologies that have come into popu­larity with the steam of HTML5: SVG, Web Sockets, Web Workers, Geo-​​location and making appli­ca­tions useful offline.

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