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Web Directions Code 2013

The conference runs from 9am to 5pm on May 2nd and 3rd, with parties after the show on both nights. There’s also an optional extra workshop on May 1.

Thursday, May 2nd

Angus Croll The politics of JavaScript

British philosopher John Locke cautioned that all knowledge is limited by experience. We can only wonder what he would have made of the JavaScript community, where understanding of, or familiarity with, the problem space are of little concern when there's a good bandwagon ready to be jumped on. I'll ponder the emergence of moralizing and faith-based JavaScript and discuss how an alternative approach grounded in knowledge, experience and understanding can not only make us better developers but also, by freeing us from FUD induced constraints, encourage creativity and innovation.

Angus is a displaced Brit who now works for Twitter‘s web core team in San Francisco. He is the author of the JavaScript, JavaScript blog and is writing a JavaScript book due out later this year on No Starch Press. Angus is obsessed with JavaScript and literature in equal measure, and is a passionate advocate for the greater involvement of artists and creative thinkers in software. If there's one thing he's learned is that every “best practice” should be thoroughly questioned.

Morning tea: scones all round!

Jeremy Ashkenas Taking JavaScript seriously with Backbone.js

More and more folks are bringing ever larger pieces of their web applications to the client side. You might begin to do it for raw speed, for a particular visualization, or for an "application-like" experience, but regardless of why you do it -- you're going to have to start taking your JavaScript seriously. We'll discuss how Backbone.js is aimed at the common patterns that JavaScript-heavy web applications rely on, how the pieces work together, and some of the design decisions that give Backbone its flavour.

Jeremy Ashkenas is a programmer-at-large, living on the road for most of 2013. When not being itinerant, he works on the Interactive News team at the New York Times, and on DocumentCloud.org, helping news organizations analyze and publish the primary source documents behind the news. He created the CoffeeScript programming language, Backbone.js and Underscore.js, among other open-source projects.

Silvia Pfeiffer HTML5 multi-party video conferencing

Last year at Web Directions Code we saw Silvia hack up the JavaScript and HTML code for a video connection in the browser without using plugins. This year she takes this to the next level to explain how you can do multi-party video conferencing in the browser using WebRTC. We expect that we’ll be able to do this across Chrome and Firefox this year some time!

Silvia is an open video technology enthusiast with a long background in open source software, media technology R&D, and in open standards. She has a PhD in audio and video content analysis, has worked with research institutes, started her own video technology company, is a freelance Web and standards developer, is currently a Google contractor coding and standardizing video accessibility techniques, and most recently joined the HTML5 editor team at the W3C. She is also the author of “The Definitive Guide to HTML5 Video”.

Ryan Seddon Ghost in the Shadow DOM

The DOM will finally have real encapsulation with the introduction of the Shadow DOM, a subset of the Web Components spec that will revolutionise web development as we know it. In this session we’ll take a short, sharp tour on the how and why of what the Shadow DOM has to offer.

Ryan Seddon is a Senior Front-end Developer from Melbourne Australia who has an unnatural obsession with JavaScript and the many places it runs. He also loves to tinker with any new web technology he can get his hands on and loves diving into specs and code to figure out more. In his spare time he’s either playing basketball, writing for his blog thecssninja.com or committing code to github.

TBA Topic coming soon

Lunch: my people need pies!

Nicole Sullivan The top 5 performance shenanigans of CSS preprocessors

CSS is a simple declarative language. Preprocessors were introduced to overcome it’s many limitations. Developers have long awaited this functionality, and the use of CSS preprocessors like SASS, Less, and Stylus has become ubiquitous on big websites. Yet CSS preprocessors often output some downright ugly code. During this talk, you will learn about preprocessor performance best practices.

Nicole is a UI performance nerd living and working in San Francisco. She helps companies make their CSS smaller and their UI more manageable. She is also an author, most recently contributing to the Web Performance Daybook Volume 2. Photo taken by John Morrison.

Tony Milne Making and keeping promises in JavaScript

An overview of using promises in JavaScript to clean up the async callback pyramid developers often face when building more advanced functionality in the browser or using node.js, this session will cover the theory of when and how and then provide concrete examples using the “q” promise library.

Tony is a co-founder of Inlight Media, a leading Melbourne web and mobile development company who specialise in Node.js backed iOS/web projects. When Tony fills in his census survey answers, JavaScript is his native language. Tony helps organise and regularly attends MelbJS (a Melbourne JavaScript group) and the Melbourne Node.js meet-up, so you can come along, hang out and drink a beer with him there.

Andrew Fisher The wonderful-amazing-orientation-motion-sensormatic machine

Mobile devices are amazing things. Not only can you use them to make phone calls, but they are jammed full of interesting sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and GPS chips. These amazing components not only tell you where you are on the planet but also the direction you're facing and how many G’s you happen to be pulling as you ride the tram on the way to work. And all of this is now available in the web browser through the Device API. In this short session we’ll look at how to get access to the orientation and motion data available to the mobile browser. Rather than just using it to turn your page the right way up no matter which way you’re holding the device, we’ll look at how to use these APIs to create applications with new input methods based on sensor data as well as user interaction.

Andrew Fisher loves playing with technology. In fact he loves breaking things in order to understand how they work as much as creating things with the bits that survive. He plays at the intersection of the web, mobile tech, ubicomp and data. When he can be persuaded away from something likely to electrocute him, Andrew does some real work too and has been involved with organisations globally since the dawn of the web creating digital solutions for brands including Nintendo, peoplesound, Sony, Cotton On, the Melbourne Cup and Optus. Andrew is the CTO for JBA, a data agency in Melbourne, Australia where he uses web technology and data science to create meaning from large, changing data sets for clients. He also created Rocket Melbourne, a startup technology lab exploring the emergence of human interaction with the Web of Things.

Afternoon tea: it’s time for a cuppa!

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Alex Danilo Create impact with CSS Filters

CSS Filters are a powerful tool available in all modern browsers to bring amazing photographic effects to web content. They can transform and manipulate the visual output in all sorts of amazing ways. From simple colour manipulation, blurring, etc all the way to complex combined effects, the creative possibilities are almost endless. Understanding how to use CSS filters, what they do as well as how to combine multiple filters for advanced effects will all be explained. Performance impact from use of filters is an important consideration as well and will be demonstrated. Current browsers are enabling these effects with H/W acceleration even on mobile devices, and we‘ll cover what they do, how to use them, best practices and more. Next generation browsers coming really soon will be building on enhanced custom filters. Custom filters are cutting edge but build on top of the filter model. We‘ll explain what a custom filter is, what it does and taste some of the possibilities for future creative content.

Alex has spent over a decade on various W3C working groups developing the standards we all know and love, all while running a couple of start ups doing web engines for mobile and embedded markets. He‘s shown off his web technology based products at CES and NAB in Vegas, IBC in Amsterdam, multiple trade shows in Japan and now works at Google, spreading the good word about HTML5 and Chrome.

TBA Topic coming soon

Jared Wyles See the tries for the trees

Stop. Put down the keyboard. Have you thought about your data structures Why is that an array? Have you thought about your algorithms? Why are you iterating over every element? Through this talk we will look at the history of algorithms and data structures and how we can evaluate their strengths and weaknesses before we write a single line of code. We shall look at some different programming languages and see how concepts from these “mathy” languages have driven some of todays largest scaling websites.

As a senior computer scientist at Adobe, Jared is putting his money where his mouth is in order to improve the web. Previously, he’s worked with Atlassian, Bigcommerce, and the usual digital agencies: in off hours, he can usually be found ranting, scotch-in-hand, about the current state of web applications and standards, or using his soapbox to push the importance of web performance at various conferences.

Opening night party

Have a drink and a bite to eat and share some of your thoughts on what you’ve seen today with other conference attendees: it’s on us! Make some friends and head out to some of the restaurants and bars on the Web Directions Code map. Take it easy though: see below for the 9am start tomorrow morning!

Friday, May 3rd

Garann Means HTML, CSS and the client-side app

Everyone knows client-side applications are built with JavaScript. Right? JavaScript ties the application together, but a considerable amount of most applications deals with markup and presentation. As much as they affect JavaScript, state, event handling, and default browser behavior also impact HTML and CSS in the choices we make, optimizations we can take advantage of, and the architecture of our applications as a whole. And the HTML and CSS that make up the structure of our applications need to be managed just as much as our JavaScript does. We’ll talk about how HTML and CSS fit into the the big picture and how to take greater advantage of them in a context where we frequently consider them last.

Garann is a JavaScript developer from Austin, Texas, USA. She works at Etsy, where she tries to use front-end technologies to make it easier for people around the world to buy and sell handmade and vintage treasures. She’s the author of Node for Front-End Developers and the organizer of Austin All-Girl Hack Night and Girl Develop It Austin.

Morning tea: coffee me!

TBA Topic coming soon

Mark Nottingham HTTP/2.0: WTF?

After 15+ years of the same protocol, we’re now talking trying to upgrade the underpinnings of the Web. Find out who’s behind it, what they’re doing, and how it might affect you.

Mark Nottingham has helped develop Web technologies like Atom and HTTP for more than ten years. Starting as a system administrator and Webmaster in 1995 (back when that title still got comments at parties), he’s become a recognised expert on the HTTP protocol, as well as Web caching and HTTP “APIs”. This led him to become Chair of the IETF HTTPbis Working Group, an effort to first clean up HTTP/1.1 and then develop HTTP/2.0. He currently works for Akamai, the world’s first, largest and best public Content Delivery Network.

Julio Cesar Ody What’s ECMAScript 6 good for?

An introduction to ES6 with emphasis on its practical aspects. See what it can do for you today, and learn how you'll be able to better structure client–side programs with this next step in the evolution of JavaScript.

Julio Cesar Ody is a developer/designer who works with a range of technologies from backend to frontend. He spends a lot of time thinking about web tech and sharing his thoughts, so you’ve got more time for family or mojitos, depending on your side of the fence.

Troy Hunt Essential security practices for protecting your modern web services

These days, modern web design offers some fantastic new ways of building highly responsive apps using asynchronous services called directly from the browser. We now regularly create and consume services which we never directly see in the address bar, rather they're consumed in the background by the likes of JavaScript and rich client mobile apps. But are you properly securing all those fancy new asynchronous requests? Just because they're not as visible as traditional webpages doesn't mean they're any less vulnerable to attackers. In fact it's often the opposite; web service security is frequently neglected as the service is "out of sight, out of mind" and we're increasingly seeing these exploited by attackers as their popularity increases. Let's take a look at what it takes to build secure services, how to easily find the ones that aren't and then what an attacker might do to exploit those that remain vulnerable.

Troy Hunt is a Software Architect and Microsoft MVP for Developer Security. Troy has spent the last 17 years building web applications and now specialises in software architecture and security. He blogs regularly about security principles in software development at troyhunt.com, is the author of the OWASP Top 10 for .NET developers series and recently the free eBook of the same name. Troy is also a regular speaker and the creator of ASafaWeb, the Automated Security Analyser for ASP.NET Websites at asafaweb.com.

Lunch: come for the freak, stay for the food!

TBA Topic coming soon

Alex Mackey TypeScript and Terminators

TypeScript is a new language from Microsoft that is a superset of JavaScript and provides some awesome functionality such as static typing, better IDE support, and an easy to use way to develop classes & interfaces. This session will use the underused medium of Schwarzenegger films to explain just what Type Script is, why you might want to use it & when you should avoid it (like that terrible movie where Arnie got pregnant).

Alex is an experienced consultant with over 11 years’ experience in .NET technologies who works for Kiandra IT. He wrote the books Introducing .NET 4.0 & Introducing .NET 4.5 for Apress. Alex is very active in the development community, having spoken at a number of large conferences including TechEd, Remix and Australian ALM. Alex also runs the development conference DDD Melbourne.

TBA Topic coming soon

Afternoon tea: smoke-o!

Cameron McCormack File > Open: An introduction to the File API

HTML has long had the ability to upload files to a server, at least since as far back as HTML 3.0 published in 1995, but it is only relatively recently that web pages have been given the ability to read files selected by the user directly in the page, without having to send them to the server first. The availability of the File API across the major browsers is steadily increasing, with Internet Explorer 10 implementing the API most recently. In this session, Cameron will introduce the File API and demonstrate how it can be used in conjunction with HTML 5 <input> elements to create a client-side Web application that can access a user’s local files.

Cameron is a Software Engineer at Mozilla, where he works mostly on the SVG and CSS support in Gecko, the Web rendering engine behind Firefox. Based in Melbourne, he is also heavily involved in Web standards activities at the W3C, where he is the editor of the Web IDL specification and co-chair of the SVG Working Group.

TBA Topic coming soon

Steven Wittens Making things with maths

The browser used to be a meek sandbox, shut off from all the things that native apps could do. But now we’ve grown up, and with WebGL, Canvas, Web Audio, Device Access and more, we have a lot of power at our fingertips. To really unlock this potential and make all this data dance, we need maths.

Steven Wittens is a long time web developer, recreational mathematician and graphics enthusiast who left his native Belgium years ago in search of adventure and better internet. Ever fond of playing with the cutting edge toys, he maintains the tech blog Acko.net, a living demo of JavaScript, CSS 3D, WebGL and whatever else he can manage to get working. A veteran of the open source world and supposedly a qualified engineer, he combines his passion for math and software with a perpetual desire to make the world a more visually interesting place.

Closing night party

Time to let your hair down after an intense couple of days at our legendary closing night party.