My Ajax Experience: Conference

• Part 1: Ajax Experience Tutorial Sessions
• Part 2: My Ajax Experience
• Part 3: Ajax Experience Roundup

First off, a quick note: Ajaxian featured my post yesterday on Ajax Experience Tutorials. Ironically in the same day Smashing Magazine published an article featuring my jQuery calendar script. I guess it was my day to be blessed - I was featured on two very popular tech sites for two completely separate reasons.

Day 2 - Geek Week @ Ajax Experience

Today seemed somewhat of a social gathering for me rather than intense Ajax information. Above shows Paul Bakaus (jQuery UI Lead), me (jQuery UI) and John Resig (jQuery Lead). All of the jQuery people went out to eat afterwords. I guess the world series was going on - really, I didn't know that Boston was in the world series - I am here for Ajax!

The dinner consisted of Rey Bango (EXT/jQuery) talking about balancing life with the passions of development as well as Jörn Zaefferer (jQuery Plugins Developer) and I dreaming up the existence of some sort of plugins web app.

What was really quite interesting was how much emotion surrounds these technologies. Since everything is relatively new and frameworks seem to be fighting for the "Ajax" space, people seem to commit to one tool and defend it with all their heart. Well, I can't say I am immune to that - I think I won a few people over to jQuery today.

Ajax Experience Day 2 Sessions

CSS Hate

There was a lot of CSS hate going on and discussions. Ben (Co-founder of Ajaxian.com) even suggested the need of a JavaScript framework for laying out page design. JavaScript is great for detecting browser window widths and adjusting the CSS layouts accordingly, but I can't see completely replacing CSS with JavaScript any time in the immediate future. Interesting idea, but I don't think I would claim that is the next solution. He showed an example of Google Images changing the number of columns as the browser window's width changed. CSS sure beats tables but I would welcome a styling alternative.

Mapquest Open Source-age

Kevin Survance of MapQuest rattled off the MapQuest team's stack of open source software:

• dojo
• DWR
• Apache Tomcat
• RedHat linux
• mysql
• java 5
• terracotta
• jboss rules
• freemarker
• hibernate
• spring framework

Other than that there were a couple of plugs about MapQuest. I don't use MapQuest - I use Google Maps but I have to say my girlfriend's Mom uses MapQuest and she loves it!

Future of JavaScript

John Resig of Mozilla

John showed off the features in the new JavaScript standard that Mozilla is writing. It simply makes JavaScript a more robust and feature rich language.

What is funny about this is that Mozilla has partnered with Adobe on this new version of JavaScript. So what this means is that even if browsers (IE, Safari, etc) don't support the new JavaScript than Adobe's Flash plugin will have the new JavaScript interpreter built in. That certainly works. Way to create the next standard, Mozilla! And thank you Adobe for supporting the advancing of the language.

Accessibility and Internationalization with Dojo

Adam Peller and Becky Gibson

This was the most interesting topic for me today. Apparently Dojo is the leader in some standardization specification called, ARIA - Accessible Rich Internet Applications. Dojo is pressing to be the first JavaScript framework that is fully compliant with the ARIA specs. I tip my hat to you, Dojo. Accessibility is awesome, that means that if my body starts falling apart (I pray that it won't), at least someone will cover my behind and let me use assistive technologies so I can still be wired to internet land - the land where your information fairytales become true.

Low Vision

Dojo demo’d something called a "high contrast" mode in Windows XP. Control Panel -> Accessibility Options -> Display -> Check "Use High Contrast" It than switches your computer into a mode with high contrast for people with low vision. This mode actually strips out the CSS background images from your website. This is where it is important to have text alternatives to your buttons and anything that displays text via a background image. A way to implement high contrast mode is to detect that it is active and include an alternative stylesheet.

Complete Vision Loss

People with complete vision loss use screen reader or brail display. Here are some things to consider when developing an accessible application for the users with complete vision loss.

• Must work both with mouse and keyboard (tabindex).
• Should give valuable feedback about the state of the application via a screen reader.
• Tool tips should activate on focus rather than simply on mouse over.
• Tab through widgets and than use arrow keys instead of each tabbing through each individual widget piece.

They then demoed a screen reader using their widgets. The application would give feedback like, "New Message, 1 of 2, combo box". Indicating that your first message is selected and you are focused on a combo box. This is great and I would love to understand how to do this. I could have, "close my eyes day" where I use my applications as if I was blind and develop from that perspective. If ybmit_type" Save