Orlando Code Camp JavaScript Sessions

I was honored to be asked by Esteban Garcia (@EstebanFGarcia) to speak at the Orlando Code Camp on March 31, 2012.

I was impressed that there were 13 simultaneous tracks that were running all day long! One of the tracks was JavaScript and that is where I stayed pretty much stayed. I presented 2 sessions Extending Your jQuery Application with AmplifyJS and Find Common jQuery Bugs. You can find the slides for these presentations online:

• Extending Your jQuery Application with AmplifyJS - This session takes an existing web application and slow enhances it with with the 3 components of AmplifyJS. I introduce the observer pattern using amplify.publish/amplify.subscribe, I show how to use the amplify.store to support HTML5 persistant storage that is cross-browser, and I show amplify.request which is a high level abstraction to $.ajax that provides ease of configuration, mocking, prototyping, and hooks to protect against future changes.
• Find Common jQuery Bugs - jQuery is so easy to use and thankfully abstracts many of the cross-browser concerns we used to labor over years ago. However, as with any library there are a common set of bugs that tend to crop up the more you use it. This session aims to help equip developers with the appropriate knowledge and tools to exterminate many common bugs seen in jQuery code. For each topic that is covered we will start with a piece of code that has a jQuery bug, then identify what the bug is, explain why it is happening, and then proceed to explore various techniques to exterminate the bug.

Kevin Griffin (@1kevgriff) started the day with a beginner “Zero to Hero in jQuery” talk. Even though jQuery has been around for years, it still can pack a room! Kevin had a lot of question from the audience and engaged them well.

John Papa (@john_papa) was the keynote speaker and gave an overview on the state of the web. He gave a good high level view of the technologies that are used today in modern front-end applications. John also gave the following 2 JavaScript presentations that were standing room only:

• Whirlwind Tour of Building HTML5 and JavaScript Apps with MVVM and Knockout
• JsRender Fundamentals: Templating for HTML5 Applications.

In addition John has done an in-depth Pluralsight series on Knockout and he is currently working on a series for JsRender that should be available May 2012.

There was a large crown of attendees at the conference. I heard that over 750 people signed-up to attend. That is extremely impressive and the conference was FREE too! It takes a lot of hard work, determination, and donations from generous sponsors to have something like that succeed. I want to thank Esteban Garcia and his team for the great job that they did.