jQuery Introduction Talk

Tonight I am giving a ā€œjQuery Introductionā€ presentation to the Nashville .NET Userā€™s Group.

Time: Pizza @ 6:00pm; Presentation @ 6:30pm;

Topic: jQuery Introduction

jQuery is a JavaScript framework that makes client-side coding more simple and powerful than compared to straight JavaScript. This session will give an overview of benefits of jQuery, show how to integrate jQuery in your project, and demonstrate how easy it is to do complex things with a small amount of jQuery code.

Location:

VACO, LLC
Highwoods Plaza I (Signage out front says Aspect - Cogent)
Suite 460 (4th floor)
5410 Maryland Way
Brentwood, TN 37027

(615) 324-8226

Update: You can now download the slides from my presentation. I used the S5 web based presentation tool which allowed me to actually run jQuery examples inside the presentation.

Note: The video is still being encoded and should be live sometime this weekend. I will update this post with the video once it is available.

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Speaking at CodeStock 2009

I am honored to have been picked as one of the CodeStock 2009 speakers for this year. Thank you to everyone who voted for my session!

The results of the voting came out yesterday and have been posted to the CodeStock website.

Useful jQuery tips, tricks, and plugins with ASP.NET MVC
Elijah Manor - ( Area: ASP.NET MVC Level: 200)

ASP.NET MVC has included the jQuery framework as part of their installation package. There are many ways in which jQuery compliments ASP.NET MVC by making the Views very simple. This session will review various tips, tricks, and plugins that demonstrate how jQuery and ASP.NET MVC work very well together.

codestock_title_09

CodeStock will be taking place June 26-27, 2009 in Knoxville, TN.

Purchase your tickets today!

You can find a list of Twitter Users that have already signed up for CodeStock on their website.

I hope to see you there! Iā€™m sure Iā€™ll be tweeting about my experiences :)

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Delicious Tech Tweets

Due to popular demand I have started to publish my Twitter tech tweets to my delicious profile.

The original intent of the tech tweets was to share current technology news with those that might be interested.

delicious I have had feedback from several individuals (@shanselman, @calvinb, @mallize) that delicious would be a good repository to complement my tech tweets so that someone could easily retrieve the links in the future.

If you are new to delicious, it is a social bookmarking service that allows you to post and share links to the world. You can learn more about it on deliciousā€™ about page. There are some really useful tools to make this more worth your while.

twitterSo, with the addition of delicious I think I will cease to post the weekly Tech Twitterings blog post since the content should be much easier to locate on delicious.

Hopefully this can be a useful option for those that are interested in the tech tweets, but donā€™t want to follow me on Twitter because of the quantity of my tweets :)

I have started a program to post a delicious link as soon as my tweets get posted, but in the meantime there will be a slight delay between my tweets and when it gets posted to delicious.

What do you think about this change? Do you find the tech tweets useful? Do you have a delicious account?

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Presenting jQuery Plugin Session at devLink Conference

Last month I submitting 6 sessions to this yearā€™s devLink Conference.

I recently found that they accepted the advanced session on ā€˜How to create your own jQuery Pluginā€™ that I had proposed.

Here is the session abstract for those of you who are interestedā€¦

<blockquote>How to create your own jQuery Plugin

There comes a time when the jQuery plugins currently available just donā€™t meet your immediate needs. This session will show you how to go about creating your own plugin and will address key points you need to consider while making a plugin.</blockquote>Iā€™ve been to devLink for the past two years and itā€™s definitely worth the time and money. It is a great chance to learn new concepts and to meet and share ideas with fellow geeks!

Here is some more information about the conferenceā€¦
<dl><dt>When</dt><dd>August 13 - 15, 2009</dd><dt>Reg. Opens</dt><dd>April 1, 2009</dd><dt>Reg. Closes</dt><dd>July 30, 2009 or until sold out (800 available)</dd><dt>Cost</dt><dd>Standard Ticket - $100 </dd><dt>Where</dt><dd>Lipscomb University</dd></dl>

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JavaScript Unit Testing Part 2: JSSpec

In this post we will examine the 2nd of 4 JavaScript Unit Testing frameworks... JSSpec.

Previous parts of this series...

In subsequent posts we will cover QUnit, and YUI Test.

<p>I like this Unit Testing framework a lot more than JsUnit for the following reasons...</p><ul><li>As you can see from the screenshot below, it has a nice interactive Test Runner</li>   <li>The testing API has an easy to read <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface">Fluent Interface</a> (a.k.a. It reads like English)</li>   <li>The project appears to still be active... the latest version was available on <a href="http://code.google.com/p/jsspec/downloads/list">Sep 23, 2008</a></li>   <li>The test files don't need to be hosted in a web server in order to run (unlike JsUnit).</li></ul><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_L6DiZQsfJzs/Seh2yK6z7KI/AAAAAAAAGyY/PJKcwcfoVMc/s1600-h/PigLatin.PNG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_L6DiZQsfJzs/Seh2yK6z7KI/AAAAAAAAGyY/PJKcwcfoVMc/s400/PigLatin.PNG"></a></div> <p>Ok, ok, enough talk. Lets get down to using this framework...</p> <p>I added functionality to the nasty Pig Latin JavaScript to not only translate words, but also sentences.*</p> <p>*Note: Yet again, this code is not optimal and it will be refactored in a future post.</p> <pre><br>function EnglishToPigLatin() {<br>    this.CONSONANTS = 'bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz';<br>    this.VOWELS = 'aeiou';<br>    this.Translate = function(english, splitType) {<br>        var translated = '';    <br><br>        console.log('English: ', english);<br>        var words = english.split(/\s+/);<br>        console.log('Split Words: ', words);<br>        for (var i = 0; i < words.length; ++i) {<br>            console.log('Word ', i, ': ', words[i]);<br>            translated += this.TranslateWord(words[i]);<br>            if (i+1 < words.length) translated += ' ';<br>        }<br>        console.log('Translated: ', translated);<br>        console.log('----------');<br><br>        return translated;<br>    }<br>    this.TranslateWord = function(english) {<br>       /*const*/ var SYLLABLE = 'ay';<br><br>       var pigLatin = '';<br><br>       if (english != null && english.length > 0 && <br>          (this.VOWELS.indexOf(english[0].toLowerCase()) > -1 || this.CONSONANTS.indexOf(english[0].toLowerCase()) > -1 )) {<br>          if (this.VOWELS.indexOf(english[0].toLowerCase()) > -1) {<br>             pigLatin = english + SYLLABLE;<br>          } else {      <br>             var preConsonants = '';<br>             for (var i = 0; i < english.length; ++i) {<br>                if (this.CONSONANTS.indexOf(english[i].toLowerCase()) > -1) {<br>                   preConsonants += english[i];<br>                   if (preConsonants.toLowerCase() == 'q' && i+1 < english.length && english[i+1].toLowerCase() == 'u') {<br>                      preConsonants += 'u';<br>                      i += 2;<br>                      break;<br>                   }<br>                } else {<br>                   break;<br>                }<br>             }<br>             pigLatin = english.substring(i) + preConsonants + SYLLABLE;<br>          }<br>       }<br><br>       return pigLatin;    <br>    }<br>} </pre> <p>Like I said before, JSSpec provides a nicer Fluent Interface that makes the tests read more like English. The follow are several sets of Unit Tests to exercise the existing functionality, plus the new feature I added since the last post.</p> <pre><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"><br><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="ko"><br><head><br><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /><br><title>JSSpec results</title><br><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="JSSpec.css" /><br><script type="text/javascript" src="diff_match_patch.js"></script><br><script type="text/javascript" src="JSSpec.js"></script><br><script type="text/javascript" src="PigLatinBad.js"></script><br><script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[<br>describe('Invalid Arguments', {<br>    before_each : function() { englishToPigLatin = new EnglishToPigLatin(); },<br>    'Passing Null Should Return Blank': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord(null)).should_be('');<br>    },<br>    'Passing Blank Should Return Blank': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('')).should_be('');<br>    },    <br>    'Passing 1234567890 Should Return Blank': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('1234567890')).should_be('');<br>    },<br>    'Passing ~!@#$%^&*()_+ Should Return Blank': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('~!@#$%^&*()_+')).should_be('');<br>    }    <br>})<br><br>describe('Consonant Words', {<br>    before_each : function() { englishToPigLatin = new EnglishToPigLatin(); },<br>    'Passing Beast Should Return Eastbay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('beast')).should_be('eastbay');<br>    },<br>    'Passing Dough Should Return Oughday': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('dough')).should_be('oughday');<br>    },<br>    'Passing happy Should Return appyhay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('happy')).should_be('appyhay');<br>    },<br>    'Passing question Should Return estionquay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('question')).should_be('estionquay');<br>    },<br>    'Passing star Should Return arstay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('star')).should_be('arstay');<br>    },<br>    'Passing three Should Return eethray': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('three')).should_be('eethray');<br>    }<br>})<br><br>describe('Vowel Words', {<br>    before_each : function() { englishToPigLatin = new EnglishToPigLatin(); },<br>    'apple Should Return appleay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('apple')).should_be('appleay');<br>    },<br>    'elijah Should Return elijahay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('elijah')).should_be('elijahay');<br>    },<br>    'igloo Should Return iglooay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('igloo')).should_be('iglooay');<br>    },<br>    'octopus Should Return octopusay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('octopus')).should_be('octopusay');<br>    },    <br>    'umbrella Should Return umbrellaay': function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.TranslateWord('umbrella')).should_be('umbrellaay');<br>    }    <br>})<br><br>describe('Sentences', {<br>    before_each : function() { englishToPigLatin = new EnglishToPigLatin(); },<br>    "Passing 'hello' Should Return 'elloh'": function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.Translate('hello')).should_be('ellohay');<br>    },<br>    "Passing 'hello world' Should Return 'elloh orldw'": function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.Translate('hello world')).should_be('ellohay orldway');<br>    },<br>    "Passing 'hello world!' Should Return 'ellow orld!w'": function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.Translate('hello world!')).should_be('ellohay orld!way');<br>    },<br>    "Passing 'Hello World' Should Return 'elloH orldW'": function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.Translate('Hello World')).should_be('elloHay orldWay');<br>    },    <br>    "Passing 'Hello World!' Should Return 'elloH orld!W'": function() {<br>        value_of(englishToPigLatin.Translate('Hello World!')).should_be('elloHay orld!Way');<br>    }<br>})<br>// ]]></script><br></head><br><body><div style="display:none;"><p>A</p><p>B</p></div></body><br></html></pre> <p>There are other asserts that can be made that I didn't make use of in the above same. Here are some examples... (taken from the <a href="http://jania.pe.kr/aw/moin.cgi/JSSpec/Manual">JSSpec Manual</a>)</p><ul><li>value_of('Hello'.toLowerCase()).should_be('hello');</li>   <li>value_of([1,2,3]).should_be([1,2,3]);</li>   <li>value_of(new Date(1979,03,27)).should_be(new Date(1979,03,27));</li>   <li>value_of([]).should_be_empty();</li>   <li>value_of(1 == 1).should_be_true();</li>   <li>value_of(1 != 1).should_be_false();</li>   <li>value_of("Hello").should_have(5, "characters");</li>   <li>value_of([1,2,3]).should_have(3, "items")</li>   <li>value_of({name:'Alan Kang', email:'jania902@gmail.com', accounts:['A', 'B']}).should_have(2, "accounts");</li>   <li>value_of([1,2,3]).should_have_exactly(3, "items");</li>   <li>value_of([1,2,3]).should_have_at_least(2, "items");</li>   <li>value_of([1,2,3]).should_have_at_most(4, "items");</li>   <li>value_of([1,2,3]).should_include(2);</li>   <li>value_of([1,2,3]).should_not_includ</li>   <li>value_of({a: 1, b: 2}).should_include("a");</li>   <li>value_of({a: 1, b: 2}).should_not_include("c");</li></ul><p>As you can see, this is a very powerful easy to read and execute testing framework. Of those frameworks I have tested thus far, I recommend it above the others (at this point I've only covered JsUnit).</p>
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