With the recent rise in popularity of web technologies such as Ajax and Flash, it has become possible to create richer user experiences on the web. Even though these technologies are not actually new, we are now seeing their widespread adoption. One of the hallmarks of this experience is the move away from the neccessity of always having to refresh the page for interaction. Instead of a standard page-to-page experience, we now have the opportunity to more closely model the real flow of the user.

Obviously a whole economy has been built around the page-based model. Designers have designed in "chunks" while user's have thought more in "flows". Information Architects have traditionally embraced this page model in design artifacts such as wireframes. This presentation takes a survey of these interaction styles, looks at why they work or don't work and explores a set of design principles that can inform the design of future products.

Eight key principles are illustrated with a set of common design patterns that are currently in vogue. The nuances of each of these principles is explored with examples that illustrate good choices and bad choices.

Speaker Bio: Bill Scott leads engineering for Yahoo! Teachers, a Web 2.0 community that allows teachers to gather, organize & share Web resources and lesson planning. In addition, he has been the AJAX Evangelist at Yahoo! where he focuses on spreading the goodness of "rich and sane" AJAX design & development. Bill is a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops discussing the nuances of good design and the challenges of great engineering. At Yahoo! he was also the Design Pattern curator where he launched the public Yahoo! Design Pattern Library (http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns). Before Yahoo! Bill led User Experience at Sabre Airline Solutions and co-founded Rico (an open source AJAX framework, openrico.org.) For 20 years he has bounced back and forth between design and engineering projects, creating products in areas as diverse as video games, widget libraries, war gaming, IDE tools, airline management and Web consumer sites. His musings can be found at http://looksgoodworkswell.com.


How to Get Richer Faster with an AJAX RIA and SOA Strategy - Kevin Hakman

Two trends in applications architecture − AJAX RIA on the client side and service-orientation on the server side − are enabling powerful enterprise solutions that can be leveraged in diverse business environments. In this session, Kevin Hakman, AJAX veteran and co-founder of TIBCO’s award-winning General Interface toolkit, will use real-world case studies to demonstrate how organizations are taking advantage of both of these advancements in application architecture to provide AJAX Rich Internet Applications that double the applicability of SOA investments. Attendees will hear how to deliver feature rich, high-productivity end-user applications to the business desktop.

Speaker Bio: Kevin Hakman is the director of developer evangelism for TIBCO General Interface, the award-winning AJAX and Rich Internet Application framework and toolkit. He co-founded General Interface in 2001, pioneering AJAX in the enterprise. TIBCO acquired General Interface in 2004 to extend its vision for service-oriented applications to the end user. Kevin is a contributor to SOA World Magazine and the AJAXWorld Magazine, and has spoken at numerous industry events.

Building Rich Internet Applications with PHP and Zend Framework - Andi Gutmans & BRadford Cottel

PHP has been a major driving force behind modern web applications. It is the server-side language of choice for a majority of Web 2.0 sites. Zend Framework is one of the leading open-source PHP frameworks and has a flexible architecture that lets you easily build modern web applications. In this presentation we will provide an overview of the relevant features in PHP 5 and Zend Framework which make them suitable for building RIAs. We will demo a sample application and then dive into the details, including best practices for its implementation.

Speaker Bios: Andi Gutmans leads the PHP Collaboration Project and Zend product strategy, working together with both partners and the community, to build the market’s leading Web development platform. He has been a leading contributor to PHP since 1997 and spearheaded the object-oriented improvements for PHP 5. Andi is a member of the PHP Group, the Apache Software Foundation, and on the board of the Eclipse Foundation. He has a rich background in enterprise software development including real-time avionics simulation software and n-tier J2EE applications.

Bradford Cottel leads open-source evangelism at Zend Technologies. He's built web apps using Ruby on Rails for startups and now uses PHP on Zend (Framework) for the enterprise. Having cut his teeth at Borland on the C++ team, he helped deliver several award-winning versions of Borland C++ and led core technology strategy to deliver common code into a number of Borland products. At Rational (now IBM), Brad managed products across four states and delivered them all as a suite of development tools on Unix, under schedule. In previous incarnations, Brad was a systems software engineer on the first portable computer: the Osborne, running CP/M, was qualified to compete on his university's programming team (in FORTRAN, when he was a freshman), speaks fluent Nepali, and has taught Pascal using Dave Gries' The Science of Programming, at the National Computer Centre in Kathmandu.

Template Driven Approach to Building Community Apps Using Java & AJAX - Anil Sharma

This session discusses how to build community applications that rival the user experience of desktop applications. A community application is different from other applications such as an ERP application. One big difference is that each user owns an independent dataset called ‘workspace’. A workspace can be treated like a document and expressed using XML (document v/s database centric design). The structure of XML can be defined using schemas that act as templates. A framework can operate on this structure in a generic way with delegate classes acting as filters for enforcing business and security rules. UI scenarios can be implemented using a HTML templates and merging HTML and XML DOMs using Java Script. Use of HTML and CSS templates lead to high fidelity applications. It renders an approach that has subtle differences with conventional approach and results in efficient delivery and customization of community applications.

Speaker Bio: Anil Sharma is a founder of Vertex Logic and architect of its AJAXFace product. He is working with Vertex Logic's customers and helping them deploy WEB 2.0 applications built using AJAXFace. These applications are in the areas of online printing, community WEB sites and social networking. He is driving future products of Vertex Logic. Prior to Vertex Logic, he was CTO and founder of Softrock Systems and Component Plus. There he built a model driven application platform using J2EE. His primary interests include user interface infrastructures and model driven applications. He is one of the contributors of the book "Real World AJAX - Secrets of the Masters."

Getting Started with Adobe Flex - Rob Rusher

If you have never built a Flex-based RIA, now is your chance! In this session, Adobe Certified Flex Instructor Rob Rusher will lead you through the basics of building with RIAs with Flex. No experience necessary, but bring a laptop.

Speaker Bio: Rob Rusher is a Solutions Architect at effectiveUI. With an extensive background in software engineering, professional services and training, he has worked with many of the Fortune 500 organizations. He is a published author and has contributed to several books, Website articles, and magazine articles. Rob is actively involved in the Adobe instructor and developer community, and contributes to developer certification exams as well as organizing and speaking at user groups and conferences. He is passionate about rich clients across devices and platforms and believes that they will change the way we create and live.

Speaker Bio: Rob Rusher is a Solutions Architect at effectiveUI. With an extensive background in software engineering, professional services and training, he has worked with many of the Fortune 500 organizations. He is a published author and has contributed to several books, Website articles, and magazine articles. Rob is actively involved in the Adobe instructor and developer community, and contributes to developer certification exams as well as organizing and speaking at user groups and conferences. He is passionate about rich clients across devices and platforms and believes that they will change the way we create and live.

Add AJAX with the Dojo Toolkit - James Harmon

Many business developers want to start using AJAX by enhancing the forms in their existing applications. This presentation will demonstrate how to quickly and easily add AJAX capabilities to standard HTML forms using the Dojo toolkit. This talk is for developers who want to empower their forms quickly with a minimal learning curve. We'll cover client-side validations, validations on the server without a page refresh, and adding specialized Dojo widgets to forms for selecting dates and providing a rich text editor. The most recent 1.0 version of Dojo will be covered. Students will walk away with practical examples for adding AJAX capabilities to their forms.

Speaker Bio: Jim Harmon, an experienced developer, has spent the majority of his career developing applications at Accenture and a number of boutique consulting firms. He now specializes in training Java developers to be more productive and to use the latest techniques.

ICEfaces and Mobile AJAX - Stephen Maryka

As interest in mobile AJAX gathers in the wake of the Apple iPhone release, the ICEfaces open source project is poised to deliver mobile AJAX solutions today. Come to this presentation and find out why the server-centric nature of the ICEfaces technology provides inherent advantages in the mobile space. During the discussion you will get a brief overview of the ICEfaces technology, and will see how it is applicable to resource-constrained mobile devices. You will also see a live demonstration of a mobile ICEfaces application running on both the Safari and Opera mobile browsers. Finally, you will learn about some of the emerging best practices for mobile AJAX application design, and get a a glimpse of the ICEfaces roadmap for mobile AJAX. 

Speaker Bio: Stephen Maryka, Chief Technical Officer at ICEsoft Technologies, leads the development of all AJAX-based technologies at ICEsoft. He is responsible for ICEfaces product development, and all AJAX-related R&D. Prior to joining ICEsoft in 2004, Stephen was co-founder of AudeSi Technologies where he served as VP Technology and led Java product development for Internet appliances. After Wind River's acquisition of AudeSi, Stephen served as a Principal Technologist for Wind River, working on embedded Java, device management and high availability technologies. Stephen has been involved with Java technologies since 1997 when he engaged with Nortel Networks as the chief software architect for the world's first commercial embedded Java telephone. Stephen earned his BSc in mathematics and computer science from the University of Victoria in 1984.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Beyond the Browser, Back to the Browser Wars - John Eckman

Rich Internet Applications used to describe desktop-like experiences, combined with live data connections to the Internet, all delivered through the Web browser. But RIAs have simultaneously broken out of the Web browser and learned to live in offline or intermittently online modes. Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), formerly know as Apollo, is the most apparent manifestation of this trend, but it's also evident in desktop widgets, custom mobile applications, and Sun's JavaFX. The Web development community should embrace these advances with caution, however, as they may lead us back into a new recurrence of the Browser Wars, as various proprietary schemes and plugins battle for dominance. We should aim to carry the open, standards-based approaches that have always characterized the best of AJAX development into the new development beyond-the-browser.

Speaker Bio: John Eckman leads the Next Generation Internet Practice at Optaros (www.optaros.com), and has over a decade of experience designing and building Web applications for organizations ranging from small non-profit organizations to Fortune 500 enterprises. His technical background includes J2EE and .NET Frameworks as well as scripting languages and presentation-tier development approaches, in addition to information architecture, usability testing, and project management. He received a BA from Boston University and a PhD from the University of Washington at Seattle; he expects to complete an MS in Information Systems from Northeastern University. He also achieved PMP certification in 2003.