Refresh Austin

7:00 p.m. February 10th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

Let’s change everything! Personalize your Design Process
Presented by Sara Summers

Use your life and experiences to draw in creativity and devise your own design process for making something great and making an impact.

Everything You’ve Wanted to Know About jQuery but Were Afraid to Ask
Presented by Jon Loyens

jQuery is a lightweight, cross-browser, JavaScript library released by John Resig in 2006 at a BarCamp in NYC. Since it’s introduction, jQuery’s small footprint and elegant API has quickly made it a favorite among developers and designers alike. In this presentation we’ll cover:
- Why JavaScript libraries?
- Why jQuery?
- jQuery basics
- Selection
- Manipulation
- Effects
- Writing progressive JavaScript w/jQuery
- AJAX with jQuery

Presentation and Code: jQuery Presentation [PDF] & jQuery Code [ZIP]

Bonus! Books!
Plus, O’Reilly has provided us a few books that we’ll raffle off throughout the meeting.

View the event on upcoming.org or FaceBook

Tags: design, design process, javascript, jon loyens, jquery, sara summers

October 14th, 7:00 p.m.
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

We’re really excited about the October meeting! Alex has lined up some fantastic presenters who will speak on the following topics:

Who are these people?! Bridging the gap between developers and communicators
Jenn and Hayes Davis

It often seems like developers and communicators (like designers, writers and marketers) are speaking two very different languages. It can be difficult to effectively communicate ideas and requirements across the gap between these two groups. This session aims to create some mutual understanding to help improve communication and narrow that gap. We want to facilitate a conversation that gets both sides talking about what they want to know about the other side, as well as what they’d like the other side to know about them.

Some of the questions we will address include:

• Why do developers do things the way they do?
• Why do designers, writers and other communicators think the way they do?
• How can developers and designers communicate more effectively with each other?
• Is there any common ground?
• How can we better communicate technical topics to a nontechnical audience?

How to write JavaScript without losing your mind
Andrew Dupont

Andrew will talk about the tools he uses to debug JavaScript, including an in-depth look at Firebug and a discussion about how to diagnose and circumvent common frustrations and browser bugs.

Update: Andrew will also give out three copies of his book Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us.

View the event on Upcoming.org

After the meeting, head to the bar downstairs for their Tuesday specials: half-price appetizers, and dollar-off select drafts, well drinks, and house wines.

Tags: andrew dupont, communication, hayes davis, javascript, jenn davis, meeting

• Michelle Greer asks, Why Do Tech Geeks Want to Punch Zuckerberg in the Face? “With Beacon still in need of a major overhaul and all eyes on him for an IPO date, it looks like Zuckerberg has his hands full with Facebook.” you can see him at SXSW giving this year’s keynote.
• Ryan Joy likes to find his daily paper on the doorstep in the morning. However, that paradigm fails when it’s the electronic version. Check out this PHP/cron job combo that may just bring back the nostalgia of newspaper delivery.
• Andrew DuPont reports great news. Prototype 1.6 officially supports Opera. With it’s lightning fast javascript engine and DOM level 3 support, Opera is finally getting the full support it deserves… from Prototype, at least.
• Whurley posed the question, Who is the best candidate for the open source community?” to the blogosphere, Twittersphere, and Interwebs. Michelle weighs in here as does Four Kitchens. I think we all cringe at the thought that our leaders may understand the Internet as a series of tubes.
• Kevin Koym, with Bootstrap Austin, talks about building business ecosystems in Austin despite a possible recession. He argues that “Austin’s wired technology community has been organizing into … ‘Enterprise Tribes’ helping entrepreneurs build their businesses, recession or not.”
• Boone Putney is excited by the beta release of Microsoft’s HealthVault. Privacy issues aside, Boone sees it as way to “automate a lot of the processes that are notorious originators of error in the medical industry.”
• …and, of course, probably the biggest thing to come out is this week’s Refresh Austin’s SXSWi Party announcement.

That’s it for this week! If I’ve missed anything, post it in the comments.

Tags: Austin, business, Facebook, javascript, Microsoft, party, PHP, SXSW

This week we saw a firestorm erupt out of the A List Apart articles on browser version targeting and future-proofing websites. If you’ve not had a chance to read them yet, check out Aaron Gustafson’s Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8 and Eric Meyer’s From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey.

Much has been written in the days following these articles, but I want to focus on Refresh Austin’s reactions as part of a new, weekly roundup.

• Alex Jones liked the idea at first glance. Especially if “we can get Firefox, Safari and Opera to implement the same method as recommended in Aaron’s article, the Web development industry … would benefit”. However, Alex revised his thoughts after further consideration because it would allow websites to stick with an IE6 web application for years with no real incentive to upgrade their code.
• Andrew Dupont gives the proposal a “tentative thumbs-up” after breaking down the issues and the flipsides, especially as they concern Javascript support.
• On a lighter note, Alex shared this take on the matter via Twitter.

What are your thoughts?

Tags: javascript, web applications, web development

Presenter: Andrew Dupont, Prototype Core Team

View the Presentation

Tags: ajax, development, event, javascript, meeting

A refresher in javascript for the web designer/developer, with practical tips and best practices offered for happier coding.

Tags: event, javascript