Ajax Experience 2008, Day 2, Return of the YUI

My AM presentation turned out to be a lively event. The audience of twenty-odd souls was a mix of Struts 1 and Struts 2 users, and several had already started using Ajax in their applications. The balance of the audience seem pleasantly surprised at how easy it can be to use Ajax with “conventional” framework. The talk centered on a Ajax JSP tag library called “Ajax TagParts”. The creator, Frank Zammetti, a friend of mine, and he was kind enough to join me on the stage for a special bonus demonstration of JSONP (or “JSON with padding”). In only a few lines of code, Frank hooked up with Yahoo maps and popped up any given ZIP code. Another special guest was Bill Scott of NetFlicks, who has been busily moving some of their assets to Struts 2 this year. After the talk, Bill, Frank, and some others stuck around to exchange war stores.

The highlight of my afternoon was “Test Driven Development with YUI Test” with Nicholas Zakas, who created the library. My first talk tomorrow also covers YUI Test, so this talk was a must-see for me. At one point, the presentation mentioned the Selenium testing tool, which prompted a question about how to automate unit testing with JavaScript (thanks Mike!). Nicholas remarked “That’s a good question!”, and mentioned that there was another testing presentation tomorrow. Not one to miss an opportunity, I jumped in with a quick overview. Hopefully, that bit of marketing might draw a few more folk away from Crockford’s “Good Parts” talk!

Everything has been running smoothly, though one snag is that I managed to lose a dental cap this afternoon. On the plus side, the loss might encourage me to speak more slowly, to avoid scratching my lip on the rough edges. Happily, Adobe TV is only capturing the slides, and not my newly gapful grin!