BayJax - The Bay Area Ajax and JavaScript Meetup

July Bayjax @ Yahoo

Jul 27, 2009 · 6:30 PM
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We have an exciting and stellar line-up for this month's meeting at Yahoo, this is a *don't miss* meeting.

6:30 - Arrival, Pizza, Beer, Drinks, and networking
7:00pm: Talks begin

Satyen Desai: "YUI 3: Design Goals and Architecture"
Nicole Sulivan: Object Oriented CSS
Jonathan Leblanc: "Building scalable YQL widgets with JavaScript"
Douglas Crockford: The JSON Saga

Additional details:

Satyen Desai: "YUI 3: Design Goals and Architecture"

Satyen Desai is one of the principle designers of YUI's next-generation codeline. In this talk, Satyen describes the key design challenges that the YUI engineering team faced in building the new codeline and the design that emerged from those challenges.

Nicole Sulivan: Object Oriented CSS

How do you scale CSS for millions of visitors or thousands of pages? What happens to the size of your CSS file as more pages and modules are added? The answer, for most sites, is that it grows out of control and becomes an unmaintainable tangle of spaghetti code. Perhaps more importantly, our sites are too brittle and require guru-level abilities to make even simple changes. CSS is a powerful, beautiful, and expressive language, but deeply misunderstood and often poorly written. Now is exactly the right moment for it to get a dose of software engineering best practices. Object Oriented CSS allows you to write fast, maintainable, standards-based front-end code. It adds much needed predictability to CSS so that even beginners can create beautiful websites. OOCSS is not a framework or a tool (though in this session Nicole will demo both), it is a better, saner way to write and maintain style sheets.

Jonathan Leblanc: "Building scalable YQL widgets with JavaScript"

The Yahoo! Query Language provides a rich and dynamic method for obtaining and manipulating data from any source or api on the internet – with YQL the internet becomes your database. Coupling the data backend of YQL with the extensive data visualization and flow techniques of JavaScript through libraries such as YUI, a developer can build powerful widget and data systems using a simplified SQL syntax that YQL is based in. The marriage of YQL and JavaScript brings a robust MVC interface to the browser.

Douglas Crockford: The JSON Saga

JSON is a simple data interchange format. It is rare among standards in that minimalism was one of the principle goals of its design. Radical minimalism made it possible for JSON to compete successfully against entrenched, maximal standards.

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Kent B.

Crock should have a yearly state-of-the-language address to Bayjax. :)

0 · July 31, 2009
A former member

A fantastic meetup. I enjoyed learning a bit about YUI3, and Nicole Sulivan had some very good things to say about creating maintainable and reusable CSS. Jonathan's talk on YQL widgets made me want to find a project to use YQL on. And Douglas Crockford speaking on JSON was terrific. While he's certainly opinionated about the XML vs JSON debate, I found what he said to make good sense, and it was a real treat to have such an internet veteran speak.

0 · July 29, 2009
A former member

The Object Oriented CSS was interesting--a very fresh perspective of CSS. The discoverer of JSON was delightful.

0 · July 28, 2009
Manuel J.

I liked all the speakers and what they presented, very relevant. It is great to have a place to meet the experts and hear directly from them about what's coming and about good software engineering.

0 · July 28, 2009
Kean Loong T.

A bit too long but overall satisfying.

0 · July 28, 2009
Dylan O.

Not sure really how many people attended, I did not do a head count so my count is highly suspect, just a guesstimation.

I thought the meet up was great, I'm a fan of pizza, beer, and all things web ui related. Throw the 3 together and it's a great combo. Maybe just add some hot wings and free macbook pros to better sweeten the deal. J/K

I wish that Nicole and Satyen's presentations could have gone on longer, I've seen their presentations on YUI theater but over time thoughts and conventions evolve, theory and practice becomes better refined (not that it isn't already).

JC Leblanc's presentation on YQL was eye opening. I can't wait to play with this new technology, it looks powerful and flexible and just amazing.

As always Doug Crockford was a joy to hear. He's always very funny and it's great to hear him share his pragmatic approach to dealing with engineering and the industry.

0 · July 28, 2009
A former member

Although the speakers were amazing, there were too many, should have been cut down to 3 speakers. They were all way too rushed, the main reason I drove from SF to Sunnyvale was to see Nichole Sullivan talk and she was forced to cut her presentation very short, this was very disappointing. Would have been nice to have the Crawford speak in the 3rd slot, I was just too tired to stay to see him and would have rather seen him then the yql piece.

On the upside the pizza and beer was very cool.

0 · July 28, 2009
K Ramesh Babu, C.

This was a very good collection of experts in CSS, YUI, YQL & JavaScript. Excellent evening.

0 · July 28, 2009
A former member

UPDATE: Summarized the talks at http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/summaries/bayjax_2009-july, including Crockford's

0 · July 28, 2009
Libor

The most valuable part for me was Nicole Sullivan's Object Oriented CSS. It's quite tough to do things right when you have complex site to build and you will have to maintain it for long years to come. It get's even harder when you have tens of such sites, that on first look should not resemble each other and yet, they are backed by same business logic offering similar set of features. Object Oriented CSS idea certainly helps with component design that will keep startup and maintenance cost under control.
Douglas Crockford's JSON Saga was more of nice good night story at the end. I believe Albert Einstein would love JSON, since he liked to "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." Unfortunately not many standards are like that, so it is good to know the history how this one came about and see the broader picture, so we learn from it, while building technologies that can last.
It was very nice evening, I enjoyed it.
Thanks!

0 · July 28, 2009
A former member

I am a newbie so much of what they talked about went over my head, but It was great sitting at the forefront of the tech wave learning from the masters.

0 · July 27, 2009
A former member

Great lineup. Enjoyed all the talks.

0 · July 27, 2009
Marat N

great speakers

0 · July 27, 2009
A former member

Awesome Javascript meetup with some of the best in the industry at Yahoo!

0 · July 27, 2009