Workshop: Web.NEXT

2016 is shaping up to be quite an interesting year for web developers. A major new version of JavaScript brings game-changing new features like classes, modules, imports, and exports. A core set of new HTML features called Web Components -- Custom Elements, HTML Imports, Templates, and Shadow DOM -- will fundamentally change the way you build web apps. And the venerable HTTP protocol its first major version upgrade to 2.0 in over 15 years.

In this day-long workshop, you'll get the opportunity to take this new technology stack out for a spin and see what it has to offer.

And, as always, all proceeds go to supporting the HTML5 Denver User Group.

JavaScript.NEXT: New Features in ECMAScript 6th Edition
JavaScript turns 20 years old in 2015, and the latest version (ECMAScript 6, or officially "ECMAScript 2015") offers the most new language features in recent memory. JavaScript is the top language represented by GitHub repos, and http://npmjs.com boasts over 150,000 JavaScript packages that are only a 'npm install' away.

In this section, Scott Davis (author/presenter of the O'Reilly video "Exploring the Architecture of the MEAN Stack") walks you through many of the new features of ECMAScript 6 -- from syntactic sugar like arrow functions and multi-line Strings, to important new language features like constants, classes/inheritance (you heard me!), and importing/exporting modules. We get new collections like Maps and Sets, and native Promises are a welcome addition to a language that is more than a little asynchronous in nature.

This most recent release offers some deep semantic shifts to the core language that will truly change the way you write JavaScript. ECMAScript 6 should be hitting a browser near you THIS YEAR, but you don't have to wait. NodeJS offers many of these features, and polyfill libraries like BabelJS allow you to start using them in your browser now. Come see the future of JavaScript.

HTML.NEXT: Web Components
We've been talking about "web pages" since we first started talking about the web. JavaScript libraries like jQuery make it trivially easy to make sweeping changes across the entire web page. Heck -- CSS allows you to style common elements like paragraphs, hyperlinks, and images across your entire web site.

It's time to start thinking smaller. MUCH smaller.

Web frameworks like AngularJS are doubling down on the idea of Web Components -- narrowing your development efforts down to individual elements on the page instead of page-wide functionality. When AngularJS 2.0 ships in 2016, it's going to not-so-gently push developers in the direction of HTML5 Web Components -- technology that will be native to the browser.

In this talk, Scott Davis introduces you to the 4 core aspects of Web Components -- Custom Elements, HTML Imports, Templates, and Shadow DOM. Learning this now will not only make transitioning to Angular 2.0 much easier -- it'll make learning the next version of ALL web frameworks easier, since Web Components will be native to all browsers.

HTTP.NEXT
HTTP 1.1 has been the protocol that drives the web since the late 1990s. While language features and web frameworks come and go, HTTP has remained steadfast with its GETs, POSTs, PUTs, and DELETEs.

And then comes HTTP 2.0, and it changes things significantly. Where HTTP 1.1 sent plain text down the wire, HTTP 2.0 is a binary protocol. Where HTTP 1.1 was stateless -- dropping the connection after the last byte of the payload gets put on the wire -- HTTP 2.0 is connection-oriented. HTTPS is the default in HTTP 2.0.

In this talk, Scott Davis will show you how HTTP 2.0 fundamentally changes the rules of the game... for the better.