DOM Scripting was my first book. It came out five years ago. Two years after that, I wrote Bulltetproof Ajax. Now I’ve written a third book.
It’s called HTML5 for Web Designers and you can pre-order it now from the greatest publishers on the web, A Book Apart. It’s not a long book, by design. It’s got just enough to get you up to speed with the new shininess in HTML5.
For a book about a markup language, there’s a surprising amount of JavaScript-related material in there. The new form enhancements are particularly interesting for the behaviour layer. A lot of common patterns that currently require scripted solutions are beginning to move down the stack into the structural layer: date pickers, sliders, and so on. We’re still going to need scripted solutions for a while yet, but it’s going to be an interesting period of transition.
We’ve been here before. Remember when you needed to use the onmouseover event just to do a simple rollover? Now we just use the :hover pseudo-class in CSS —although I have pointed out six years ago, with tongue firmly in cheek, that this crosses the streams of pristine layers of separation.
This is how technology evolves. Common patterns that require a programming solution eventually get a declarative implemenation. We’re seeing it in CSS with animation and we’re seeing it in HTML5 with form controls.
Does that make DOM Scripting obsolete? Far from it. Instead we can stop using JavaScript to reinvent the wheel, recreating patterns that thousands of others have already implemented, and instead start using the technology to solve problems specific to our own content.
My first book, DOM Scripting was published in 2005. It opens with the words:
This is an exciting time to be a web designer.
That’s even more true in 2010, thanks to HTML5. In HTML5 for Web Designers, I’m sharing my excitement.
Here’s a Belorussian translation of this announcement by Patricia Clausnitzer.
The latest version of jQuery has been released, just in time for the framework’s fourth birthday. Version 1.4 looks like a speedy improvement on its predecessors.
If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, be sure to check out this very nifty jQuery reference app. It doesn’t take long to install and, best of all, it doesn’t involve the app store at all—the whole thing is built with HTML, CSS and JavaScript using HTML5’s offline storage. Now, no matter where you are, you’ll always have access to jQuery documentation …as long as the battery in your phone lasts, anyway.
Last Friday, the Full Frontal conference took place here in Brighton. It was like having the circus come to town …but with fewer acrobatics and more closures.
In short, it was superb. I’ve been to quite a few conferences in my time so I can get pretty jaded but this was a textbook lesson in how to put on a great event.
The content was top-notch. The fact that the whole day was focused on a single technology gave it a very cohesive feel. That said, there was still a wide variety of topics covered: mobile, accessibility, performance, and even server-side JavaScript. The intensity and complexity increased as the day went on, finishing with Simon blowing everyone’s minds.
All the speakers were great but special mention must go to Jake Archibald from the BBC. His talk on JavaScript performance was thoroughly entertaining and informative —a very tricky combination to do successfully. He made the presentation look effortless but there must have been months of preparation involved. That kind of spontaneity takes years of practice.
If you weren’t lucky enough to make it to Full Frontal, you can check out the speakers’ slides on the website but really, you should have been there.
Congratulations and kudos to Remy for putting together such a world-class event. I sincerely hope there’ll be a Full Frontal 2010, but it’ll be hard to match the standard set by this year’s conference.
November is shaping up to be a very busy month for JavaScript.
Fronteers 2009 is a two-day event in Amsterdam on November 5th and 6th. John Resig and Douglas Crockford—that alone makes it worth the price of admission.
Straight after that, JSConf.eu takes place in Berlin on November 7th and 8th. It’s a tight squeeze but it would possible to go to both events with a train ride in-between. I wonder if that’s what John is going to do; he’s speaking at both conferences.
But the highlight of the month still looks like being Full Frontal on November 20th. That’ll be held right here in Brighton which probably explains why I’m kind of biased. But seriously, check out the line-up:
…and more.
You can still grab tickets for the early-price of just one hundred squid.