Jonathan Jeter

Director of Application Development

Home Archives for Web apps

HTML5 Texas JavaScript Workshop – Client-Side Storage

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HTML5TX JavaScript Workshop - Pamela FoxWeb technologies have taken a long time to progress.

A lot of the standards we see today are because browsers decided to implement new features.

HTML5 is now just supposed to be HTML. It is supposed to be a living standard.

Pamela needs an HTML app that helps choose her hair color.

Client-Side Storage

Cookies are used for all types of tracking, but they have issues with security, user trust (can be disabled), performance and size.

In the HTML spec, they considered the issues and came up with the following solutions.

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localStorage

  • Key / value pairs – hash table
  • Persistent on page reloads
  • Avoids HTTP overhead of cookies

10 Things You Didn’t Know a Browser Could Do

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by Estelle Weyl at HTML5 Texas Conference in Austin, TX (Deck)

It may feel like the HTML5, CSS3 and ECMAScript specifications are moving along at a snails pace, but browser capabilities are moving quickly, and it is difficult to keep up with all the new feature support. In this session we’ll cover some brand spanking new and older but unknown features that make debugging, designing and developing more fun.

10 Things You Didn't Know a Browser Could Do1. $(‘selector’) without jQuery

  • Supported since IE8
  • You can access DOM elements with standard css selectors

2. Everything is Editable

  • Everything can be updated
  • Can even paste!
  • Updates the DOM
  • Turn anything into a form element
  • Supported since IE5

3. Can store lots of data

  • LocalStorage
  • SessionStorage
  • WebSQL (deprecated but available in webkit)
  • IndexedDB (new standard, but not supported in any browser)

Cookie Limitations

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Backbone: 3 Ways

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by Pamela Fox at HTML5 Texas Conference, Austin, Texas (Deck)

Backbone is one of the most popular MVC frameworks for JavaScript these days, and one of the reasons for its popularity is that its minimal and lightweight. That makes it easy to use in different ways and adapt to different projects – but can also make it hard to learn. In this talk, I’ll start with Backbone basics, and then dive into three different ways that we use it to power the frontends of Coursera.org.

Backbone 3 Ways HTML5TX

Why use an MVC framework? Website includes: 242 js files, 28848 lines of code & 5-person frontend team. Needed more structure to their code.
Why Backbone?

Backbone JS MVC Diagram

Backbone is a lightweight model view controller framework. Models use set & get so the framework know what’s going on. Collections group objects together. Views with basic data binding. Router is available, but you don’t have to use it.

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The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web? at #SXSW2012

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Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas #sxsw #righttool
Panel discussion by Buzz Andersen (Dir of Mobile – Tumblr), Jacob Bijani (Prod Engineer – Tumblr), Majd Taby (Software Engineer – Facebook), Matthew Delaney (WebKit Engineer), and Tom Dale (Sr Software Engineer – Ember.js)

Apps are much easier to monetize than websites, because you can charge up front.

for Tumblr T-shirt Contest / 01 (Photo credit: albyantoniazzi)

The browser rendering engine does a lot of the heavy work that native developers have to contend with. The web browser is a highly evolved medium for content delivery and rich layout.

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Killer App Design with Javascript and HTML 5

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HTML5 and Complex Web Apps

Web 2.0 vs HTML5 apps

Web 2.0

  • Dynamic content
  • Database driven
  • Social applications
  • Stupid name
  • “The Internet is more than lame dancing genies and hit counters!”

HTML5 Apps

  • Interactive content
  • Real-time
  • Task-oriented
  • Cool logo
  • “You can have a desktop experience in your browser”
  • Not trying to replicate a desktop software experience.

HTML5 – New Markup (separating functionality and presentation in the DOM with data-* attributes)

Amazing JavaScript APIs

Application Architecture

Lots of tools available that will allow for a more robust application development process.

  • Moving state to the client
  • Wep app Kool-Aid: MVC/MVVM, pub/sub and the module pattern
  • Your application as an API

Don’t do it alone

Toolkits, precompilers, boilerplates, and more

For the enterprise-y among you

Testing, IDEs and other developer tools

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Josh Clark – Mobile Apps: Native or Web-Based?

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UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 23, 2011

Josh Clark (author of TapWorthy) – Mobile Apps-Native or Web-Based
Josh Clark – Mobile Apps-Native or Web-Based?

Josh Clark, Author of TapWorthy

Mobile Apps

Mobile is growing quickly, with many platforms (many cultures)

App design needs to take mobile culture into accounts, how to develop for a iPhone user vs Android user, etc.

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Blackberry still has 40% of the global enterprise

  • Text-centric
  • low browser activity (blackberry browser has sucked until recently, when they adopted webkit)
  • how does your app fit into a text heavy culture

iPhone

  • active
  • high browser activity
  • spenders (big buyers – 70% of ebays mobile commerce is iPhone; eBay accounts for 25% of mobile commerce)
  • older, wealthier
  • according to OKCupid, iPhone users have more sex

Android

  • it’s about the technology
  • it’s about tools and features
  • customization
  • cutting edge
  • technically-proficient, customized