Seattle jQuery Open Space and Hack Attack with John Resig – July 5th

Posted on by

On Monday, July 5th, John Resig will be at the Seattle jQuery/JavaScript community meetup at Amazon’s brand new Van Vorst Meeting Center in South Lake Union for an afternoon of learning, openspace, hacking and, of course, pizza!

The fun begins at 1pm with a quick keynote and explanation of open space technology then the group will self organize into smaller sessions run in an open space style until 6pm.

There will be plenty of pizza, refreshments and networking space to meet like minded developers, so come and meet, eat, learn and play with some of the Pacific Northwest’s best front end and interface developers. Topics will be suitable for beginners all the way through to advanced jQuery and JavaScript programmers.

This awesome event is provided for free and but you need to register to get in. Be sure to get your ticket quick.

Microsoft’s Proposal for Data Linking in jQuery. Feedback Requested.

Posted on by

Microsoft has submitted it’s second proposal to the jQuery Project outlining a plugin that allows properties within objects to be linked to each other. Termed “data linking”, the new plugin would allow changes made to a property of one object to effect a change on the property of a secondary object. The plugin leverages jQuery’s “special events” API to create a new event that will trigger when a change occurs on a bound object property. This would allow a developer to link properties in the following way:

var person = {};

$(“#name”).linkTo(“val”, person, “name”);

$(“#name”).val(“foo”);

alert(person.name); // foo

// … user changes value …
alert(person.name); // user typed value

The proposal has been submitted via the jQuery forums and Microsoft is actively soliciting community feedback:

http://forum.jquery.com/topic/proposal-for-adding-data-linking-to-jquery

A prototype of the data linking is available for review via Github:

http://github.com/nje/jquery-datalink

We’re pleased to see Microsoft’s continued contribution to our open source community and ask that you provide feedback in guiding this effort along.

jQuery UI 1.7 Released: New domain, New CSS Framework & Dramatic Updates to Controls

Posted on by

We’re excited to announce the release of jQuery UI v1.7, the newest version of jQuery’s effects and UI library. This release culminates many months of development in which a major overhaul of the whole library was performed and a new CSS framework introduced, all in order to provide a professional and easily extensible set of UI controls and effects for jQuery developers. The new CSS framework is especially exciting since it will not only allow for easy theming of jQuery UI controls but also allow plugin authors in general to take advantage of ThemeRoller, the dynamic theme generation application developed by the Filament Group for the jQuery UI project.

Full details of this new & exciting release can be found on the new jQuery UI blog.

Think You’re Good at CSS & Want a Free Pass SXSW? Check This Contest Out.

Posted on by

jQuery UI sponsor Filament Group is holding an awesome contest:

“To celebrate ThemeRoller’s selection as a finalist for the SXSW Web Award for Technical Achievement, we’re holding a contest to give away one free pass to the SXSW Interactive Festival to the person who creates the coolest use of the new jQuery UI CSS framework.”

Check out the contest post here: Contest: Win a Free Pass to SXSW Interactive for the Coolest Use of the jQuery UI CSS Framework

Quoting Filament:

SXSW badge

We’re really excited about the new jQuery UI CSS framework because it makes it easy to theme UI widgets or even entire layouts with the jQuery UI ThemeRoller web application. To celebrate the nomination and encourage everyone to take advantage of this new framework, we’re holding a contest to see who can demonstrate the most creative use of the framework’s capabilities. The winner will receive a free pass to the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, March 13-17, 2009.

How to get started

First off, download a theme and demo page from jQuery UI ThemeRoller and review the jQuery UI CSS framework documentation to get an idea of how the framework is used. Then head over to the jQuery UI site and grab the handy Firefox ThemeRoller bookmarklet to help you test your styles as you build your project. If you’re creating a demo page, we strongly suggest that you include the Theme switcher dropdown to let people quickly sample ThemeRoller themes on your page and really show off the theming in action.

Remember, the CSS framework is not just for jQuery plugins — framework styles can be used with any Javascript library or your own custom markup. We’d be thrilled to see how far you can go with a cool WordPress template, corporate website, widget or even a game to show the power and flexibility of this system. Feel free to use multiple scoped, themes, too — go wild.

How to enter

We’re going to keep this simple: post a comment with a brief description of your project and a link to a functioning example. The winner will be decided by Filament Group based on the creativity, quality and inventiveness of their project.

Contest rules

  • Everyone is eligible, no exceptions.
  • You may submit any type of project that uses the jQuery UI CSS framework: public sites, demo pages or anything else that shows off your creativity and is publicly accessible (read: not behind a login).
  • You may enter as many unique projects as you wish; each will count as a separate entry. (Please don’t post the same one over and over…that may count against you).
  • The entry deadline is Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at midnight.
  • The contest winner will be announced on Friday, February 27, 2009.
  • The winner will receive a single pass to the SXSW Interactive Festival, which includes admission to the SXSW Web Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 15. We will email you an access code that will allow your to register for free. (NOTE: the pass does not provide entry to the Film or Music festivals, nor does it include transportation, room/board, or meals — you’ll need to cover those yourself.)
  • jQuery UI and Filament Group Inc. reserve the right to link to your project (we want to promote your hard work).

A little inspiration

To show off what is possible with the jQuery UI CSS framework, here is a really fantastic example of a plugin that uses the framework really well, from styles to icons. Nicolas Rudas created a very cool Apple-style file browser that also includes the theme switcher dropdown for good measure. He’s taken this a step further by creating a jQuery API browser that uses his plugin. Very cool indeed.

(NOTE: Nicolas Rudas was not notified prior to the announcement of this contest, so Nicolas, if you’d like to enter you’re still eligible to win. How’s that for competition?)

image

There is a list of plugins that use the CSS framework on the documentation wiki but it’s pretty short at the moment and we’re hoping that this contest really gets people fired up to try out the framework for themselves.

So…get to it, show us what you’ve got!

Check out the contest here: Contest: Win a Free Pass to SXSW Interactive for the Coolest Use of the jQuery UI CSS Framework

jQuery Conference 2008 Agenda

Posted on by

The sold-out jQuery Conference 2008, being held in Boston at the MIT Stata Center on September 28th, is nearly upon us. With 13 sessions being delivered by the jQuery team as well as prominent industry experts such as Jonathan Snook, Aza Raskin and Cody Lindley, this is sure to be a stellar event.

The conference has been broken out into two tracks, Beginner and Advanced, to allow developers of various jQuery expertise to take full advantage of the sessions that will be suit their needs. Below you will find the agenda for the conference. In the interest of sharing information, we wanted to put up the agenda as soon as possible. We will be releasing another page shortly that will provide topic descriptions as well as bios for each of the speakers.

Featured Presenters:

John Resig

John Resig

John Resig is the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library. He’s also a JavaScript Evangelist for the Mozilla Corporation and the author of the book Pro JavaScript Techniques.

Currently, John is located in Boston, MA. He’s hard at work on his second book, Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja, due in bookstores Late 2008.

Joern Zaefferer

Joern Zaefferer

Jörn Zaefferer is a member of the core jQuery team. Along his work on jQuery itself, he wrote and maintains several of the most popular jQuery plugins. Jörn Zaefferer works as a consultant for maxence integration technologies GmbH in Cologne, Germany, where he architects and develops Java-based web applications for maxence’s customers and maxence’s own products.

Jonathan Snook

Jonathan Snook

Web designer and developer, Jonathan Snook moves effortlessly from client-side, front-end work to hardcore server-side challenges, and his fluency in CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL make make him the “turn-to” man for many high-profile clients. Coauthor of Accelerated DOM Scripting and The Art and Science of CSS, he writes regularly at his popular blog snook.ca, and for Digital Web and Sitepoint. Jonathan also works with his partners at Sidebar Creative, makers of world-class websites and innovative applications.

Richard Worth

Richard Worth

Richard D. Worth is a Web developer in the Washington, DC area. He works for Fulcrum IT on web services contracts, primarily for the government. Richard is one of the lead developers of jQuery UI, a component framework built on top of jQuery, designed to make Rich Internet Applications as simple as jQuery has made Ajax. Richard is also a contributing author on dmxzone.com, writing regular beginner and advanced jQuery UI articles, and has been selected as a Technical Reviewer for a book on jQuery UI to be published in the fall.

Paul Bakaus

Paul Bakaus

Paul Bakaus is a UI architect living in Germany. He’s the creator and lead of jQuery UI and works for the open source company Liferay in a full-time sponsored position to jQuery UI. He’s responsible for the overall direction and roadmap of jQuery UI and he enjoys speaking about his user interface work in many places of the world. He’s also a member of the jQuery core team and takes part in the discussion of the overall direction of the jQuery project. In the past, he was largely responsible for creating the jQuery dimensions plugin (which is now part of the jQuery core) and worked together with Stefan Petre on the rich effects and components library Interface.

Yehuda Katz

Yehuda Katz

In addition to being the co-author of jQuery In Action, Yehuda Katz is a contributor to Ruby in Practice and co-author of the upcoming Merb in Action. He is a core contributor to DataMapper and jQuery. Before coming to Engine Yard, he worked for on a construction management tool written in Ruby on Rails and jQuery. Yehuda is a Merb core developer, contributes to Rubinius, and is taking a lead role in the development of Engine Yard’s new Control Panel.

Aza Raskin

Aza Raskin

Aza Raskin is the founder of Humanized (now part of Mozilla), Songza, and Bloxes. The son of Apple software pioneer Jef Raskin, he brings a keen interest in human interface design to everything he does.

Karl Swedberg

Karl Swedberg

After having taught high school English, edited copy for an advertising agency, and owned a coffee house, Karl Swedberg began his career as a web developer three years ago. He now works for Fusionary Media in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he specializes in client-side scripting and interaction design. Karl is an “Evangelist” for the jQuery JavaScript Library and the co-author of two books, Learning jQuery and jQuery Reference Guide.

Scott Jehl

Scott Jehl

Scott Jehl is a designer at Filament Group, a Boston, MA studio specializing in web application design and development. At Filament, Scott and his colleagues frequently contribute design and code to the jQuery community, and recently built ThemeRoller, a theme design application for jQuery UI. Scott leads the design team at jQuery, and runs WriteMaps, an ajax web application for building visual website sitemaps. He enjoys wake/skate/snowboarding, being outdoors, and spending time with his wife Stephanie and their two cats.

Jonathan Sharp

Jonathan Sharp

Jonathan Sharp is a standards driven freelance web designer and developer. With experience in both frontend and backend technolgoies he brings value in integration delivering a seamless user experience. Jonathan has also developed a number of jQuery plugins such as jdMenu, jdNewsScroll and positionBy. Prior to freelancing, Jonathan worked for Union Pacific Railroad, CSC and Motorola, Inc. in Chicago after helping found Imprev, Inc. in Bellevue, WA in early 2000. He lives in Nebraska with his wife, Erin, and their daughter Noel. When not working he enjoys spending time with his family, playing with their dogs, and riding off into the sunset on Micah, his draft horse.

Kevin Hoyt

Kevin Hoyt

Kevin Hoyt is a Platform Evangelist with Adobe Systems, Inc. Passionate about engaging user experiences, you’ll most often find him meeting with customers, speaking at conferences, presenting online seminars, or just enjoying the chance to share ideas and brainstorm with other developers. When not on the road, Kevin enjoys spending time with his family, photography and general aviation.

Cody Lindley

Cody Lindley

Cody Lindley is a Christian, husband, son, brother, professional web developer, and outdoor enthusiast. He spends the majority of his time sleeping and working, but who doesn’t? In between the daily routines of the average American, he desires an existence that entails a relationship with God, family, and nature. He considers himself a bookworm and a novice theologian, but truth be told, he simply enjoys watching movies and playing Xbox way too much. He is thankful for the luxury of pursuing his profession as a personal passion. More details can be found about cody on his site codylindley.com.

Mike Alsup

Mike Alsup

Mike Alsup is a Senior Developer at Click Commerce in Rochester, NY. He has been developing software solutions for 15 years with a current focus on Java, Swing, J2EE and web applictions. Involved with the jQuery project since near its inception in early 2006, Mike has authored many popular plugins including the Form Plugin, BlockUI, Taconite and Cycle.

Agenda:

Beginner Advanced
9:00 – 9:30
Registration, Breakfast
9:30 – 9:55
State of jQuery – John Resig
10:00 – 10:50 Learning jQuery – Karl Swedberg Optimizing jQuery Core – John Resig
11:00 – 11:50 jQuery Case Studies – Cody Lindley
and Jonathan Snook
Writing Scalable jQuery Applications – Yehuda Katz
12:00 – 1:00
Lunch
1:00 – 1:50 Rich Interactivity, Simplified with jQuery UI – Richard Worth An In-Depth Look at jQuery UI – Paul Bakaus
2:00 – 2:50 Designing Reusable jQuery Components – Scott Jehl Desktop Applications with jQuery and Adobe AIR – Kevin Hoyt
3:00 – 3:50 Making the Case for jQuery – Jonathan Sharp Using jQuery in Firefox Extensions – Aza Raskin
4:00 – 4:50 Your First jQuery Plugin – Mike Alsup Building Robust jQuery Plugins – Joern Zaefferer
5:00 – 6:00
Dinner
Later
Cambridge Brewing Company for drinks and socializing

Full details of the individual sessions, biographies of the speakers, and additional conference information is forthcoming.

jQuery Site Redesign – The Community Speaks

Posted on by

As many of you have seen by now, the jQuery Project’s site has been redesigned. It had been a long overdue task and it was important to put a fresh new spin on the main hub, and the face, of jQuery. One of the things about the jQuery Project is that we’ve never run with the crowd or accepted the norm. By pushing boundaries and sometimes being “in your face” we’ve not only grown tremendously in popularity but we’ve pushed most of the other JS library projects to rethink their own principles and make changes to improve their products. That’s a good thing for everyone as competition is always good.

So, it should come as no surprise by the drastic change in the jQuery website. So far, the single biggest complaint has been associated with the new banner (ie: rockstar caricature & slogan). Again, we wanted to push the boundaries and come up with something that would generate a lot of buzz. Overall, we’ve succeeded in that goal with plenty of positive feedback but unfortunately, with some very negative comments as well. We actually value both types of feedback and want more as it’s the only way to determine if we’re on the right track. As with any site redesign, you can’t please everyone and we understand that. But we also want everyone to realize that this is a first cut and it doesn’t mean that it can’t be tweaked.

We’re actively reviewing all of the feedback and will certainly be looking at how to best handle some of the concerns of the community. After all, the community is what makes the jQuery Project so special and so different from other projects. In addition, the jQuery team has always listened to the needs of the community and this time is no exception. Again, I think the team is unique in that we *DO LISTEN* to the community and we’re going to work on making the site an invaluable tool for everyone. So just give us some time to go through the messages and keep an eye on this blog for updates.
Thanks for your patience and we truly appreciate your feedback.

jQuery Camp 2008 Announced

Posted on by

The jQuery Team is pleased to announce the second annual jQuery Camp! jQuery Camp 2008 will be held on Sunday, Sept. 28, the day before The Ajax Experience, in Boston, MA (location TBA).

Last year, over 100 jQuery developers gathered for a full day of jQuery sessions, which included talks from such big names as jQuery creator John Resig and other core team members, as well as talks from expert users exploring new and exciting jQuery projects. It brought together the largest group of jQuery Core Team members ever assembled, and gave users the opportunity to pick their brains and pitch new ideas.

The event was a *clear* success, and this year’s camp promises to be even better.

jQuery Camp 2008 will offer two tracks, providing both introductory and advanced sessions, covering a variety of topics. Ajax development, mashups, security and the recently released jQuery UI component and effects library are just some of the topics already lined up.

jQuery Camp 2008 will charge a nominal fee of $50 per person, which will include lunch. Attendees need NOT be registered for The Ajax Experience to attend. Registration will open in July; keep an eye on jQuery.com for more details!

For those attending The Ajax Experience, show organizers have recently announced a half-day time slot for additional jQuery sessions, on September 29th at the conference center. The agenda is still up in the air, but we’re thinking of offering a “Dream Team Code Review” session, where users can have code reviewed by members of the jQuery team. We’re interested in your feedback; would you attend this session?

jQuery Camp 2008 is a truly fantastic opportunity to learn from the jQuery team and socialize with top jQuery developers; we’re looking forward to meeting everyone!

See you all in September.

Google Using jQuery

Posted on by

Google relaunched their Google Code site with a new design and, you guessed it, jQuery under the hood! Dion Almaer, employee at Google and co-founder of Ajaxian.com, discusses the redesign on his blog and makes mention to the fact that the Google team is now using jQuery for the Google Code site. DeWitt Clinton also discusses this on the Google Code Blog:

For example, the search results pages use a combination of the AJAX Search API and Custom Search Engines. The homepage gadgets use the AJAX Feed API and Google Reader feeds. The videos are powered by the YouTube API, the blogs by the Blogger API, the events powered by the Google Calendar API, the metrics by Google Analytics, the forums by Google Groups, etc., etc.. And we’re pleased to use jQuery, the wonderful open source JavaScript library (not ours, we’re just fans), to help power each page. Stay tuned — over the upcoming weeks we’ll offer detailed articles and tutorials about how we built the various parts of Google Code using open technologies.

As pioneers in the Ajax and JavaScript space, it’s extremely exciting to have Google use jQuery to help them build out this site and we look forward to helping the Google team in the future.

New jQuery Project Team Members

Posted on by

The jQuery team would like to welcome our newest team members, Yehuda Katz, Nate Cavanaugh, & Klaus Hartl. These three developers have made invaluable contributions to the jQuery projects in terms of time, knowledge and commitment to the community.

Yehuda is a developer living in New York City who maintains the web site Visual jQuery, and publishes the Visual jQuery Magazine. Additionally, he’s a frequent contributor to the jQuery Blog and promoter of good practices within the jQuery core. As a member of the evangelism team he’s working to help people discover jQuery; actively trying to find and promote jQuery to new users.

Nate is a designer living in California. He was responsible for the recent redesign of the jQuery site. He’s going to be helping to design new portions of the site, and help to bring outdated portions of the site inline with the rest. He’s also working to take a critical look at how using jQuery, as a design tool, can help to promote Unobtrusive design principals.

Klaus has been one of the most vocal supporter of jQuery and unobtrusive design on the jQuery mailing list. His ability to expertly explain quality, unobtrusive, solutions to problems is invaluable will be a tremendous boon to the jQuery project. Klaus will be working with both the Evangelism & Dev teams, to help promote jQuery and expand its reach as well as maintaining Thickbox and the Tabs plugin. He will also be spearheading the effort to make Tabs an official plugin.

We’re very pleased to be working with all of you and welcome you to the jQuery team.

New jQuery API Browser

Posted on by

The jQuery team continues to pump out additional tools and resources to make development using jQuery easy, efficient and productive. The latest addition to jQuery’s growing list of tools is project team lead Jorn Zaefferer’s new jQuery API Browser.

jQuery API Browser
Visit: http://jquery.bassistance.de/api-browser/

The jQuery API browser provides an intuitive interface to quickly find information on jQuery’s methods and properties. Features include:

  • Tabbed navigation
  • Treeview on categories
  • Quicksearch on both navigation and main content
  • Code highlighting for both HTML and JavaScript snippets
  • A vertical splitter that allows you to resize navigation/content panes
  • Highlighting selected methods in the content
  • Styled tooltips for method arguments

The API browser is available both online and as a download for local usage.

The jQuery project offers a comprehensive & ever-growing list of resources that will provide developers with documentation, tutorials, and plugins/widgets for their site development.

jQuery:
http://jquery.com/

Plugins & UI Widgets/Controls:
http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins

Documentation:
http://docs.jquery.com/Main_Page
http://www.visualjquery.com/
http://jquery.bassistance.de/api-browser/

Magazine:
http://www.visualjquery.com/magazine/

Mailing List:
http://jquery.com/discuss/

Project Blog:
https://blog.jquery.com/

Learning Resources:
http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials
http://www.learningjquery.com/
http://15daysofjquery.com/

About
http://docs.jquery.com/Sites_Using_jQuery
http://docs.jquery.com/About/Contributors

Don’t forget to Digg up this article on Digg!