After writing my first blog post for the Yahoo Developer Network blog it’s time to also upgrade this one here. There are 14 hours left at the Open Hack Day in Bangalore for the hackers to come up with something to woo the others and the Jury. So far I’ve been asked a lot about mail authentication APIs and if you can have a transparent XUL Canvas overlay an iframe to be able to paint on a third party web site. I am a bit scared about what people will hack here.

My presentation seems to have been well received and as always, here are the slides called Yahoo for You on Slideshare

I’ve also taken and uploaded a lot of photos and will go on doing so until I go back to the UK next Thursday.

[tags]hackdayindia,hackday,openhackday[/tags]

As some of you might have seen already, I published an article at the Opera developer network about the YUI:

• Progressive Enhancement and the Yahoo! User Interface Library

This will most likely be the first of a series of articles on how to use YUI and what each of the components offer you. Whilst YUI has a very good documentation, it is pretty hard to please all kind of users of a library and these articles are more geared towards the “step by step” learners than the ones that are happy with a pick and choose method backed up by a full JAVADoc style documentation.

So if you want to know something about the ideas of YUI and why it may help you to use it, check out the Opera Developer Network in the next few weeks.

[tags]opera,yahoo,yui,tutorial,beginner,writing[/tags]

After a refreshing and not at all annoying, pointless and anachronistic two and a half hour wait outside the High Commission of India in London I am a proud owner of a 3 month, one entry visa to India to go to Bangalore for Open Hack Day (no I am not bitter).

From the 5th to 6th of October I’ll be telling the India Hacker community about YUI and other Yahoo! offers and then vanish into the depths of our office to bring YUI cheer to the guys there. I will be back in London to get different rain on the 11th and then soon leave for Paris I think.

Anyways, looking forward to go back to India and maybe rekindle past encounters:

[tags]hackday,openhackday,bangalore,india,annoyance,bureaucracy,kafkaesque,wtf[/tags]

Stuart Colville and Ed Eliot finally announced their engagement … in writing a book for Apress about coping with hair lossweb site performance to be released later this year. The URL is http://website-performance.org/ and the first killer app to use there is the CSS sprite generator that allows batch uploading of images inside zips and several levels of customization of the generated CSS and images.

I am proud to work alongside these two guys, especially as I consider them the best kind of developers: good, team-orientated in their workings and not posh about it. Keep your eyes open for the book, it can help you a lot.

[tags]performance,websites,css,sprites,generator,stuart colville,edward eliot[/tags]

The first three days of this week were kind of a blur to me as I was back in Germany, specifically in Cologne for the Flash Forum Konferenz 2007 meeting the creme de la creme of German Flashers and monkeying around in front of my Powerpoint.

As I know not that much about Flash I had to come up with something special and gave an inspirational talk about how JavaScript started out as a geek blemish on your CV but now became probably the main criteria to hire front end web developers. The talk entitled “Emancipated JavaScript and the Coming Out of the Flash Community” (well, its German equivalent) went down rather well considering the feedback I got so far and the slides are licensed Creative Commons and are as always available on Slideshare:

I thought I was provoking and edgy having had several mild profanities in my slides but I realized that I am no match for Saban Ünlü, who built a really cool Flex based live video chat system for the adult entertainment market and managed to show around 200 Flash Developers in the audience the admin tool of the system with live data. Live data in this case meant lots of ladies on webcams in various states of nudity, performance and application of props. That said, he also showed how the system works and lots and lots of code. I’d have alternated code and adult entertainment in five minute intervals to keep the audience’s engagement up.

I’d have to thank the organizers of the conference and I was very proud to be the odd one out among and amazing array of great presenters, examples and ideas.

Here’s what I took away as action items for myself:

• Get a Wiimote and play around with WiiFlash and Papervision 3D
• Badger both Saban, Sven and maybe some others to come around my office for Tech Talks
• Get new Moo cards
• Always sit around hotel lobbies with my stickered laptop (I got to know someone who runs ImageLoop that way and he took Aral Balkan and me to a very nice Sushi place and then a lot of glasses of Wine in a 39th floor restaurant)
• Look more into Flash and how we can make it work with and improve the user experience of Ajax apps.
• Maybe start a career as live translator as this is what I did for Aral during some talks.

It was great to meet you all and I am looking forward to seeing all the photos and interviews I gave and had taken.

Now go out there and hug a Flash Developer, they are nice folk and do need to stand up more for themselves.

[tags]ffk07,flashforumkonferenz,flashforum,flash,conference,wiiflash,javascript[/tags]