Behind Paper.js: On the nuts and bolts of designing and building a vector graphics library in JavaScript

Jürg Lehni

Twitter: @juerglehni.
Github: lehni

As one of the creators of Paper.js, Jürg Lehni will shed light on the history and functionality of the library. His presentation will also focus on various meta-programming tricks, such as the implementation of operator overloading in JavaScript to make vector math a first class citizen, a row of other syntactic goodies that lead to more readable code, almost automatic (de)serialization of data structures, and an internal micro framework used for simple class inheritance with support for accessors and dynamic overloading.

Behind the Weird Faces: Presets as a technique for rich procedural content creation

Matthias Dörfelt

Twitter: @mokafolio.
Site: http://www.mokafolio.de

In his presentation Matthias will talk about his art project "Weird Faces" which generates an infinite number of unique faces that look very similar to his hand drawn faces. Weird Faces has been programmed in Java Script using PaperJS. In his talk he will use the project to show off the power of using presets as a technique for rich and diverse procedural and generative content creation.

The History of Women in Computing

Jessica Suttles

Twitter: @jlsuttles.
Github: jlsuttles

Computer programming was once seen as "women's work." Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Adele Goldberg, and others played pivotal roles in paving the way for today's computing professions. So why then do we see so few women in our community? I'll cover the history of women in computing, possible causes of the gender imbalance, and ideas for how our community can shape a future that includes more women.

The History of Women in Computing from JSLA on Vimeo.

Modular Widgets with AMD

Guy Bedford

Twitter: @guybedford.
Github: guybedford

Guy is the author of RequireCSS and ZestJS, which provides a way of writing widgets as AMD modules managing the templates, CSS and dynamic scripts as a single dependency for rendering both on the client and server.

He will go over some of the benefits of using AMD modules with RequireJS, including how it's not really that different from CommonJS. See how features such as plugins and dynamic loading work naturally in the browser and how these allow for the ZestJS widget approach.

Modular Widgets with AMD and jspm.io from JSLA on Vimeo.

JavaScript Made Simple: JavaScript Object Orientation

Joe Johnson

Presentation Material: On-screen or Gist.
Twitter: @say2joe.
Github: say2joe

For this month's installment of JavaScript Made Simple, we talk about the Object (JavaScript's "atom").

In Object Orientation, we'll introduce you to the basics of several forms of JavaScript Object creation as well as recognizing and implementing prototypal inheritance.

JavaScript Made Simple: JavaScript Object Orientation from JSLA on Vimeo.

Browserify V2 and You (nix)

James Halliday

Twitter: @substack.
Github: substack

Browserify lets you use node-style require() calls to load files and npm modules in the browser (it's awesome).

The recent browserify v2 rewrite embraces streaming APIs, lots of tiny modules all doing exactly one thing well, and timeless unix wisdom. Now you can bundle static assets with source transforms, generate compact bundles with standalone streaming pipeline tools, trivially test your modules in node and against every browser ever and other superpowers all with a new very tiny bundle filesize overhead that supports multiple bundles.

Finally the sublime wisdom of node and unix can be realized all the way up the stack in browsers too.

Browserify V2 and You (nix) from JSLA on Vimeo.

Java Script Made Simple: Hip Hop Array

Jonny Kang

Twitter: @coderjonny.
Github: coderjonny

Short talk on arrays in javascript. For our series, Javascript Made Simple.

JavaScript Made Simple - Hip Hop Array from JSLA on Vimeo.

Node's Harder Side

Eric Gradman

Twitter: @egradman
Site: http://www.gradman.com

Eric Gradman is an inventor and entertainer who makes others see technology as magic. He has a colorful history as a circus performer, professional whistler, roboticist, and inventor.

In this talk, Eric will discuss the challenges and rewards of interfacing with interesting hardware using Node. If you've never wondered why you'd debounce an unreliable button using Underscore, come check this talk out

Eric Gradman - Node's Harder Side from JSLA on Vimeo.

Creative JavaScript in Advertising

Michael Anthony and Andy Thelander

Twitter: @_activetheroy.
Twitter: @andythelander.

Michael Anthony and Andy Thelander of Active Theory will look back on their first 6 months as a digital agency and share select projects like Clouds Over Cuba and My Life in 20 Years whilst discussing development techniques of client and server-side JavaScript.

Creative JavaScript In Advertising from JSLA on Vimeo.

JavaScript Made Simple

Ron Evans

Twitter: @deadprogram

If you have never seen Ron present before you are in for a treat. This is the first in a series of very short talks (5-7 mins) which will help introduce some of the basics of JS, as well as point out some interesting aspects that perhaps even "experts" might not know.

JavaScript Made Simple - Liberty, Equality, Identity! from JSLA on Vimeo.

Node.js & Me

Mike Brevoort

Twitter: @mbrevoort
Github: @mbrevoort
About.me

Mike has been leading the Node.js efforts at Pearson, a global education and publishing company. He has been responsible for advocating the needs of large organizations in the node community and has unique experience integrating a diverse tech stack into a modern one that developers want to work with.

Mike will share his experiences with node.js, where it's a good fit and where it is not. He will discuss some specific examples of how he's used node and dive into some code.

Node.js & Me from JSLA on Vimeo.

Math Envy and CoffeeScript's Foibles

John Bender

Twitter: @johnbender
Github: @johnbender
http://johnbender.us

John Bender is the co-creator of Vagrant, a jQuery Mobile contributor, and a recovering polygot. During the day he works full-time on jQuery Mobile at Adobe and otherwise spends his time hacking on open source.

CoffeeScript is an extremely popular JavaScript replacement, but its flexible syntax has been the source of some confusion. This talk covers one troublesome interaction between CoffeeScript terms and how mathematics could prevent similar issues in the future. You don't need a background in math to enjoy the talk, just an interest in language design and how math can help solve tough problems.

Math Envy and CoffeeScript's Foibles from JSLA on Vimeo.

Sandboxing Untrusted Code in Node.js

Joe Rozner

Twitter: @jrozner
Github: jrozner

Running untrusted code is always a difficult problem to deal with. This talk will explore some of the potential problems with result from doing this including: resource starvation, data security, remote code execution, and unintended network access. It will then explore some of the design decisions of Node.JS and show how these can be used to help control provide methods to sandbox code to prevent these types of attacks, ending with an explanation of some of the limitations of this technique and possible other solutions.

meteor.js

Philippe Lewicki

Twitter: @philfree
Github: philfree

Meteor is a pure javascript open source platform based on node.js, mongodb, mustache style template with optional packages like backbone, underscore, bootstrap, coffee script, less, stylus, d3, query...

I will present the key concept like live page update, synchronization, hot code push then demo some application and explain how some of the key concept are implemented.

meteor.js from JSLA on Vimeo.

Top 10 Secret Weapons For Front-End Development

Geoffrey Plitt

Twitter: @GeoffreyPlitt.
Github: GeoffreyPlitt

Geoffrey Plitt, active standup comedian, former Google engineer, and CTO of comedy discovery engine Laffster.com discusses tips, tricks, and pitfalls his teams have learned while using technologies such as KnockoutJS, HeadJS, CoffeeScript, Slim, SASS, Middleman, various jQuery plugins, and Amazon Web Services. Plus he's funny

Top 10 Secret Weapons For Front-End Development from JSLA on Vimeo.

Wheatley

Giles Bowkett

Twitter: @gilesgoatboy.
App.net: @gilesgoatboy.
Github: gilesbowkett

Legacy code is annoying. Imagine how cool it would be if robots would fix your legacy code for you!

Wheatley was designed to refactor JavaScript semi-automatically. The project's unfinished, because writing code which will refactor your JavaScript for you automatically is just insanely overambitious, but the few refactorings it can do are very cool. Wheatley can also recognize identical code and nearly-identical code.

Wheatley from JSLA on Vimeo.

Sentiment Analysis in a Post Grammatical World

Danny Tran, Disney

Github: digidanny
Twitter: @digi_danny

How do we determine the sentiment of text in a world where syntax and grammer are thrown out of the window? Utilizing Node and Natural, a NLP (Natural Language Processing) toolkit, we'll go through a few techniques ranging from manual polarity determination to machine learning classification, all the while highlighting the challenges of analyzing text in a "post-grammatical" world.

Sentiment Analysis in a Post Grammatical World from JSLA on Vimeo.

Jukebox.js - Experiment with Modern Web Technology

Jeff Pelton @comster

Today in the browser you can decode audio, parse metadata and album art, using Audio API & File API's, preview files on your computer using FileReader and upload them using XHR2 with HTML progress bars for the best user experience, build visualizations using a drawing library like D3.js and more.

Jukebox.js is an open source experiment showing what you can do with some of the latest web technologies like file access, audio playback, chat, and real time collaboration. The web app is built with tools including backbone.js, socket.io, aurora.js, dancer.js, and more. The server is built on house.js, a node.js open source platform as a service to provide RESTful interfaces to authentication, file systems, data and media.

We'll take a quick look at the broad strategy for modern web app development, then we'll dive into as many of these great HTML features and open source javascript libraries as we can!

Jukebox.js - Experiment with Modern Web Technology from JSLA on Vimeo.

Sophisticated Views: How Ember's View Layer Handles the Complex Problems

Peter Wagenet @wagenet

Simplicity is good, but what happens when your problems aren't simple? In this talk, I'll discuss some of the complexities of handling events and DOM rendering that are overlooked in many Javascript frameworks. We'll then see how Ember provides sophisticated solutions to these issues so that you don't have to.

Sophisticated Views: How Ember's View Layer Handles the Complex Problems from JSLA on Vimeo.

JS To Rule Them All

Michael Anthony @_activetheory

One of the more cringe-inducing terms for any JS developer is "web page". We've now reached the point where any meaningful experience needs to be an application. It also needs to be thoughtfully crafted to work on phones and tablets all the while having the level of animation and polish users have come to expect from the technology they use regardless of platform.

Static pages with responsive layouts aren't going to cut it in this new universe, so we'll look at using only JavaScript to structure applications, create and style markup, and also be platform aware in order to present users with an interactive experience suited for each device.

This talk will be a general theory overview accompanied by plenty of examples and very brief code demonstrations. It will cover interesting points along the way such as best practices for smooth UI and animation, content management, SEO, and even how to use these exact techniques to create native mobile applications.

JS To Rule Them All from JSLA on Vimeo.

Backbone.js: The framework that isn't

Daniel Hengeveld @thedaniel

Backbone.js is often discussed alongside the many other popular client-side frameworks like Ember, Knockout, et cetera. This talk will discuss how Backbone.js is less like those opinionated frameworks and more like a set of glue libraries to build your own framework, and will also cover some useful patterns you can use in your own Backbone application.

Backbone.js: The framework that isn't from JSLA on Vimeo.

Going Native: Practical scripting with the JavaScript Image Object

Aaron Martin @citygridmedia

JQuery, Dojo, Mootools, Ext, Prototype, Script.aculo.us, Backbone, Modernizer….[sigh]…it’s hard to keep up. Remember when there was just something called JavaScript? I do. Don’t get me wrong I love all the aforementioned libraries like a father loves his children, but when it is time to get practical and create performance solutions those babies got to go. I’m going to introduce you to an old friend of mine, the JavaScript native image object. This ol’boy is perhaps one of the most powerful objects in JavaScript and he’s uber simple to get to know. I’m going to show you some of his tricks and try to convince you that he belongs in your JavaScript solutions tool belt!

Going Native: Practical scripting with the JavaScript Image Object from JSLA on Vimeo.

AngularJS

Igor Minar @IgorMinar

What if you could write modern web apps with dramatically fewer lines of code and improve its readability and expressiveness at the same time? No, there’s no new language to learn. Just familiar old HTML and JavaScript. As a matter of fact, there’s some stuff for you to un-learn.

AngularJS is a client-side JavaScript web development framework where we believe we’ve done something special. We’ve approached the problem let’s say differently from the way any other JavaScript tool has before. Instead of asking what kind of functions we could provide to make writing apps smoother, we asked “what if the browser worked differently in a way that eliminates code and gives structure to apps?”

This talk will take the audience on a tour of what the web platform of the future will look like and how the AngularJS framework can provide many of the powerful capabilities to existing browsers and bridge the path to web components, model driven views and other platform features that are currently being spec-ed.

AngularJS from JSLA on Vimeo.

Design to Deploy - Mobile Development with Titanium

Christian Sullivan @euforic

This talk is about the entire process of creating a mobile application with Titanium. From the early design stage all the way through to the testing and deployment of the app and how to overcome some of the caveats that come with using Titanium.

BIO: Node.js, Titanium, iOS, Javascript hacker, Software Engineer by day Jiu Jitsu Fighter by night. Buddhist bum and Father of two beautiful girls. His blog can be found at http://RogueSynaptics.com.

Design to Deploy - Mobile Development with Titanium from JSLA on Vimeo.

Realtime Visualizations w/ D3 and Backbone

Andrew Cholakian @andrewvc

D3 is perhaps the most powerful tool available for displaying realtime data on the web. By defining its own level of abstraction, being closer to the DOM than charting tools (e.g. highcharts), and being higher level than drawing primitives (e.g. Raphael), you can create amazing data driven visualizations. This talk will cover the basics of D3, and best practices for integrating D3 visualizations with Backbone.js and realtime websocket data. An example of D3 + Backbone can be found in Andrew's open source Engulf HTTP load tester here https://github.com/andrewvc/engulf

BIO: Andrew Cholakian is a software developer, blogger, and frequent open source contributor working at LA startup Pose. His blog can be found at http://blog.andrewvc.com.

Realtime Visualizations w/ D3 and Backbone from JSLA on Vimeo.

Faster JavaScript Through Category Theory

John Bender @johnbender

Math, it's certainly not something you expect to see in a presentation about JavaScript, but even this far from its ivory towers it has an important role to play. Together we'll build two categories and see how, by satisfying the category and functor laws, we can optimize our jQuery plugins and methods.

Don't worry, you don't need a background in Math just some curiosity and a desire to speed up your jQuery!

Faster JavaScript Through Category Theory from JSLA on Vimeo.

J3D: Adventures with WebGL

Bartek Drozdz @bartekd

I usually find technologies that interest me, experiment with them, publish demos I do and eventually use them in a commercial project. With WebGL it was different - my first contact with this technology was through a client project. I had to learn WebGL on the go. It took me a few months to actually start apperciating it, but once the project was over and I thought I know everything about it, I decided to write my own engine that I baptized simply J3D. After a good start, I realized I didn't know that much about WebGL after all... Since then I spent many day & nights (mostly nights) learning and creating what I believe is a good tool for other developers to start creating 3D applications in the browser.

In my presentation I talk about specific challenges when working WebGL projects and how J3D addresses them. I will also take you on a short walk-through of it's features and present some demos.

J3D: Adventures with WebGL from JSLA on Vimeo.

Introducing Mojito

Gamaiel Zavala, Yahoo!

Mojito is a sweet (and minty!) MVC application framework built on YUI 3 that enables agile development of Web applications. Gamaiel Zavala will be presenting an introduction to Mojito including set up, routing, controllers, models, addons, binders, and configuration. Gamaiel has been building Media sites at Yahoo! for 6 years and is currently working on Media's migration to Mojito.

Seeing Sound with HTML5

David Guttman @davidguttman

Embrace JavaScript-induced synesthesia. Thanks to recent advances in web audio API technology, you can now see sound---in your browser. Thus, the time for in-browser music visualization is now! It's easier than ever before with EasyEars.js and David will show you how.

Breaking up big node.js apps into lots of tiny services

James Haliday @substack | The presentation Example

Splitting up your architecture into tiny processes that talk to each other over the network is useful for many of the same reasons that unix utilities are useful: they can focus on doing one thing well and it's trivial to glue a bunch of tiny processes together to serve some more complicated end goal. It can be difficult to write and deploy applications this way, but I've written some libraries such as dnode, upnode, seaport, and fleet to make this much easier to manage. In this talk I'll show how you can glue tiny processes together and split bigger ones up with these tools.

An Introduction to WebGL and three.js

Travis Glines @travisglines | Presentation Github

I had recently been working a lot with WebGL and three.js and will give a simple primer on what WebGL is, using three.js and how to make something neat.