The Ajax Experience - dustup
Well, one more conference done and dusted, and The Ajax Experience was definitely fun to do, not least because it allowed me to return to Boston.
Currently I’m sitting in the hotel bar with a few hours to kill, so this is as good a time as any for some impressions:
- I underestimated the level of the audience here. When I asked how many people had experience in coding sites for Netscape 4 and IE4, about half the audience raised their hands, and that was something I definitely did not expect.
- More in general, this conference has about the highest overall audience level I ever encountered. You really can’t teach these people much.
- An hour and a half for a session is long. I’'m not saying it’s too long, but it’s still long.
- I suppose I am a passable panel moderator. Now I just have to learn to handle the flow while simultaneously keeping track of the conversation. When it became clear we would be running way overtime if we treated all the questions, I had to totally drop out of the conversation for a minute or two to decide which questions we were going to skip.
- Met a lot of people I haven’t seen for a while. Also met quite a few new ones, as well as two Fronteers 2008 veterans.
- Chris Heilmann needs a keeper. I duly appointed myself.
- The normal, non-light beer ran out during the MS-sponsored cocktail hour. So Microsoft is Evil after all. I mean, IE8 is great and all that, but Miller Light?
- Time for MS Beer 8, I guess.
- BTW, don’t say stuff like that to Pete LePage; he’s liable to order more beers than I (or even Chris Heilmann) can handle.
- “A Microsoft, a Google and a Yahoo developer relations manager walk into a bar...” What happens next? Let me know in the comments.
- Quite a few leads for good speakers for Fronteers 2009.
- I’m also considering a Browser Drinking Panel. The Opera guys would win hands down, so the other browsers would compete for second place (though according to Chris Wilson we shouldn’t underestimate Chris Wilson).
- Lots of interesting conversations about various geeky subjects.
- It turns out TAE is also the time for the Dojo, jQuery and Prototype teams' annual meetup. So they kind of stuck together in large groups. Haven’t seen that before at a conference, but it makes sense. I mostly hung out with the Prototype guys (who formed the smallest group anyway).
- I got to play with Google Android for about ten minutes. Sorry, promised not to tell you more, but it’ll be released pretty soon and you can see for yourself. And if they give me one for free I’ll be more than happy to run my tests and include it in my tables. (That goes for any mobile device, BTW.)
Hope to be here next year, too. I think this is my last US visit until SxSW party time comes around again.
Comments are closed.
1 Posted by Karl Swedberg on 3 October 2008 | Permalink
It was a pleasure to hear your presentation on the state of the browser, as well as the panel you moderated.
I, too, was impressed by the level of expertise of the attendees, but since it's the only conference I've attended (not including last year's TAE and the jQuery conferences), I don't really have a basis for comparison.
Cheers!
2 Posted by TNO on 3 October 2008 | Permalink
Since the percentage of archaic browser users are higher than expected, do you have any plans to expand the compatibility tables to include them? IE5, and NS5 perhaps?
3 Posted by Andrew Dupont on 5 October 2008 | Permalink
Yes, Chris needs a keeper, yet he cannot be contained. Can you know the mighty ocean? Can you lasso a star from the sky? Can you say to a rainbow... 'Hey, stop being a rainbow for a second'? No! Such is Chris.
Yeah, we Prototype people were the smallest group, mostly because we're the smallest team as well. The Dojo guys are quite accepting of outsiders, though, if their SXSW excursions to The Salt Lick are any indication.
Anyway, regarding Android: you should be able to download a simulator and run your tests inside their WebKit-based browser right now. Not as sexy as testing it on a device, of course, but then the G1 isn't all that sexy anyway.
4 Posted by ppk on 6 October 2008 | Permalink
I'll try to contain Chris again at the next conference, even though I feel I'll fail.
As to the Android simulator, I've never trusted any simulator since the time I downloaded one for a mobile phone (I forget which one, but it's long ago) and it turned out to use the IE rendering engine on my computer!
In other words, a simulator without a full rendering engine is useless.
Now if the Android simulator specifically noted that it includes the Android rendering engine (and not just any Webkit-based one), I'd use it, but as matters stand today I won't.
5 Posted by Anni Perkson on 18 October 2008 | Permalink
"coding sites for Netscape 4 and IE4" do you expect that those versions had any relations? i think actually we can forget them...
"Quite a few leads for good speakers for Fronteers 2009" ... i wish i can join it :(
"I got to play with Google Android for about ten minutes. Sorry, promised not to tell you more, but it’ll be released pretty soon and you can see for yourself." ... damned what are you waiting for? i cannot wait to read about it! :)))