DevCon TLV – HTML5 APIs (Talk & Slides)

Today I had the pleasure to talk (again) at DevCon Tel Aviv. In this talk, I’ve covered some of the aspects that developer should think about in the design phase, coding phase and after the ‘production time’. It was a good opportunity  to put a simple demo page that contain some basic HTML5 features you might want to use. Why? because in cases like the ‘Summary/Detail’ element you get the option to have expendable/collapsable areas without any JavaScript. It’s great to have the ability to communicate to the browser our needs without doing some ‘hacks’ in JS. Other great options like: visibility API, Geo and device orientration are all working on most modern browsers. You can check out the slides and the links to the resources in them.

DevConTLV Summary

Last week, I had the pleasure to present at DevConTLV for the 3rd time. It a great conferance that bring to Tel Aviv some rock-stars from companies like: Github, CouchDB, Amazon and many others. The location (Ozen Bar) is a cool place where you can hear live music during the nights and drink good coffee during the mornings. So it is a natural location to such an event. Ahh… and yep, the opening of the day was done with a live rock band! (just like JSConf).

Web Components Talk At HTML5-IL Meetup

Last week I had the pleasure to take part in the first HTML5-IL meetup. If you are a front-end developer that live in Israel you should try and come to this group events. Lots of great developers, designers and others that share the same passion for the web. Great stuff. Unfortunately  I didn’t have more then 30min for this new, hot, complicated topic. So I hope to have more time to cover some of the aspects during the next meetup. From the four main aspects we touched only on the first two:

Barcelona GDG 2012 – Keynote On HTML5 APIs

Last month, I had the pleasure to be in Barcelona and talk with great developers on HTML5, JavaScript and the open web. The keynote cover new HTML5 APIs and If you wish to read some of the main points check out this blog post. During that day, I saw a cool start-up (e.g. Imira) which created html5 game: ‘Lucky Fred’ and use phone-gap to have it in iOS and Android market places.

After the keynote, I gave another talk on HTML5 and big data (with google cloud services). Overall, it was a great experience and the organizer did a great job. I hope to be able to make it again next year…

• Slides for the keynote
• Slides for HTML5 and Big Data – There is no video for now. Thus, I hope to get it soon and post it.

My Talk At HTML5Fest Israel (In Hebrew)

Two week ago, I have the pleasure to take part in HTML5Fest Israel and give the keynote. It was a great event that the Israeli office of the W3C organize. If you wish to read some of the main points check out this blog post. It was a short talk because I thought I had 30min but in the end of the day… It was shorter.

Nevertheless, I had great time having interesting conversations with lead developers in the crowds for the rest of the day. I can’t wait for next year event…

HTML5 New APIs And Modern Web Apps

Here is a talk I gave over hangout to developers that came to Esto es Google 2012 in Mexico. It cover the same topics from this talk that I gave in hebrew but this time it’s in english…

As in most of the cases, you can find all the slides over at: ido-green.appspot.com

Dart Hackathon In Tel Aviv

In the last weekend of April there we are going to have a Dart Global Happy Hour around the world. Luckily, we will have Tel Aviv on the map as well. Fitst, for the ones that still think we are speaking here about

Well, we are not talking about dart game in the irish pub. Although it’s good fun…

So… what is Dart?

Dart is structured web programming for the entire modern web. Like a good draught, Dart is fresh yet familiar, with unique touches that help create a delightful new experience for aficionados of software development. Dart delivers a smooth pour of a new language, libraries, virtual machine, and compilation to modern JavaScript. Dart will make web development crisp and refreshing again.

So in order to gain more feedback (and have fun hacking) we are going to have a #Dart hackathon in the last weekend of April. The keynote will be giving by +Gilad Bracha and we will have other Dart experts, helping during the hackathon. The event is going to take place at the Hub in Tel Aviv so if you wish to attend you better register asap at hackathon-israel.eventbrite.com/ and for the schedule and more details on the event: http://goo.gl/iFccu

We ask all the participants to bring their own laptops and power cords. Please make sure to have Java, Dart SDK and the Dart Editor on your laptop before the hackathon. Here is a good page that will guide you on the process: http://www.dartlang.org/docs/getting-started/editor/. The hub will provide WiFi and we will make sure there is enough food/drinks. If you wish to ‘test the water’ before the event – dartlang.org is an excellent resource to test the language and get a feel to the power of the APIs.

• Disclaimer: Dart is “technology preview” (not yet even alpha). This hackathon is for experienced developers.

Great Web App Session

At the last day (for me) in the Javaposse roundup 2012 we started (like any good day) with camp 4 coffee. Then, after you can speak (more or less) we sat to talk on what does we mean when we say: “Modern web app” or as Joel N. said: “Don’t use the word modern because it will become obsolete before you know it”. When we try to define a great web app here are some common aspects we found:

• Self Contained
• Functional
• Immersive
• Interactive
• Works Offline
• Device Aware
• App Styled Navigation
• Client Side Architecture

Few important things we can learn from Amazon web kindle app:

• Does it cost more to support browser X than it generates?
• Is the browser older than the mayo in your fridge?
• Is an exorcist required to debug the app’s behavior?

The lesson is to be explicit about the browsers you support (just like Amazon). One of THE success stories about mobile web apps if the Financial times app. You might want to check the slides in order to get the full details of their success story.

Btw, in you can have this new script to help you popup the message for users to add your web app to their home screen. It will make the engejment of your app better and the user will be able to ‘treat’ your web app as any other app.

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Here are my slides from the lighting talk on Great Web Apps that I gave later this day.

Google App Script Session

On the second day of the JPR12 we had a good coding dojo (which is a meeting where a bunch of coders get together to work on a programming challenge) during the afternoon activities on Google App Script. The idea was to create a simple, yet functional, system to organize an event. The event could be a training day, hackathon, birthday party, running race, etc’. We started with a template site I’ve created that is built on top of twitter bootstrap-responsive and modernizr (but of course).

The site gives you basic functions like:

• What  – What is the event goal/mission or why should I come.
• Where – Information on the venue and where to park. We use some nice custom google map in order to follow the rule: “one picture is worth 10,000 words”.
• Contact – Who is running the event and ways to get in touch.
• Registration – Using Google forms and app script, as our backend, we will have a system to keep track on the registration process.

In the system backend code we got:

• Set up the maximum number of people that could participate in this event.
• Send a confirmation email.
• Send a waiting-list email to the ones that are filling the registration form after the maximum number of participate is being reach.
• Send a reminder email (a week and/or a day) before the event.
• Lastly, after the event, send an email with a link to a feedback form. We want to be able to improve…

The two interesting parts of this system are:

1. Simple one page app that will render nicely on phones, tablets and desktops.
2. Backend that let us run the communication with the participates and keep tracks on the registration process.

Ready to see some (simple) code?

Here is the part that we use in #2:

//
// Call this when you want to send the call 
// for Feedback email AFTER the event is done
//
function sendFeedbackEmail() {
  // Get our main spread sheet into ss obj.
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();

  // Fetch the sheet with the list of emails
  var dataSheet = ss.getSheetByName("Registration");

  // Fetch the range the contain our information for the email
  var dataRange = dataSheet.getRange(2, 2, 
      dataSheet.getMaxRows() - 1, 
      NUM_FORM_QUESTIONS + 1);

  // First row of data to process
  var startRow  = 2;  

  // Get the email template (you may use html template here)
  var templateSheet = ss.getSheetByName("Email Templates");
  var emailTemplate = templateSheet.getRange("A5").getValue();
  
  // Create one JavaScript object per row of data.
  objects = getRowsData(dataSheet, dataRange);

  // For every row object, create a personalized email from a template and send
  // it to the appropriate person.
  for (var i = 0; i < objects.length; ++i) {

    // Get a row object
    var rowData = objects[i];

    // Only contact people who are 'yes' status
    if (rowData.status == YES) {  

      // Generate a personalized email.
      // Given a template string, replace markers (for instance ${"First Name"}) with
      // the corresponding value in a row object (for instance rowData.firstName).
      var emailText = fillInTemplateFromObject(emailTemplate, rowData);
      var emailSubject = dataSheet.getRange("P2").getValue() + " Reminder";
      
      MailApp.sendEmail(rowData.emailAddress, emailSubject, emailText);
      
      // Make sure the cell is updated right away in case the script is interrupted
      SpreadsheetApp.flush();
    }
  } 
}

Here is the full code for the event site: https://github.com/greenido/events-site-template please feel free to fork, pull and do something cool with it. For more details on the new options and capabilities in Google App Script: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/templates

Tools That Make You More Productive

During the first day of Java posse roundup 2012 I’ve took some notes from all the interesting session I’ve been in. The first day was a great start to the conference with two session that were very interesting with lots of good stuff to start and checkout. Here are some of the notes I’ve took from the session about “Tools that make you more productive”.

The first suggestion was (surprise – surprise) Whiteboards with some good tips like:

• Big boards for work in meetings
• Small portable boards that people can take back to their desks
• Pictures of boards for later reference/distribution – good mobile apps for that are:
  • CamScanner+ phone-based scanning to PDF, etc.
  • Camera+ with its text mode filter.

My favorite editor Sumblime Text was next in line. There are many great tips and ways to make you efficiant using it. I will try to post on that later this week. You can start by using ctrl-p for smart search and improve your knowledge of short-cuts.

Productivity tools:

• Workfloy.com – good for plan/todo anything that need list/sharing and a nice web app.
• join.me – Hassle free screen sharing.
• Evernote/SpringPad  – Everything you want to remember on every device you use.
• Plain-text – good for note-taking, searching
• SimpleNote
• Lightscribe pen – It’s not a pure online tool (but it can be uploaded). It’s a good solution for people that like pens but want to be able to have their drawing/writing digitize for future search.

ToDo:

• Any.do
• “do it tomorrow” – for Android
• Pomodoro technique – Tomatoes.com web-site for pomodoro

For the (web/Java) developers among us:

• Standing desk
• large monitor (or even 2-3 of them).
• best mouse, keyboard, monitor you can buy. On every tool that you use daily you want to buy the best.
• SSD (or hybrid HDD/SS)

How to handle interruptions:

• Turn off all distractions: facebook, twitter, IM, IRC etc’
• Work at home
• Headphones
• Go in early – the few hours without people around in the morning are your 1-2 productive hours of the day.

email considerations:

• Establish policy/reputation of NOT responding rapidly/frequently to emails – unless it is something urgent and then the other team members know to IM you or just call.
• Use email header/subject to distinguish FYI, ACTION REQUIRED, URGENT then you can use priority box in gmail (or filters) to make sure you get to the most important stuff first.
• Boomerang for gMail – It is a good extension that let you set the time of sending so people will get the emails at the start of their work day and not in 23:45 at night.
• Separate user account on workstation that has no email access
• Use email search for trouble-shooting hints, etc.

Software (Java) development:

• JRebel – with and without GWT.
• Play framework – It was great to have a session in the zero day with James ward on play with Java and Scala. Very cool stuff under the hood of Play.
• Write more tests – focus on the parts that you don’t want to do.
• Pair programming (in disciplined doses)

Team communication:

• hipchat.com
• Yammer
• Campfire and it’s ‘brother’ Propane apps.
• Google hangouts (with screen sharing) is powerful tool for meetings.
• Skype.

General hints:

• Environmental hooks (e.g. SBT)
• Python scripting
• Command-? on Mac to drive menu from keyboard
• Avoid the mouse; use keyboard shortcuts
• Mylyn with Eclipse
• Time tracking per task
• Reviewing “painful things” per iteration
• Track time spent on interruptions

If you have more, please let me know in the comments or g+

As for the lighting talks, I was able to hack a little site: jpr12ns.appspot.com (It’s JPR12 and NS for ‘no snow’) to hold all my talks since we had only two nights for the lighting talks so I got some talks ready for next year.