Tom Valletta

By Tom Valletta

We will be going through a handful of strange and seemingly anomalous JavaScript programming puzzles in the style of Joshua Bloch's entertaining and enlightening game show.

The goal of the presentation is to highlight some of the less understood pieces of JavaScript in an engaging format. Understanding some of the subtle nuances of the language will allow developers to deliver cleaner, more bug-free code. Come to see how well you do at answering these puzzles.

By Tom Valletta

Build a Web Bowling game using HTML5, CSS, accelerometer and gyroscope, web sockets, and Box2D physics.

Hey wii bowling fans, in this workshop you will learn how to build a mobile web client that utilizes the accelerometer and gyroscope data of your smartphone to build a control for throwing objects at a remote display. We will create a node websocket server for handling the communication between the controller and the display. On the display we dig into the fantastic JavaScript Box2d physics engine to create obstacles for our remote objects to crash into. Come see just how easy this is to do and build a souvenir to take home to your kids that they really will enjoy a lot more than that starfish you were thinking of buying.

By Tom Valletta

Node.js and Netty are both frameworks for building scalable network applications. While Node.js runs on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine and Netty runs on the JVM, they both have a similar architecture for building event-driven network applications.

This presentation will compare each framework’s pros and cons and discuss their weaknesses and strengths.

By Tom Valletta

Every developer has their favorite tools and today when it comes to which browsers to develop in we have a few choices.

In this session we will be looking at the different dev tools that can be used in each of the popular browsers and discover their strengths and weaknesses. We will be looking at how to inspect elements in the DOM, use the JavaScript console, analyze network requests, spot problematic performance issues, tweak css and much more. Knowing how to use these tools and what they each offer can greatly increase your productivity as a developer and help you quickly troubleshoot browser issues. We will be focusing on Chrome's developer tools, Safari, Firebug and IE.

By Tom Valletta

We will be exploring the features and capabilities of native platforms and comparing them to what is available via the mobile browsers. The strengths and weaknesses of both native and web approaches will be demonstrated through example applications and code.

Comparisons and debate will include graphic acceleration, persistence, geolocation, orientation changes, offline support, camera, file system access, overall experience, etc. We will touch on industry trends, what development organizations are doing, and what technical research firms are predicting.