The folks at Hinchcliffe & Company conducted an all day Ajax Bootcamp at Web Design World today. The posted pre-conference materials state:

Using a concept-to-completion format, you’ll learn how to leverage the full power of the browser to build effective RIAs in this day-long course. We’ll cover the basics of Ajax including asynchronous server communication, Dynamic HTML, and Javascript with a focus on the most popular open-source Ajax libraries and frameworks. The latest techniques and best practices for building RIAs are explored including Ajax design patterns and user interface strategies for building elegant, “user addictive” Web sites and applications.

Other than the “user addictive” nonsense, the bootcamp was quite good. It became clear the practice of hand-coding Ajax-driven web content is quickly going by the wayside. There are enough quality libraries and frameworks available in the open-source market to accomplish most tasks. Most of the discussion at the bootcamp revolved around implementing the Dojo Javascript framework. Frameworks have a tremendous amount of power and seeing this presentation has prompted me to further investigate Dreamweaver CS3 and the Spry framework.

In the end, there was a little too much emphasis on web-standards (the Dojo framework creates non-standards code anyway) and not enough time spent on best practices.

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Anyone that has worked on a web development team of any size knows that documenting and managing website changes can be a nightmare. Although project management software (I love Basecamp) helps to manage the larger elements of a project, the minute details can often get over looked.

Not anymore. I recently started using mystickies.com as a collaborative website change management tool. Prior to using mystickies.com, the website change process usually involved either:

1. Filling out a change request form;
2. Sending an email; or
3. Printing the page and covering it with unreadable text and (ahem) sticky notes.

Sometimes it involved all three! These methods were often inefficient and timely. Now clients can leave sticky notes on their websites referring to changes that they would like to make to the site. The sitcky notes can be resized, color coded, and even tagged. What a great concept.

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I will soon be making the switch from my trusty Dell laptop to a 15″ Mac PowerBook Pro. I am excited to have Windows and OS X on the same machine, but am getting a little nervous about changing the way I work. I will use OS X for my primary development environment and have windows installed for browser and platform testing. I am not an Apple newbie, but I have found a few bits of software that I use on a daily basis that do not appear to have a Mac equivalent:

• Microsoft OneNote - I love this program…and Office 2008 for mac doesn’t seem to include it.
• Microsfot Visio - I don’t really want to make the switch to OmniGraffle…I have a lot of good Visio stencils.
• Xenu Link Sleuth - I will miss this program. Dearly.

Anyone have recommendations for OS X equivalent software?

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After months of waiting for new features and better plugins, I am ending my relationship with Bloglines.  It’s not as though I have been disappointed in Bloglines.  I have often recommended it to colleagues, friends, and complete strangers.  I find it to be a completely capable feed reader. 

I have been very busy lately and haven’t been able to keep up on my  blog subscriptions.  When I could I would check into my Bloglines account, only to be interrupted and taken away to another website.  Upon returning to Bloglines, I would have to start over…often times forgetting where I had left off.  Herein lies the one simple feature that has forced me to change feed readers: Google Reader saves my state.  It allows me to pick up where I left off.  This is very important to me.

Now if I can only get the good folks at google to allow me to search within my subscriptions…

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37signals have made Getting Real available online for free.  It is in HTML format, but you can still buy a PDF. This excellent book covers how to build successful web applications the “smarter, faster, easier way”.  They even throw in a short chapter on interface design.  A must must read.

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