The AJAX Experience - Day 3

This post is a bit tardy only because the past couple of days have been pretty backed up, but the last day of the conference was one of the better ones.

I'll go through the sessions that I was able to see.

Keynote: Don't Make Me Click by Aza Raskin
I learned more in this one keynote than I did in all of the other sessions, combined. This talk just absolutely ruled. I truly wish that every single developer for Liferay could have been there. I want to talk briefly about what he talked about, and how I think it can apply to Liferay, and enterprise software in general.

His first question was, what's the ideal interface? He clicked to his slide, and it was a blank screen. The interface, above all, should be invisible. It should be seemless, and you shouldn't even think about it, because it's so easy to use.

His example was that of a shovel. You have the blade of the shovel, the "business logic", and you have the handle, the "interface". He mentioned how most software looks like a full size shovel with a 6" handle. All the work has been made to make the shovel the best tool, diamond encrusted, completely unbreakable, and yet people can hardly lift it.
He also showed the Microsoft version of the shovel, which was essentially a giant digging tractor that connects to the internet, answers phone calls, and does pretty much everything except really dig.

And the point that stuck out to me the most was when he asked what the user wants, and he showed a picture of a hole.
THATS what our users really want. They want the work done. The interface should be designed to get to that goal. Whether it's with a Web 2.0 style, whether it looks like 1999, getting the user to "Done" is our job.

He also talked about how the worst interface is one that is a thin veneer over it's underlying implementation.
This is why many web app UI's are really bad. It's practically just an interface to enter information into a database, rather than something that's thought about and designed to accomplish a goal.

He used Google's homepage as a good example of that, and went through and showed many different ways that Google could have screwed it up by adding more options, more form fields, and more "noise" for a user.

Later on, I met up Aza and chatted for a bit, and he's an awesome guy. I loved the keynote, and if for nothing else, I'm glad I could see his talk.

Design Patterns and Animation with jQuery by Paul Bakaus

Paul is an absolutely brilliant guy, and the content of the talk was great. I think he was a bit nervous, but overall he did a fair job.
He talked about the different ways to handle animations and the different design patterns.

It was also one of the talks where I felt like I was learning something. I was really glad I could make it.

Ajax Futures Panel and Q&A with Douglas Crockford, John Resig, and Aza Raskin
It was great to see John and Doug on the same stage finally, and letting them hammer it out between them about Javascript 2. Doug is an entertaining guy to listen to, even if I don't agree with him 100%. But he was quite even handed in talking about the new spec, or at least his openness to being wrong.

The Q&A was pretty terrible, though. They managed to find all of the people with either accents too thick to follow, people too timid to really speak above a whisper, or people who would just ramble on without ever getting to a question.

Hybrid JavaScript: Extending the Capabilities of the Browser as a Platform by Nathan Naze

Nathan did a fair job as a presenter, though I really did enjoy his talk about the different standards, the browser as a platform, and the intertwining of Flash and Javascript.

I wish he had come a bit better prepared, but that's a small gripe. He was very likable, and his content was good.

And that was the last session I was able to make it to.

I am just so happy I could have made it. This coming week I am doing on site training for one of our clients, and Thursday night I get to go home.

I think the training will go well, and I'm looking forward to helping them get rolling and productive, but I miss being in the office, working with the guys, going to get Pho and Maxim (the Chinese Denny's :), and getting cracking on fixing our other interface issues, and implementing new features, but most of all, I miss my wife, and I'm looking forward to a nice weekend of relaxation with her.

Sadly, the next Monday, I will be getting 4 cavities filled and a wisdom tooth pulled.
Yay for dentistry!

Alrighty folks, that is it for this years AJAX Experience roundup. I will now go back to blogging about design, interfaces, and the other random stuff I come up with.

Until then, I bid you adieu...

[Jorge Ferrer]

Hey Nate,
It's amazing that you've met and talked to Aza Raskin! I'm a big fan of him (as I was of his father) and the only real thing that I really missed when moving back to Linux a few months back was Enso (http://www.humanized.com/enso/launcher/). If you ever meet him again, could you ask him for a version for KDE? ;)

BTW, Aza gave a very similar talk at Google and the recording is available here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6856727143023456694

I also recommend everyone to spend around 80 great minutes watching it.