Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

The members of the DOM Scripting Task Force have been productively busy over the last few months, be it globetrotting to conferences and workshops, to rolling up sleeves and writing Dom Scripting books. Here’s a rundown on what’s been happening.

Dean Edwards’ Base class is on its way to being incorporated into Prototype. His Base class offers a clean way of creating and extending JavaScript classes – without affecting Object.prototype. Easing the pain of object oriented JavaScript.

We welcomed Aaron Gustafson into the Task Force in April. Aaron is well known for his work on A List Apart and Digital Web.

Books

Following on the heels of Jeremy Keith’s Dom Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript, and Stuart Langridge’s DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design using JavaScript & DOM, members of the DOM Scripting Task Force have been keeping up with demand, with the following offerings published, or soon to be published:

• Peter-Paul Koch recently completed “ppk on JavaScript”, scheduled to be published in August/September by New Riders. Dean Edwards was the general technical editor, and Derek Featherstone provided technical reviews for accessibility on several chapters.
• Chris Heilmann recently completed work on “Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax”, scheduled to be published on 17th July 2006. He also found time to contribute a chapter on accessible JavaScript for the book “Web Accessibility: Web Standards and regulatory compliance”, scheduled to be released at the end of July (through Friends of ED). This collaboration included Patrick Lauke, Gez Lemon and Bruce Lawson of the WaSP Accessibility Task Force. He also did a technical review of the XML and JavaScript chapter of David Flanagan’s upcoming JavaScript Reference. And yet, Chris still finds time to work on a Yahoo! Answers plugin to the next Yahoo! messenger (tutorials on writing JavaScript/Ajax plugins for Yahoo! Messenger are in the pipeline).
• Dori Smith is writing the next edition (6th edition) of “JavaScript and Ajax for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide”. This includes rewriting all the code from scratch to use current best practices.
• Aaron Gustafson contributed chapters on JavaScript and DOM Scripting in the recently released book “Web Design in a Nutshell (3rd edition)”. Derek Featherstone and Tantek Çelik also contributed a chapter, with Molly Holzschlag and Tantek as technical editors. The reviews so far are very positive about the book’s web standards focus.
• Derek Featherstone was a technical reviewer of Cameron Adams’ and James Edwards’ “The JavaScript Anthology”

Articles

• Chris Heilmann: Show your love to the object literal
• Chris Heilmann: From DHTML to DOM Scripting
• Aaron Gustafson: Getting Started with Ajax

Recent events

• Dori Smith spoke at WebStock on “Moving to Unobtrusive Scripting” in New Zealand.
• Jeremy Keith ran the DOM Scripting/Ajax workshops in the UK, delivered “In praise of the hyperlink” at Reboot 8 in Copenhagen, and “Hijax: Progressive Enhancement with AJAX” at XTech 2006.
• Derek Feathersone delivered “JavaScript and Accessibility” at the 2006 California Web Accessibility Conference (run by knowbility.org) in April (Molly gave the keynote address). He was the guest expert instructor at the Accessibility University, in Austin, Texas teaching Accessible JavaScript. That was quickly followed by a Keynote Address and “JavaScript and Accessibility” at TODCon8, Orlando during May 2006.
• South by South West Interactive 2006 saw:
  • Jeremy Keith and Aaron Gustafson presented “How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting“
  • Dori Smith participated on the “Ajax: What do I need to know?” panel
  • Derek Featherstone participated on the “Web 2.1: Making Web 2.0 accessible” panel.
  • Molly Holzschlag and Dori Smith discussed “WTF: WASP Task Force Panel: Getting the Job Done Right” which included the role of the DOM Scripting Task Force.

Upcoming events

DOM Scripting Task Force members are committed to conferences, workshops and presentations. Upcoming events to look out for are:

• June 15th and 16th: @media 2006 includes two JavaScript sessions:
  • “Using DOM Scripting to Plug the Holes in CSS” by Jeremy Keith
  • “DOM Scripting: the Next Level“: the panel includes Peter-Paul Koch, Stuart Langridge and Simon Willison.
• July 6th: Jeremy Keith runs a DOM Scripting/Ajax Workshop in New York.
• July 11th: Aaron Gustafson is presenting a session on DOM Scripting at the New York leg of the An Event Apart series of conferences.
• July 14th: Chris Heilmann is presenting “Maintainable JavaScript” in the first London Web Standards Group meeting.

Your Replies

#1 On June 13th, 2006 11:20 am Dustin Diaz replied:

Wow. That’s a lot of DOM Goodness happenin’. You guys have been busy. Congratulations Aaron on getting (abducted) inducted into the Task Force. Did they give you the helicopter as stated in the offer letter?

Nevermind the matter, I’m looking forward to Peters book. Sounds like it will be a classic.

Any chance you guys let skinny white mexicans from California into the DOM TF?

#2 On June 15th, 2006 12:29 am James Mc Parlane replied:

Good to see.

This post summarises the major problems.

#3 On June 18th, 2006 4:29 am Steve Tucker replied:

Its good to see a really strong push for more clean, accessible and standardised JavaScript and DOM usage. JS has got a bad rap over the years following heavy abuse by the masses. Ill be looking forwards to seeing where the future will take us.

#4 On June 18th, 2006 6:02 pm roya jensen replied:

Hi

#5 On October 3rd, 2006 4:37 am darin replied:

thank’s for showing me some useful books, article, and useful links.. :))

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