Ironically, I think I got more out of one presentation on the last day (a half-day, mind you) than I did in any single session during the previous two.
Jamie Avins presented “Application Deployment”, in which he described a number of very helpful tools to debug and deploy a successful web application. While not specific to any platform or framework, Jaime did an awesome job going into each of the following tools:
- YSlow! plugin for FireBug
- FireBug Net Tools
- Fiddler (an HTTP Debugging Proxy)
- JSLint
- JSBuilder
- YUI Compressor
- Build Automation (via shell scripts and batch files)
- CSS Sprite Generation
The reason I say that I got more out of this session than any other was the fact that I learned about JSBuilder – a tool which combines and compresses your JavaScript library files into a single, smaller file. This smaller file reduces the number of HTTP requests dramatically, which decreases the application’s load time. My application, which is still in development, has roughly 40 JS files. . . so this tool will offer an incredible increase in its performance.
I had already known about (and currently use) some of the tools Jamie covered – namely YSlow!, JSLint, and NetTools. However, Jamie went into a great amount of detail and uncovered things I didn’t know about them. For example, I didn’t realize that YSlow! was really weighted towards sites like Yahoo. It makes sense when you think about it, but I just assumed it was a more generic tool.
Learning about CSS sprites was also very interesting. I’d heard about the concept before, but I never really understood how it was used to increase performance. After listening to Jamie explain the concept in more detail, I will definitely be making use of it.
Kudos to you Jamie!
As for the rest of day three. . . I actually missed the final round of sessions because I had to catch my flight.
On a scale of 1-10, I would give the conference an 8 overall. Lots of great content, but there’s a few small details that they missed (e.g. power strips on the tables). I’m sure some of these details won’t be missed the next time around, and I’m hoping there’s another conference next year! Bravo!
About Arthur Kay 
