ntschutta / jquery_workshop Goto Github PK

So what is this? It's a jQuery workshop that I'm giving (first run at The Rich Web Experience http://www.therichwebexperience.com/conference/fort_lauderdale/2010/11/home) The goal is simple: get people up to speed on jQuery. Here's the conference blurb:

Sure, Ajax might not be the hardest thing you'll have to do on your current project, but that doesn't mean we can't use a little help here and there. While there are a plethora of excellent choices in the Ajax library space, jQuery is fast becoming one of the most popular. In this talk, we'll see why. In addition to it's outstanding support for CSS selectors, dirt simple DOM manipulation, event handling and animations, jQuery also supports a rich ecosystem of plugins that provide an abundance of top notch widgets. Using various examples, this talk will help you understand what jQuery can do so you can see if it's right for your next project. Once we've established a solid understanding of just what jQuery can do out of the box, we'll delve deeper into the plugin space. jQuery is designed to be extended and while odds are there's a plugin that meets your needs, sometimes only a homegrown solution fits. Starting with a couple of very simple examples, we'll work our way up to more full fledged widgets.

Using a variety of examples and labs, I'll cover:

* Ajax
* CSS selectors and more
* Coding to events and using effects
* Widgets
* Themes
* jQuery Mobile
* Plugins

The ajax labs require a simple servlet thus why I've included jetty (http://jetty.codehaus.org/jetty/). You'll also find a stripped down Java web project (war) that I've used over the last few years for various ajax talks I've given. The servlet really is pretty dumb - it has a set of hardcoded zip/city/state combos :) But hey, it's a teaching example.

You'll also notice an index.html - this file contains links to various helpful resources as well as the structure of the lab files. I didn't bother numbering them (i.e., lab 1, lab 2 etc) because I'm likely to refactor the workshop at some point and I'm just plain too lazy to renumber. The docu folder contains...wait for it....documentation. There's great jQuery documentation online (see index.html) but oddly, we don't yet live in a world with ambient 100Mbps connections, it can be really handy to have *something* local. I even managed to find a Windows helpfile version out on the innerwebs - I'm not sure any self respecting geek uses Windows anymore but hey, I'm an equal opportunity teacher.

The labs are found, shockingly, in the labs folder. The shells for all the examples are there - named, I hope, in a meaningful way. For those that like to read ahead, the lab_finished folder contains...you know, if you can't figure that out on your own, you should probably just delete this directory right now.

Anyway, I hope this workshop is fun, meaningful and helps you get a solid understanding of just what jQuery can do. I'm particularly excited about jQuery mobile...I think that's going to be a Really Big Deal (TM).

For those that are curious about *me*, here's my bio:
Nathaniel T. Schutta is a senior software engineer focussed on making usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written two books on Ajax and speaks regularly at various worldwide conferences, No Fluff Just Stuff symposia, universities, and Java user groups. In addition to his day job, Nate is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota where he teaches students to embrace dynamic languages.

You can follow me on Twitter: @ntschutta
You can read my mostly dead blog: http://www.ntschutta.com/jat/