The first ever HTML5/JavaScript Developer Conference in God’s Own Country

“I have seen the future… It’s in my browser” – says the web developers of Kerala
For the first time in history, God’s own country – Kerala showcased a HTML5/JavaScript Developer Conference at Kochi.The two day conference started on April 12, 2014 with an idea to bring HTML and JavaScript developers under one roof to network, interact and build. The conference brought together tech enthusiasts from various fields of web development together. And we provided them with the best speakers we could find for each category. We had a social media sharing hashtag that was set for the event which was #html5defcon. Our volunteers had a hard time identifying a hashtag that wasn’t used on any social media, but in the end it was #html5defcon.

The event was backed by 2 big players of the industry – Opera and Mozilla along with other companies in the field. Toobler Technologies was another company that supported the conference very much and is worth mentioning. The delegates comprised of professionals as well as students who shared the same interests in the web world. Everyone was excited to be part of this grand event that was happening for the first time in India.

The HTML5/Javascript Developer Conference 2014Vaisakhi Prakash. The conference was meant to be more of a discussion platform where geeks could discuss anything related to the web. Let’s have look at what all sessions we had for the conference.

Day 1 – April 12 , 2014

Session 1.1

The curtain raiser talk was given by Shwetank Dixit. He gave an idea about “The Future of Web Graphics”. He explained various topics including graphics performance, resource priorities that includes lazy load and postpone attributes. We had a discussion on CSS blend mode types – background and mixed blend modes. He also covered object fit, aspect ratio, container, CSS filters, CSS marks, Media Capture, HTML media capture, etc.

Queries :

1. Is web graphics compatible with all browsers including Internet Explorer?
2. How to make a good web standard the renders the same in all browsers?
3. Will CSS all the properties from JavaScript in the future?

Shwetank was very happy to clear these queries for the delegates.

Session 1.2

The next session was handled by Praveen “psbots” Sridhar. He talked about “Firefox OS – The mobile OS for Web Developers”. Being the principal evangelist of Firefox OS in Kerala, the topic was just apt for a Mozillian of his personality. He briefed about the importance of a web-based OS. He covered the Firefox OS layers – Gonk, Gecko and Gaia. He also covered the levels of access on (Hosted, Privileged, Certified) apps. He taught about the Battery API by chromebook and the different development tools like the console debugger and the editor.

Queries :

1. How to convert a website to an app in Firefox OS?
2. If the same HTML is made to an app then it’s easy to pirate the app, what are the measures taken to avoid piracy of apps?

Session 1.3

The next session was taken by Praseed Pai. He discussed the topic “Modern JavaScript”. Within the short span of time he had, he managed to impress his audience by showing how the modern JavaScript could do wonders. He started with the basic concepts and then moved on to non-transient data, the embedded nature of JavaScript, “confusing the messenger with the message” concept, manipulating the DOM tree, declarative programming. He also spoke on the concept of DOM on the fly and the differences between static typing and dynamic typing also shows different codes in JavaScript. More specifically he managed to keep the session alive.

Queries :

1. What’s the difference between JavaScript and other scripting languages?
2. Does JavaScript use any special method to interpret inline statements?

Mr Praseed also spent the lunch time clearing the doubts of the attendees.

Session 1.4

The afternoon session was lead by Shine Xavier on the topic “JavaScript : Good Parts”.

This session was a complete programming oriented one. He spoke on framework and libraries like the EmberJS, BackboneJS, jQueryJS, etc. He also talked on first class libraries, closure and modules, augmenting types, cascading, partial application and memorization, apply invocation pattern, etc. He taught on YeildJS for cascading iterations and the move next method etc.

Queries :

1. Does programming in iteration need more memory space?
2. What are the demerits of programming in iterative method?

Session 1.5

The last session of the day was dealt by Prakash Babu on the topic “Developing apps for Google Glass using HTML5”.
The attendees were curious to know about Google Glass which is a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD) made by Google. He spoke on Google Glass, its various parts, its working, etc. He also made a note on the Google Glass SDK to develop apps and the differences of the Glass SDK to the Android SDK. He demonstrated various apps in the simulator and showed the programming paradigm for app development in Google Glass.

Queries :

1. 1. When will Google Glass be made to available to consumers and what is the estimated price?

Many of us had the same doubt.

1. What are the differences between Google Glass SDK and the Android SDK?

  

As preplanned, a cake cutting ceremony was organized to celebrate the 25 Years of the Web. Nick Desaulniers, the star of the event who flew all the way from Mountain View, California to be at #html5defcon, along with the Mozillians and attendees cut the cake. We all had the cake, refreshments along with tea and went home happily excited about the conference and eagerly waiting for the next day’s sessions.

Day 2 – April 13 , 2014

Session 2.1

This was the most awaited session of the whole conference because it was our star guest speaker on the dias. Nick Desaulniers was on the stage to talk on the topic “The Convergence of the Browser and the Operating System”.
He spoke on what open-source is and what it meant to a developer, the user-brand permission on UNIX and the application-based permission on HTML5. The Native-Client program (NaCl) {{Do Not confuse with Sodium Chloride in chemistry. We’re Web Developers, not chemists}} and the LLVM IR compiler. He also talked on the asmJS. He also did a few demos.

Queries :

1. Is it possible to make a browser act like an OS and what are the challenges to it?
2. Does the browser make the abstraction layer more secure than the OS?

Nick was happy to answer the queries. The session was very informative. We learned many technologies from him. In fact the Mozilla Kerala community was proud to have him.

Session 2.2

The next session was by Sayed Aqeel Haider on the topic “EmberJS”.

EmberJS is an exceptionally powerful and exciting javascript library for building rich, native-feeling experiences on the web. It combines some of the best ideas from classic UI frameworks like Cocoa and UIKit with cutting-edge HTML5 standards like WebComponents.
He spoke on What was MVC – the Model-View Controller and creating single page applications. He also made a note on the rich object model, declarative two way data binding, etc. He covered topics like WebComponents and data binding in EmberJS.

Queries :

1. What makes EmberJS more special than jQuery?

Session 2.3

The next session was taken by Revath S Kumar on “Modern Frontend Workflow”.

He spoke much on Yeoman and Bower. Yeoman is a scaffolding tool for WebApps. He talked on the client development stack consisting of tools and frameworks intended to help developers quickly build high quality web applications. Bower is a package management system for the web which depends on the nodeJS and npm.

Queries :

1. How to make robust apps with Yeoman for the cloud?

Session 2.3

Again Praveen “psbots” Sridhar was on the stage with another of his favorite topics “Javascript Robotics”.

We were all impressed by the amazing demo he did with a robot and a smartphone.

Unlike the traditional way of modelling a robot “We don’t need to hope and pray” while testing a robot using javascript [nodeJS]

You must see the robot moving forward, backward and rotate with respect to the motion of the smartphone to get the full spirit of JavaScript Robotics.

That was the official end of HTML5/JavaScript Developer Conference. It was hard for us to believe that event got over so soon. But the experience that it gave all of us was amazing. We had a photo-session in the central lawn of the facility. We had so much fun clicking pictures of each other and in front of the awesome back-drops that we had prepared exclusively for clicking pictures. We enjoyed it all. And after so much hard-work, it all paid-off well. The event was a grand success with a lot of appreciation to the organizing committee. It gave us a feeling of achievement. We made a great team and will continue to be united together by Mozilla.