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Promoting the responsible use of JavaScript: writing, teaching and presenting

By Mike Davies | June 12th, 2006 | Filed in Accessibility, DOM, DOM Scripting TF

The members of the DOM Scripting Task force have been busy writing and reviewing books, teaching and presenting at conferences and workshops, and preparing for upcoming events; focusing on the responsible use of JavaScript, as well as accessible JavaScript. Here’s an update of recent and forthcoming activities our Task Force members are involved in. Next stop is @media 2006 – see you there!

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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
Recent events
Upcoming events

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

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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