Video Presentation: Douglas Crockford on the “Theory of the DOM”

By Christian Heilmann | October 18th, 2006 | Filed in Browsers, DOM, DOM Scripting TF, General, Training, W3C/Standards Documentation, Web Standards (general)

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Douglas Crockford, discoverer of JSON and JavaScript evangelist/veteran has given a training on the theory of the DOM lately and the videos are available on the web.

The course takes you through the theory of the DOM, how browsers implement it and what the problems with the DOM and the implementations are.

Each are half an hour long, and – having been in the training myself – I must say they taught me more about JavaScript and the DOM than a lot of books and hours of researching why something just didn’t work.

Your Replies

#1 On October 19th, 2006 2:23 am Adrian Gheorghe replied:

I’m using Linux and the latest flash player available is version 7, so I cannot see the videos on Yahoo. Can you please upload the videos on Google or Youtube?

#2 On October 19th, 2006 2:41 am koan replied:

@Adrian… have a look on Digg.com: there’s plenty of news about Flash Player 9 for Linux…

#3 On October 19th, 2006 4:20 am Adrian Gheorghe replied:

Yes, I’ve found the prerelease version – here’s the link for anyone who’s interested: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html
Still, there’s one more problem with Yahoo Video: if I pause the movie, they don’t keep loading it, so I had to watch 10-15 seconds of the movie and then wait for 3-4 seconds while it kept loading. That’s a really bad experience so I’d still be glad one could upload them somewhere else, but if not I’m happy I can see them at all.

#4 On October 19th, 2006 4:31 am Markus Fink replied:

The presentation is great. But Flash streaming is a pain. Even w/ broadband access it took me more than an hour to view Part 1 (31 minutes). Is there a downloadable version of this presentation (i.e. QuickTime) perhaps even a version for iPod?

#5 On October 19th, 2006 4:49 am Robin replied:

Seconded on the iPod request. About the only time I’m going to have to watch these is on the train…

#6 On October 19th, 2006 7:51 am Nick Fitzsimons replied:

There’a a “Save Video” button below the player. Mind, when I tried it, it crashed Safari :-(

#7 On October 19th, 2006 7:55 am Emma replied:

These seem like they’ll be really useful, but I can’t get them to play in either Firefox or IE which is a shame.

#8 On October 19th, 2006 8:14 am AlastairC replied:

The ‘save video’ button is a bookmarking mechanism, which is a shame, it would be really useful to be able to download a file. (Not that the other main video services let you, but since it doesn’t keep loading when paused, it’s an issue.)

Still, what I could see of it was very good!

#9 On October 19th, 2006 6:02 pm james replied:

nice how a ‘web standards’ presentation uses flash video. ironic much?

#10 On October 19th, 2006 6:10 pm james replied:

AlastairC: google does, and for youtube and others, there is keepvid.com, I’m sure someone is working on it.

#11 On October 19th, 2006 6:38 pm WaSP Member cheilmann replied:

James: Can you tell us a web standard that allows you to play video?

The question is not really the format. The question is if you could get that kind of information someplace else for free. This information might as well be on a DVD, Video-on-demand or part of an expensive training material package. It is up to us to encourage people to keep offering it for free. Smug comments and information where to make illegal copies (yes, keepvid is not retaining the copyright) are not likely to inspire people to be generous about these things in the future.

Google video allows you to store video, but that is also in a proprietary format and needs a special player. Of course video material for download would be the best option, but it would also mean a lot more traffic and illegal copies being spread on the web or published elsewhere to make money with your material.

Flash is not a W3C standard, however there are standards that define themselves by amount of application and ease of use. For years I’ve been annoyed with embedded WMV, ASF, Realplayer and Quicktime files expecting me to have the right player installed and scripts trying to sniff what is the right format for me. Flash has proven to be the easiest way to embed movies in web sites. If only it were an open format, the internet experience would be a lot richer.

#12 On October 19th, 2006 7:21 pm BarelyBlogging » Blog Archive » links for 2006-10-20 replied:

[...] Video Presentation: Douglas Crockford on the “Theory of the DOM” – The Web Standards Project (tags: toread javascript dom) [...]

#13 On October 19th, 2006 8:50 pm james replied:

chellmann: SMIL.

and youtube? what copyright would keepvid not be preserving that uploading to that site hasn’t already?

And google video DOES allows you to download video in AVI format when you’re not running Windows.

#14 On October 20th, 2006 3:51 am Viktor Kelemen replied:

Yes, its really annoying that the save video function doesnt save the video properly.
what can i do with a bookmark:(

#15 On October 22nd, 2006 5:20 am mildiez.net » Archivo de bit�cora » APIs, feeds e indexaci�n replied:

[...] Estaba buscando informaci�n sobre Douglas Crockford (por cierto, imprescindible su presentaci�n sobre la teor�a del DOM) cuando me he encontrado con este resultado en Google: [...]

#16 On October 26th, 2006 4:19 pm Fatih Hayrioğlu’nun not defteri » Web’den haberler replied: