Case Studies & Industry Leader Sessions

Learn from those who have gone before: The Ajax Experience features several case studies and Industry Leader technical sessions from large-scale projects to help guide your choices in your next Ajax-based development project.

Learn about user interface best practices, hear about common mistakes, efficiency measures and benefits derived from a project centered around creating an Ajax-based application for a top financial institution, and much more from companies like Netflix and Orbitz. Select a title, or view sessions by type: Case Studies | Industry Leader Sessions.

•Case Study: Dodging the Pitfalls of Enterprise Ajax Applications with Joshua Gertzen, Primary Architect, ThinWire Ajax RIA Framework

For all the great things that Ajax adds to the Web developer's toolbox, it can also add layers of complexity to a Web development stack that is already bursting at the seams. As if that weren't enough to tackle, the needs of enterprise Ajax applications further complicate matters due to their more data centric needs and extensive user interaction demands. The more you know about those pitfalls early on, the better you'll be able to separate the pragmatic Ajax use cases from the fluff.

Using examples from a real-life financial application that has been in production at a top-ten bank in the US since early 2005, this session:

  • • Reviews a number of common pitfalls in depth, and details how they impacted this project.
    • Covers the technology and business decisions that went into its final design, and the perceived vs. real benefits of those decisions.
    • Shows how key concepts of this application ultimately led to a fundamental change in the way that this company developed applications for the web.
    • Details how to address server and browser resource constraints and how to overcome the knowledge gap in any project team.

•Case Study: Offline Ajax – Taking Large Browser-based Applications Offline with J.J. Zhuang, Zimbra

Ajax delivers a new set of internet-based applications that provide users with a rich set of integrated features traditional applications failed to provide. But despite its game-changing hype, Ajax is limited in its usefulness – it only helps people on the Web, when the majority of users want to access their applications even when they aren’t connected to the Internet. This session explores how open source software provider Zimbra managed to integrate several open source projects, including Tomcat, Jetty, Jakarta, MySQL and Firefox, to create an architecture for offline Ajax applications. Using the Zimbra e-mail client as an example, you’ll see how to use these technologies to take your own Web-based service offline.

•Me.dium: Mapping the Internet and Its Users in a 208 Pixel Wide Sidebar with Jonathan Phillips, Software Designer, Engineer and Researcher, Me.dium

Me.dium provides a real-time, shared browsing experience where users are able to see crowds form on popular sites and follow recommended paths around the Internet. This session covers the challenges that Me.dium has faced designing a user interface in a space that is only 208 pixels wide, as well as the technical challenges of implementing a long-lived Ajax application using the Dojo toolkit. Attendees can leverage this knowledge to continue to push the boundaries of Ajax development.

In this session, you will learn how to:

  • • Deliver a substantial amount of functionality in a compact space;
    • Gradually introduce complex user interface elements to create a more tenable learning curve;
    • Build an interface that is entertaining.
    • Performance tune a long running Dojo application;
    • Use the Dojo gfx package for client-side rendering of a map of the Internet.

•A Netflix Case Study: Developing a Great User Interface with Sean Kane, Director of User Interface Engineering, Netflix

Netflix has long established its place as a leader in elegant, interactive web functionality – including the invention of the now ubiquitous 5-star rating widget interaction. This presentation will detail the innovative, rich Netflix website features and how they were constructed for an optimal user experience. You’ll also hear Director of UI Engineering Sean Kane detail the development process of several rich features, from concept to user testing to website testing to launch.

This case study will highlight:

  • • Design patterns that have resonated well with users;
    • Ideas and patterns that were rejected, and why;
    • Efficiency gains realized by the Netflix team after launching various rich features;
    • Performance benchmarks for Ajax-based features and more.

Virtual Earth: A Real-World Performance Exercise with David Stewart, Senior Development Lead, Microsoft's Virtual Earth Project

Studies show that users will abandon websites that don’t load within 4 to 8 seconds, and that number is shrinking all the time. Yet many of today’s Web 2.0 sites are client-heavy, meaning that they must download more code to the client, taking longer to give that all-important first experience. Performance is about measuring, testing, and measuring again – not guessing. In this session, Senior Development Lead for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth project Dave Stewart looks at the actual processes and changes that went into cutting the initial page load time of the Microsoft Virtual Earth website in half during its previous release. From measuring performance, to unexpected successes, to even more unexpected failures, you’ll see how you can use similar techniques to decrease the time it takes to get into your Ajax site.

In this session you will learn:

  • • How to measure performance of your current applications;
    • Ways to achieve faster page load times;
    • Lessons learned from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth project and more.

Industry Leader Technology Sessions

There are common pain points throughout every stage of developing and designing Ajax applications. And, for each pain point, there are dozens of vendor and open source solutions offered in the market. Evaluate potential solutions for yourself in these sessions led by Industry Leaders.

Taking your Web Dev. skills to the desktop Using Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) with Kevin Hoyt

Get a personal tour of how you can take your web development skills to the desktop using the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). Designed for the Ajax developer, special emphasis will be given to the latest features in the AIR Beta to include:

  • - File Pickers
  • - Native Clipboard
  • - Native Drag and Drop
  • - Service Monitoring
  • - Native Windows with Custom Chrome
  • - Local Database