jQuery at WebTech Exchange 2009

So, just got back from doing my jQuery bit at the SkillsMatter Open Source .NET Exchange, which was great fun. Thanks to Gojko and SkillsMatter for putting the whole thing together, to the other speakers for their excellent sessions, and to everyone who came up to me afterwards with feedback and questions; it’s really inspiring to see so many people giving up their own time to learn about writing better software.

I’ve been asked to do a full session at the WebTech Exchange conference in May; it’ll be talking about jQuery in one form or another, but I thought I’d throw the exact topic open to see if there’s anything people particularly want to see. A couple of ideas I’m already playing around with:

• A detailed analysis of how jQuery actually works. How have they actually implemented the selectors, live events, event handler syntax, fluent method chaining and that all-powerful jQuery object? (which, by the way, is a functional object that behaves like an array, in case you were wondering…)
• Implementing a jQuery plug end-to-end – starting with the basics of jQuery’s plugin architecture and actually implementing a full jQuery plug-in module from scratch during the session.
• A “top 10 plug-ins” – showcasing some of the third-party modules that really show off the extensibility and power of the jQuery framework, and how you can mix' and match modules within your own pages to deliver amazingly rich UI experiences with very little code.
• What’s new in jQuery 1.3 – the new Sizzle selector engine, live events (which allow you to attach handlers to elements that don’t exist yet), the new .support API, and so on.

Any other ideas you think might be worth a look – either leave a comment on here, e-mail me on dylan@dylanbeattie.net, or you can find me on twitter as @dylanbeattie – and if you’re at all interested in progressive .NET and web technology, I really recommend you check out the conference programme. Hamilton “Hammett” Verissimo de Oliviera, project leader on the Castle Project, will be delivering the keynote and talking about plans for Castle 2.0, and there’s great sessions lined up on Prototype, Dojo, cloud computing. BBC iPlayer, REST and OpenRasta, and a whole lot more. Oh, and there’s an early-bird discount if you register before 28th February.