The first talk I’ve visited was held by Florian Müller. He was comparing the AJAX (JavaScript) approach with Rich-Client technologies like Flex and Java applets. He dived into a product called CaptainCasa (afair) and showed, how it is possible to debug front- and backend code all within the eclipse IDE. This was really impressive and I would be happy if we would have this comfort within the AJAX/JavaScript world.

Afterwards Jason Purdy talked about “Selecting an AJAX Framework”. His presentation mainly based on a simple application he has implemented with the frameworks Prototype, Mootools, JQuery, Dojo and YUI and compared the runtime and the resulting code of each implementation. It was great to see, that Dojo always was on top. He also took into account that the documentation of a framework is very important when selecting it and he came to the point that in the meantime all framworks are documented well. I’m really happy, other people recognize, that the fact, that Dojo has a bad documentation is not true anymore (have a look at http://docs.dojocampus.org).

Now it was time for Wolfram being on a panel discussion, moderated by Björn Müller (CaptainCasa) together with Florian Müller and Andreas Ecker (qooxdoo). It was about the state of rich clients. Wolfram represented Dojo very well (in my opinion he is the German Dylan :-)) and promoted the message, that AJAX/JavaScript is ready for enterprise. He pointed out that we always should focus on the user who is accessing these rich clients.

Dojo and Adobe AIR was the next talk I’ve attended, that my collegue Nikolai held. About 50 people (around 150 people assigned to the Ajax in Action conference) attended there and this told us, that people are interested in writing AIR applications with JavaScript. Nikolai used our new application called X-Ray to show that it is possible to write impressive desktop applications and that AIR can enhance your web app with drag’n'drop, creating screenshots, writing to a file, … Currently X-Ray is just available for beta testers and we will hopefully release it during the next month. If you want to help us testing this application, just send us an email.

Wolfram then had to deal with a big room packed with people (about 100) where he did his talk about Efficient AJAX/JavaScript Development he also gave at the Barcamp in Munich. He really did a great job. Several other people blogged about it and it seems, they really liked his overview of javascript development concepts and tools (Sorry, this info is just avaialable in German):

http://www.marctv.de/blog/2008/10/28/ajax-in-action-2008/
http://twitter.com/arrglarks
http://createordie.de/cod/news/AJAX-in-Action-Erster-Tag-erste-Erlebnisse-045741.html

In the evening it was time for a post-Oktoberfest party, that the conference team organized. Together with some Qooxdoo guys (Andreas Ecker, Fabian Jakobs, Jonathan Rass), Jan Kassens (Mootools), Paul Bakaus (jQueryUI) and Jörg Kress we were drinking several beers out of 1l glasses and had great discussions about everything (Can’t remember those; maybe I had to many of those big glasses :-)). It was big fun hanging out with those guys and I’m looking forward meeting them again. Maybe we altogether can create a vital Ajax/JavaScript community in Germany; we’ll see.

AIA.beer() from uxebu on Vimeo.

The first day at the Ajax in Action really was a great success for our company and we represented Dojo very well. I definitely see a bright future for Dojo in Germany and I’m proud that we are part of spreading the word about it.