This month we have a special guest flying in from New York City – the CTO and co-founder of Nodejitsu, Paolo Fragemeni.  Paolo, a solid computer programmer and veteran hacker has written loads of node.js code including the a significant portion dedicated to the node.js framework, Flatiron.

Node.js.  What is it?!!  How does it work?!!  Paolo will be giving an informative talk on just that – the anatomy of node.js.  So whether you are are node.js newbie or a seasoned veteran, this informative talk on node will benefit you.

Also, we will be throwing the 3rd Annual Austin JS SXSW Party in March so if you and/or your employer/company would like to sponsor the event (or be a part of it), please reach out to @joemccann to find out more details.

Of course we will followup all of this up with our wildly crowd-pleasing roundtable of JavaScript-related questions.  This is an open forum to present topics of discussion in a rapid-fire manner or simply heckle @joemccann.

• When: Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 from 7:30-9:00 PM.
• Where: frog design – 101 West 6th Street – 2nd Floor
• How: Parking is on the street, or you can take any number of buses to get downtown.
• Drinks and pizza will be provided.

Afterwards, the discussion carries on a few blocks away at The Gingerman, where they have over 70 beers on tap.

Any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact Joe (@joemccann).  Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter: @AustinJS.

That’s right on Tuesday, December 13th from 7pm to 9pm the greater Austin web community will have its annual holiday gala while also supporting a good cause:  The Capitol Area Food Bank.

There will be mingling and possibly mistletoe depending on the weather (naturally) and of course free food and beer provided by our gracious sponsors:

Austin JavaScript is proud to be a part of not only such a great event but a member of an incredibly strong web, dev and design community that is in Austin.  Just look at who else is involved.

TL;DR

Lyle Garza is an Austin based JavaScript developer with a passion for web technologies.  He has extensive experience in social media, e-commerce, and mobile development.  For the last year, his primary passion has been bridging the gap between native mobile apps and mobile websites .

Lyle will be discussing the creation of native mobile apps using web technologies.  He’ll cover items from development to debugging and distribution of the app. To help demonstrate these concepts, he’ll be demoing a recent app that he created called Dateventure.

Local healthcare software provider, Tango Health will be sponsoring as well so expect to fill your belly with pizza and drinks!

Joe is yet again still out of town so Alex will be guest hosting the meetup.

• When: Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 from 7:30-9:00 PM.
• Where: frog – 101 West 6th Street – 2nd Floor
• How: Parking is on the street, or you can take any number of buses to get downtown.
• Afterwards, the discussion carries on a few blocks away at The Gingerman, where they have over 70 beers on tap.

Any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact Joe (@joemccann) or Alex (@slexaxton). Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter: @AustinJS

Stay tuned for next month’s meetup details and be sure to follow us on Twitter:  @austinjs.

Offline features are more than just for when you application is offline or for viewing content offline! Bradley and Kassandra will be discussing how to use ApplicationCache to speed up page loads and Lawnchair.js for storing offline data. They will have an example using Backbone.js’ ORM to have an offline application send requests with updated data to a server after it has been offline w/o user interaction.

Bradley Meck works full time at Nodejitsu on tooling and infrastructure. He enjoys security concerns and flow control issues. Most of his free time is spend creating random projects in Node.js or trying to get people to play tabletop RPGs. Although programming Javascript constantly, he has been working solely on the server side for several months.

Kassandra Perch is a web developer with experience developing several large PHP applications in team and content management. She has a distinct interest in JavaScript and JQuery, and also enjoys playing with Node.js in her spare time. Her current projects involve a team management website for some Austin area softball organizations.

Of course we will followup all of this up with our wildly crowd-pleasing roundtable of JavaScript-related questions. This is an open forum to present topics of discussion in a rapid-fire manner.

Joe and Alex will be both be attending Funconf so local Git, Python and JavaScript master, Travis Swicegood will be guest hosting the meetup.

• When: Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 from 7:30-9:00 PM.
• Where: frog – 101 West 6th Street – 2nd Floor
• How: Parking is on the street, or you can take any number of buses to get downtown.
• Afterwards, the discussion carries on a few blocks away at The Gingerman, where they have over 70 beers on tap.

Any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact Joe (@joemccann) or Alex (@slexaxton). Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter: @AustinJS

We’re looking for a highly skilled front-end developer who lives and breathes standards. You will have strong experience with standards compliant, semantic HTML and CSS, solid knowledge of JavasScript, DOM-scripting and familiarity with JavaScript frameworks like Sencha, MooTools, JQuery etc. You’ll also be proficient with server-side programming using a server-side scripting language like PHP, Python or Ruby and know how to run queries with MySQL, or SQL Server.

You’ll be tackling big and little projects that are fun, challenging and span the spectrum of front-end development.  Sometimes the deadlines are tight, but that’s why we’re looking for people with great personalities who are team players. When a project is done we’ll celebrate, enjoy the view and look forward to the next project wiser and stronger than before.

We’re a casual dress, fun, thriving software company with a great work environment and plenty of growth in our future, so if we’ve sparked your interest drop us an email with your resume and a nice portfolio of sites developed and we’ll talk.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

·         Semantic HTML/CSS coding/updating for assigned projects

·         JavaScript/DOM scripting to build interactive but accessible interfaces

·         Working with FreeMarker templates and JSON or XML files to expose data to the front-end

·         Building specific functionality and modules using a front end framework.

·         Interaction with UX team and business users.

·         Build efficient and reusable front-end abstractions and systems

·         Identify and address performance bottlenecks

·         Participate in design and code reviews

·         Interact with other team members to incorporate their innovations and vice versa.

·         Identify and communicate best practices for front-end engineering

Required Skills:

·         Ability to write standards based, semantic HTML and CSS and modern layouts using tableless design

·         Ability to do DOM scripting with JavaScript and various JS libraries like MooTools, JQuery

·         Ability to write well-abstracted, reusable code for UI components

·         A strong understanding of modern web practices to create an efficient user-experience

·         A good understanding of cross-browser issues and their workarounds

·         Experience working with server-side scripting languages like PHP, Python and Ruby

·         Knowledge of but not reliant on Object Oriented JavaScript Frameworks (Prototype JS, MooTools, Dojo, etc.)

·         Strong portfolio required

·         Excellent written and oral communication skills

·         Must be a team player and open to change

·         Fun and Friendly attitude

·         Must have legal authorization to work in the United States

Bonus:

·         Experience building complicated workflows

·         Relevant experience includes self-started personal projects

·         Knowledge of web accessibility standards
Please provide a portfolio of sites developed, either online or with attached files.

CompassLearning is a recognized leader in the K-12 educational software industry. In our Learning Studio in Austin, TX, our team of educational experts, graphic artists, writers, and developers create award-winning K-12 curriculum and assessment solutions that motivate today’s students to engage, think & learn.

K–12 schools use our Odyssey system to personalize instruction, improve test scores, and increase graduation rates. Odyssey influences student success because it is based on current and confirmed research on the way today’s 21st century students acquire knowledge. And teachers and administrators benefit from our custom implementations, excellent customer support, and strong professional development. We have a singular passion for student achievement.

CompassLearning is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Mike Cravey (@craveytrain), a UI Engineer at WhaleShark Media, has loads of web development experience on the back and the front end.  Sadly, his biggest claim to fame is that he hired Joe McCann a few years back.  What you may not also know is that he has led some internal talks on the basics and fundamentals of JavaScript and his preferred library, jQuery.

Mike’s talk will focus on the fundamentals of JavaScript the language.  Think you know it all?  We guarantee you will learn something new, unless you are @andrewdupont BECAUSE HE KNOWS ALL #dupontCAPS.  Moreover, the introductory talk with cover things like function hoisting and closures, but even simpler topics like basic expressions.  Noobs are certainly welcome so if you are one or know someone, be sure they attend.  The presentation will be a quick one, so feel free to chime in while Cravey runs the show.

Of course we will followup all of this up with our wildly crowd-pleasing roundtable of JavaScript-related questions. This is an open forum to present topics of discussion in a rapid-fire manner.

Since Joe is still on gypsy status, Alex Sexton will be hosting the meetup again!

• When: Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 from 7:30-9:00 PM.
• Where: frog – 101 West 6th Street – 2nd Floor
• How: Parking is on the street, or you can take any number of buses to get downtown.
• Afterwards, the discussion carries on a few blocks away at The Gingerman, where they have over 70 beers on tap.

Any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact Joe (@joemccann) or Alex (@slexaxton). Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter: @AustinJS

It’s hot.  We know.  But don’t fret, this month, we’ll have plenty of cold beverages (courtesy of Compass Learning) alongside a talk by local web developer, Aaron Forsander (no really, he will be here this time!).  If you don’t know who Aaron is, he’s a developer at Four Kitchens in Austin, TX and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.  Aaron’s been doing web development since 2005 plus a brief and excruciating year of desktop development.  Most of his current work is making large websites scale but he’s taken a particular interest in the server side javascript community in recent years.  He’s beaten Alex Sexton in ping pong a lot.  Like, a whole lot.

Realtime Web Apps with Node.js and Socket.io – Node.js and Socket.io have made web sockets ridiculously easy to implement.  Creating real-time web applications has never been easier.  Couple that with the fact that most new phones have GPS and you’ve got the potential for some really cool interactivity.  In this talk Aaron will be discussing building realtime mobile web applications and demo a really amazing Android app called Zombie Run and how he’s porting it to the web using Node.js and Socket.io.

UPDATE:: 7/15/11

Also (surprise!) joining us will be J Chris Anderson from Couchbase!

Chris was one of the early committers to the Apache CouchDB project and has been working on CouchDB for over 3 years. He’s watched CouchDB grow from unknown to a widely deployed and trusted database, now used by large organizations such as the BBC and CERN as well as small organizations like Dimagi using CouchDB on smartphones in rural Africa. Chris has a unique perspective from being involved in all aspects of Couchbase, he is deep into technology but equally involved in the business side of Couchbase

JavaScript CouchApps Hackalong: jQuery, Couchbase, and a Chat App in 30 minutes or less – Couchbase is an HTTP server (as well as a database) so it can serve apps directly to the browser. In this talk, we’ll build an HTML5 app on Couchbase, at a pace that anyone who knows basic JavaScript will be able to keep up with. At the end we’ll create an ad-hoc cluster so we can all chat across the distributed system. I’ll talk a little about how you can use the same techniques for serious apps, not just fun chat toys.

Of course we will followup all of this up with our wildly crowd-pleasing roundtable of JavaScript-related questions. This is an open forum to present topics of discussion in a rapid-fire manner.

And bonus time, with Joe travelling the world, Alex Sexton will be hosting the meetup again!

• When: Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 from 7:45-9:15 PM.
• Where: frog – 101 West 6th Street – 2nd Floor
• How: Parking is on the street, or you can take any number of buses to get downtown.
• Afterwards, the discussion carries on a few blocks away at The Gingerman, where they have over 70 beers on tap.

Any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact Joe (@joemccann) or Alex (@slexaxton). Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter: @AustinJS

Test-Driving Javascript with Jasmine – There seems to be a tendency for developers to do an excellent job of unit testing their server-side code but leaving client-side javascript as the new “spaghetti” dumping ground and it doesn’t have to be that way! Jasmine is a nifty Javascript BDD testing framework with a RSpec-like syntax that easily integrates with vanilla JavaScript, jQuery plugins, and even Rails applications.

Of course we will followup all of this up with our wildly crowd-pleasing roundtable of JavaScript-related questions. This is an open forum to present topics of discussion in a rapid-fire manner.

• When: Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 from 7:30-9:00 PM.
• Where: frog – 101 West 6th Street – 2nd Floor
• How: Parking is on the street, or you can take any number of buses to get downtown.
• Afterwards, the discussion carries on a few blocks away at The Gingerman, where they have over 70 beers on tap.

Any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact Joe (@joemccann). Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter: @AustinJS

Alex is a Labs Engineer at Bazaarvoice here in Austin. He created the yepnope.js library and is on the Modernizr team and a couple fake/nonvoting/volunteer jQuery subteams that deal with bug triage and docs. He is running TXJS 2011 on June 11.  He also has a website.

Modernizr was one of the first libraries on the scene in the ‘new-world feature testing religion.’ Modernizr 2 is just around the corner and there are some nifty new features in there to help you build modern web apps. Some time would and will be well spent going into how to use Modernizr, but there will also be some more in depth looks into the internals of the core library, build tool, Modernizr.load and into how to extend all of these things for great good. HTML5 today. Straight up.

Did we mention we are giving away a ticket to TXJS?  It’s sold out, btw.

Of course we will followup all of this up with our wildly crowd-pleasing roundtable of JavaScript-related questions.  This is an open forum to present topics of discussion in a rapid-fire manner or simply heckle @joemccann.

• When: Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 from 7:30-9:00 PM.
• Where: frog design – 101 West 6th Street – 2nd Floor
• How: Parking is on the street, or you can take any number of buses to get downtown.
• Drinks and pizza will be provided.

Afterwards, the discussion carries on a few blocks away at The Gingerman, where they have over 70 beers on tap.

Any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact Joe (@joemccann).  Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter: @AustinJS