Hard to believe that my 4 years of student life at the University of Dundee are coming to an end today. In some respects this has been an uphill struggle, in others it has been a wonderful, enjoyable and rewarding experience. I have made mistakes a long the way, I have learned important lessons and I have worked hard to better myself not only as a software engineer, but as a person throughout this experience.

I was planning on collating a number of resources and tit-bits of information and then posting them to the internal mailing list at university, however I changed my mind and decided to write this post making what I have to say open to all. I hope it is of use to someone as the advice I provide here comes from real, solid, “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt” experience.

Not all of it may be relevant to you but it has helped me. Use the links below to view each page (I apologise as it is rather long).

I have been quite busy over the last little while between moving flat, finishing university, looking for a job and other things and as such I have not had the time I would have liked (as well as the energy) to write a couple of the posts I have in mind although there are some drafts now kicking around I am working on.

In the mean time I have been invited to join the Scottish Developers committee and as of yesterday I have taken over the role of convener for the Dundee (well, soon to be Tayside) branch of the user group. I am very happy to be asked to fill this position and I look forward to getting started.

Thanks again to Colin and the rest of the committee for the opportunity.

Haven’t updated in a while so I figured 2 birds with 1 post.

jQuery Talks

I would like to say thank you to all of the people who voted for my jQuery Deep Dive session at both Developer Day Scotland and Developer Day Belfast, I will now be speaking at both events. I am still very surprised at how popular the sessions have been so far and I just hope that what I deliver on the days lives up to the expectations.

Developer Days

Ok, a bit of an update on these.

DDD Belfast 4th April 2009 in Belfast
Web: http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/belfast/
Status: Registration Open

WebDD ‘09 18th April 2009 in Reading
Web: http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/webdd09/Default.aspx
Status: Registration Opens on Monday 30th March

DDD Scotland 2nd May 2009 in Glasgow
Web: http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Default.aspx
Status: Registration Open

DDD South West 23rd May 2009 in Somerset
Web: http://www.dddsouthwest.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx
Status: Registration Open

The events are getting pretty close now, Belfast is in less than a month so if you plan on attending any of the above, get your registrations in! If you are attending then I hope to see you there

In addition, if you are on Twitter you may wish to follow

• scottishdevs
• developerday
• dddsouthwest

In other news…

My blog is bothering me. I like WordPress, it has some nifty features that make blogging easier (although I probably should use Live Writer more often) however I still want to roll my own. Why?

There are a number of reasons:

1. Because I can (not a good one, but still top of the list)
2. Because I want to use ASP.NET MVC to build a blog engine
3. Because I want to demonstrate various technologies all working together
4. Because I said I would build one

The problem is time, I still maintain there are never enough hours in the day. Anyway, I have a couple more things to look into and then I will most likely start work. I want it to be an exercise in blogging because I don’t really blog as much as I should on some of my discoveries. Just something else to keep an eye out for.

And finally

Graduation is getting ever closer and the date is now set. On 25th of June 2009 I will graduate with a BSc (Hons) in Applied Computing. On June 26th, the first day of the rest of my life will begin (Actually, no, that is a lie, June 26th will most likely be a recovery day from the alcohol consumption of June 25th). I think I should go spin the job wheel and see what I can find

Update [20/02/08]: If you would like even more free wargear and extras (Chapter Command Wargear Set) from THQ, all you need to do is register your game on MyTHQ and you will get some free bonus content which can be added to your LIVE profile the same way as described below. You may need to be quick as the UK site does say for the first 100,000 people to register their copy. Note: This is not the free (Artificer Wargear) set that THQ were giving away if you pre-ordered from them directly.

Update [23/02/08]: Relic put a post up on the forums after my blog post with pretty much the same information: http://community.dawnofwar2.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=11232

Ok, so this isn’t development related but since someone *cough*THQ*cough* forgot to inform some of the customers who pre-ordered Dawn of War 2 how to use their pre-order code, I felt I should post the missing information. Dawn of War 2 was released today but if you are in the UK and you pre-ordered from Amazon, Game, HMV or direct from THQ, you got a pre-order code which depending on where you ordered from, unlocked different things for the game. I believe other countries have similar things using the same pre-order code system.

I should point out that I got the game from Amazon.co.uk so I do not know if Game, HMV or THQ actually tell you what to do with it, but all I got from Amazon was:

Dear Amazon.co.uk Customer,

Thank you for pre-ordering Dawn of War II from Amazon. We’ve teamed up with THQ to offer you a free Sternguard Wargear set giving you a host of in-game items. Please find your code enclosed.

This was followed by the code details. Right, so first things first, the game uses steam as it’s deployment platform, lets start there. I checked the Steam client for any options around DoW 2 to add a coupon or something similar, I found zip.

Ok, maybe you need to enter it in game, perhaps through the Games for Windows Live interface as that is the multiplayer platform. I hopped in and started looking, played with the GfWL interface, looked around still no option to redeem this code.

I decided to google for it and I found a couple of people having various problems getting the code recognised but not saying where they were trying to enter it. Then I found references to a Games For Windows Live Marketplace client, ah-ha! The missing piece became clear, Microsoft have released a desktop client for Games For Windows Live (I was wondering how long this would take), once I installed it (you can find it here by the way if it isn’t already installed) everything became clear.

1) Load up the GfWL client and click marketplace in the top left

2) Click on Redeem Code on the left of the sceen

3) Enter the pre-order code into the boxes

4) Click redeem code and confirm the wargear set

5) Be happy that it all works and click on the My Media tab to see the download progress.

I hope this has helped, would be fine if Amazon gave clearer instructions on what to do with the code.

Wednesday evening saw my first non-university talk in front of a public audience. Due to a ridiculously resilient headache over the last two days I am only now getting around to posting the slide deck and code.

They can be found on the Talks page.

I would like to thank all who attended and if you missed it or want to see it again, there will be a repeat on the 8th of April at Microsoft’s offices in Edinburgh.

In addition (shameless plug time), I have session proposals up for both Developer Day Scotland (2nd May 2009) and DDD Belfast (4th April 2009). For DDD Scotland I have submitted “jQuery Deep Dive” which will look at jQuery a lot more indepth, revealing some of the more powerful features under the hood and what jQuery is actually doing when you run code. For DDD Belfast I have submitted both the deep dive and the introduction.

Voting for DDD Scotland is now open and Belfast wont be far behind.

Once again, thanks to everyone who attended and to Colin and Barry for organising the event and the support they have provided.

Again, about a week late in announcing but I have been tied up with other things.

DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! (DDD) Day South West is now accepting session submissions however with an aim to encourage new speakers there are some restrictions:

• You must live in the United Kingdom.
• You must not have presented at a major event before (including but not limited to any DDD, TechEd, DevWeek). Speaking at a user group is fine (and encouraged!).
• You must have presented your full session at a user group at a date prior to DDD South West (in other words there must be a live practice run to a public audience other than your work colleagues).

The big difference here being the second restriction. So if you haven’t spoken at a large event before but are active in local user groups (or any user groups really then this could be a good opertunity for you to submit a session proposal.

The event will be held on Saturday, 23rd May 2009 at Queen’s College, Taunton in Somerset.

• http://www.dddsouthwest.com

DDD South West is just one of the regional Developer Day events that will be running this year.

• DDD Scotland (Session voting now open) 2nd May 2009 in Glasgow - http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Default.aspx
• DDD Belfast (Session voting due to open soon) 4th April 2009 in Belfast - http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/belfast/
• DDD 8 (Planning) - http://www.developerday.co.uk

These events are all free to attend!

Update: John Resig has uploaded the official vsdoc file for jQuery 1.3.1, the workaround posted below is obsolete. You can find the updated file

 at http://docs.jquery.com/Downloading_jQuery.

After the release of jQuery 1.3 earlier this month, those of you who have made use of the extended Visual Studio 2008 support for jQuery will no doubt have discovered the new version is not compatable with the 1.2.6 vsdoc.js file.

James Hart, has come to our rescue with the creation of a 1.3 compatible vsdoc.js file however it should be noted the structure for this file is different from the structure Microsoft used in the 1.2.6 file. As such there may be compatibility issues such as problems when working with extensions, just something to keep in mind.

There has not been any comment from Microsoft on an updated vsdoc file with 1.3 support.

• Get jQuery 1.3 intellisense support – http://www.infobasis.com/sandpit/jQuery-Intellisense/jQuery-vsdoc.js

Ok, so I am a little late to the party for announcing it but just in case you don’t already know, DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! (DDD) Day Belfast is now accepting session submissions.

The event will be held on Saturday, 4th April 2009 however a venue is yet to be announced.

• http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/belfast/

If Northern Ireland is a bit too far afield for you, DDD Scotland will be held in Glasgow at Glasgow Caledonian University on Saturday, 2nd May 2009. Call for speakers is still open until the end of January.

• http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Default.aspx

This is indeed a momentous day for the jQuery team with three major announcements; The release of jQuery 1.3, “Sizzle” (the new css selector engine) and the launch of a new API Documentation browser.

jQuery 1.3

As previously mentioned the new release is mainly about performance which in my book is always good. I really appreciate projects that are willing to go back over their work and improve it for the better.

Most important in this new release is Sizzle, the new CSS selector engine but more on that in a bit. Also in this release is a rewritten event engine, rewritten HTML injection engine which makes appending HTML even faster and my favourite’, the complete removal of all browser sniffing which has been replaced by feature detection. So the lightweight and nippy jQuery just got even nippier!

Live Events are another new feature in 1.3, they allow a developer to attach events to current and future elements through event delegation.

The full 1.3 release notes can be found here

Sizzle – The new CSS selector engine

In 1.2.6, jQuery already had a very fast CSS selector engine, even noticably so when compared to Prototype 1.6 however the new ‘Sizzle’ engine has taken jQuery’s performance to an even greater height.

If you are a stickler for the numbers you can find them here

The big news with Sizzle it is a new standalone public project with an aim to bring together more creators developers to work on a unified selector engine.

More importantly, though, we’re taking a big leap with Sizzle: We’re releasing it as a completely standalone project to be collaborated upon by many library creators and developers. We saw an opportunity to give something back to not just the jQuery community but to the JavaScript development community as a whole; and at the same time be able to collaborate with developers of other libraries on a single, unified, selector engine. We feel that there’s too much competition and not enough collaboration occurring and so we put our code out on the line as a good first step towards working together.

In addition, Sizzle has been handed over to the DoJo Foundation;

As a sign of good faith and willingness to collaborate, we’ve turned over Sizzle to the Dojo Foundation (an excellent non-profit well suited for this project, not to be confused with the Dojo Toolkit). We wanted a common meeting ground where all developers would be able to work together and under which there would be a clear long-term copyright holder.

The Sizzle project can be found at http://sizzlejs.com/

New API Documentation Browser

Any project is only as good as it’s documentation in my book and this is one thing that jQuery has done well with, right from when I started using it in September 2007 and quite probably before.

Remy Sharp has taken the API documentation and moulded it into an even more impressive format, written in both jQuery and Adobe AIR. The new API browser can be found at http://api.jquery.com/ and really does work very well.

Having the option of downloading the API as a windows application really does appeal to me so kudos to Remy for the port to AIR.

So there you have it, lots of new activity in the jQuery arena, now if I could just get my hands on some promotional merchandise (t-shirts) I would be over the moon. Ah well, I guess today’s news will have to do

Oh, I should probably add that today, January 14th, is jQuery’s birthday, well 3rd birthday to be exact so Happy Birthday jQuery.

3 Posts in 24 hours, am I feeling OK?

The next major version of the popular javascript framework jQuery (1.3) is almost finished with just the last few bugs to be tracked down. John Resig, lead developer and creator of jQuery published the beta of jQuery 1.3 back in the middle of December and yesterday announced on his twitter feed that 1.3 RC1 was out although this was quickly followed with a mention that RC2 would be required due to last minute bugs. The expected release date of 1.3 is the 14th of January as indicated on the beta announcement blog post.

A summary of what’s new in 1.3:

• Selector Engine – The selector code has undergone a complete rewrite – it’s likely that some edge cases still exist here.
• DOM Manipulation (append/prepend/before/after) – This code has also undergone a large rewrite along with some of the logic for executing inline script elements.
• .offset() – Another method that has been completely rewritten.
• Event Namespaces – The logic for handling namespaced events has been completely rewritten.
• Event Triggering – When triggering an event the event now bubbles up the DOM – this is likely to cause some problems.

I have yet to have a play with the new version and indeed probably wont get the chance until it hits release but it is reassuring to see performance enhancements being implemented in this release as well as removing all browser sniffing code. I will add a little bit to my jQuery talk about the latest version.