Recap: Refresh Ottawa kickoff meeting

Derek and Jonathan

Last night’s Refresh Ottawa kickoff meeting was excellent.  It was hosted by a couple of well-know web gurus: Derek Featherstone  and Jonathan Snook.  If you are a web developer, this is an event for you.

Topic 1: Javascript frameworks

Which Javascript framworks should you choose?  I thought the various frameworks were created mostly as equals, but they are not.

Some are meant for general websites, some for serious web apps, and some just for animation.  In all, Jonathan went through an excellent overview some popular ones and what to use them for.

Topic 2: Accessible Google/Yahoo maps

Just exactly how does one make Google/Yahoo maps accessible?  In other words, what if you can’t use a mouse to control (e.g., zoom, pan) the map?  The zoom controls on these maps rely on mouse-driven actions.

Derek’s answer to replace the zoom controls with a custom version that can be easily tabbed to or selected.  You can see a demo of this on his ironfeathers.ca site.

Refresh Ottawa kickoff

More Refresh Ottawa events are planned in the future.  Other than the presentations, it’s also a great venue to interact with other web developers in town.

By Scott Lake

3 Responses to “Recap: Refresh Ottawa kickoff meeting”

  1. JamieO  on January 11th, 2008

    I agree, it was a very good start to Refresh Ottawa!
    http://www.oastler.ca/my-002/other/20080108_first-refresh-ottawa-event/

  2. Scott Lake  on January 11th, 2008

    Great post An-Min

  3. Wendy  on January 12th, 2008

    Fascinating presentations: I learned a huge amount. Many thanks to Web Directions North for hosting this.