Well, I’m still here at php|works/web|works. Current;y I’m attending Gilbert Hyatts Rich User Interfaces with AJAX.
Gilbert is speaking really well, I am only just managing to take notice and type this blog. Its a good thing I can touch type.
Gilbert has released his own AJAX framework called PAJAJ which I’ve look at briefly and it seems to be a good start, its currently at the 0.2 release so I wouldn’t expect it to be as stable as say, JPSPAN.
Earlier today I skipped Rasmus’ talk on XSS (I finished breakfast later than expected and decided to just spend some time with my Wife 
and started my day with Dan Udey’s talk on Cross Browser Web Design – this talk was more of an overview of techniques that can be used to help your end result work in the most browsers as possible. He also made it clear that having a site look the same in NN4 and Firefox using standards compliant (X)HTML/CSS-P is just not possible. But by using these technologies you can make sure your content is still available in a reasonable way.
Next up I took in the first part of Amy Hoys Web Development 2.0 talk, which although I had to leave early, it was a really great start and I wish I could have stayed for the entire session.
After this, I took Zend PHP Certification Exam here at the conference, and I was very surprised. The exam was actually very taxing, I found that some of the questions where not worded in the most obvious way, though this is nothing new with exams. I think the fact that I found it somewhat hard – a PHP developer of some 5 years with some very large and complex projects under my belt – points out just how much weight should be given to those Zend Certified Engineers. I would definately suggest the The Zend PHP Certification Practice Book from php|architect.
I’m now going back to fully concentrating on Gilberts talk, I’m learning a tonne about how AJAX works and will allow people to better debug their AJAX.
Now he’s demonstrating his Framework, which does look kinda neat. Though I think that for me (and perhaps Cerebral Cortex), using Amys approach of the Prototype JavaScript Framework with (optionally) script.aculo.us is better.
– Davey
Update: Gilbert is almost done now (at least, he has 5 minutes left, a user asked a question which caused Gilbert to spend quite a while trying to get across a simple idea (the Singleton pattern)), and I see a number of problems with his framework. I still think he has some excellent ideas, so I’m going to try and dicuss things with him and see if perhaps we can fix some of these things.