Ajax -- called DHTML just a few months ago -- has revolutionized (or "radically iterated", if you like) web application development in the short few months since the term was coined.

What is it all about? Why are we excited about a set of capabilites that have been sitting in our browser for years? What can you do with it? And, how can you do it?

Ajax, short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a technique for communicating with servers from within a web page without causing a page refresh.

This session provides an introduction to Ajax and an orientation to the state of the ajaxian universe. The basic ajaxian techniques will be demonstrated through live coding, and more advanced examples of Ajax will be demonstrated and deconstructed.

Attendees will understand how the Google Maps UI is built (and why it isn't as hard as it looks), how Ajax can improve portals, community sites, and pretty much any other type of web application.

Furthermore, the issues surrounding how to create an Ajax application that doesn't turn into an unmaintainable pile of hacked up crap JavaScript will be discussed.

At the end of the session, an off-line capable, web services consuming Ajax RSS aggregator will also be demonstrated.

This talk will be presented by one or more of the founders of Ajaxian.com.

The session "Ajaxian JavaScript Frameworks" complements this session, and dives deeper into specifics on how to use many of the frameworks introduced in this session.

In the "Introduction to Ajax" session, we discuss what Ajax is, how it works, and how others are using it.

This session goes deeper into Ajax by reviewing the existing JavaScript frameworks that aim to make it easier.

The scope of the frameworks is all over the made, from unit testing JavaScript to deconstructing other websites to making it easier to create your own ajaxian effects.

If you want to easily add some Ajax to your site, come to this talk, presented by one or more of the founders of Ajaxian.com.

Java's Swing GUI toolkit is one of the most powerful and flexible frameworks available for creating professional, high-quality desktop applications. Along with its considerable abilities, however, comes considerable complexity. Swing does not have a reputation for ease of use (despite being much easier than many of its competitors--but that's another story). If you could combine the Swings power with the productivity of easier, more restrictive tools, such as Microsoft's Visual Basic - you'd have an incredible tool for application development.

This presentation talks about eight techniques you can employ to realize such an environment, such as how you can successfully integrate GUI builders and XUL frameworks into your project, making it much easier to set and retrieve values on Swing components, how to make it trivial to make JTables easy to use, and more.

Along with the presentation and slides, attendees will be able to download open source code they can use in their projects today to implement these ideas.