Mark Volkmann
Software Consultant and Partner at OCI
Mark Volkmann is a partner at Object Computing, Inc. (OCI) in
St. Louis where he has provided software consulting since 1996.
As a consultant, Mark has assisted many companies with
Java, XML, Web, jQuery and Node.js application development.
Mark also has created and teaches many courses on topics including:
Java, Swing, XML, XML Schema, Relax NG, XPath, XSLT, XQuery,
DOM, SAX, JAXP, JDOM, JAXB, SOAP, WSDL, Ruby,
HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, CoffeeScript and jQuery.
He is currently developing a course on Node.js.
Mark is a member of the St. Louis Java User Group steering
committee and a regular presenter for that group. He has written
for XML Journal and the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) magazine.
He has presented the XML DevCon, NFJS and Strange Loop conferences.
Presentations
jQuery - RIA Miracle!
Developing rich internet applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript is now a common exercise. While it can be done using only those client-side technologies, JavaScript libraries greatly simplify the task. They also shield developers from most browser differences. The jQuery JavaScript library is a very popular option.
This talk demonstrates building a web application using jQuery. It includes use of jQuery selectors to access DOM elements and attributes, DOM traversal, CSS manipulation, mouse and keyboard event handling, Ajax calls to server-side code using JSON to represent data, dynamic HTML modification, and jQuery UI widgets.
Node.js - the core
Node is a programming environment implemented on Google's V8 JavaScript engine. Node is well-suited for implementing server applications that are primarily I/O-bound rather than compute-bound. It supports a variety of network protocols such as HTTP and TCP.
While Node's primary programming language is JavaScript, applications can be extended with code written in C and C++. It has excellent performance characteristics, in part because its performance critical underpinnings are written in C/C++. Node enables web development where the same familiar programming language, JavaScript, is used for the client and server.
Making effective use of any programming environment requires a certain amount of familiarity with it's provided libraries. Imagine trying to write a Java application without knowing what is available in the java.* and javax.* packages. Rather than "packages", Node has "modules". Provided modules are referred to as the "core modules".
This talk begins with an overview of Node. It then provides a review of the core modules including examples of commonly used functions. Armed with this knowledge, you'll be ready to begin writing Node applications.
