I had heard a little about document databases being an alternative to relational databases (a slightly alien idea) but hadn’t got around to much research. In particular the session was looking at how to use CouchDB. The design goals are more based around assuming that individual nodes will fail, and having a lightweight, multiple-master setup with changes replicating across nodes.

From the introduction (which I recommend you read)… A CouchDB document is an object that consists of named fields. Field values may be strings, numbers, dates, or even ordered lists and associative maps. A CouchDB database is a flat collection of these documents. Each document is identified by a unique ID.

Unfortunately the session didn’t really cover how to apply this concept to a real-world scenario and how to perform useful queries against the data. However it was definately enough to encourage some reading around the subject – I think it’s important to understand the kind of problems where this could be a viable and better solution.

• Mixing functional and object oriented approaches to programming in C#
• Hello Document Databases
• C# 4
• Microsoft Surface
• A developer’s guide to encryption

The first is a workshop with Eric Meyer – The Exciting Future of CSS and XHTML. I went to one of his workshops a few years back, and would really recommend this if you’re interested in front-end web technologies.

The second is @media 2009, the main web standards conference in London. I missed last year, so curious to see what people have to say.

In this case I had an input element that was kicking off an ansychronous form submit when clicked. On top of this I’m implementing drag and drop behaviour, so I figured it would be as simple as simulating the click event when the item was dragged and dropped in the right way. The click handler already worked, and kicked off the async operation as desired, so it should be a nice layer on top.

The async operation basically hijacks the form submit if it is caused by certain elements, and performs an async post instead. The problem with the event target in Firefox meant that this behaviour never kicked in.

A workaround was to use dispatchEvent instead. This allows a simulated click which results in the correct event target set. This is in the W3C DOM level 2 spec, and is implemented in Firefox (but not IE).

Some of the speakers at the event are well worth seeing – Jeffrey Veen in particular was one of the highlights of @Media last week.

I’ll post again when registration opens.

This did confirm one thing to me. One of the aims of moving to Soho was effortless socialising – being able to maintain a social life while commuting and being busy, with no effort required. I smiled when the venue was announced – Windmill street. There was a film made recently about the club on Windmill street, starring Judy Dench. I think it was one of the first strip clubs in Soho (although my history has much to be desired).

This is definately one of the streets, where you have to look straight ahead to avoid getting accosted by the loveable ladies in cowboy hats – what is that about btw? I never realised that cowgirls were meant to be sexy.

Anyhow, just back from the first day at @Media 2006. The session that really stood out for me was Jeffrey veen. This is why I decided to go to the event – to shed the layers of dirt that build up from day to day life and remember how interesting the work that we do really is. Jeffrey very eloquently discussed what Web 2.0 is really about. I think my favourite were the quotes from Venture Capitalists when asked to define the term – “Scaling up to many users” was one of the quotes. Oh how I laughed (I quite enjoy making fun of people who make money from technology, but don’t really understand).

I rarely see someone who is so natural a speaker, and I think he provided a very insightful view into the kind of impact that AJAX is having on interraction design and user experience.

Another highlight was Chris Wilson discussing features looming in IE7, and the approach they are taking to progessing the product. I think Chris and his team deserve applause – they are in a very difficult situation and seem to have a great attitude to progressing towards adoption of standards support. It looks like a lot of work has gone into the new version, and I look forward to the public release (apparantly in the second half of 2006).