Learn from our experiences in building Contour!
Early on in the development of Contour two of our key requirements was it had to be web based with a intuitive and usable interface. This lead us down the path of Ajax which has been a challenging, fun and I’ll go so far as to say a revolutionizing experience. I gave a talk at the Ajax Experience in Boston last year about this experience and the lessons learned while building Contour using Java and Ajax. I felt that it was well received, theServerSide even filmed it (although I have as of yet to see it posted). In putting the presentation together I realized that what we’ve learned and accomplished in the last year could not be summed up in a 90 minute presentation. My presentation focused on what I called the phases of adoption, which basically helps development teams migrate to Ajax slowly and with little impact. Big gains, less pains.
The hardest part is ensuring that you don’t sacrifice design and well written code for the sake of ramping up on Ajax knowledge. There will always be the on-the-job learning but knowing the end goal and having a head start will reduce many of the complex problems that can crop up if you begin to implement Ajax haphazardly.
To help with that head start we decided to put together a two day course that introduces you and guides you down several possible end goals in adopting Ajax in a J2EE application. By strengthening your Javascript and working with proven frameworks like dojo and DWR, adopting an Ajax model can be done in a more structured and controlled manner. Check it out and I hope to see you there.
Our own Derwyn Harris will be speaking at The Ajax Experience on October 23rd in Boston. Derwyn will be talking about reengineering Java applications using Ajax.  You can read more about the presentation at the 
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