April 20, 2016 — In this session, I’ll share my experiences in converting a popular WordPress plugin, Ninja Forms, from a PHP/HTML plugin to a mostly JS application. We’ll talk about the tools and technologies that we’ve used to avoid the dreaded pasta of bad code, along with how we overcame some WordPress-specific challenges. We’ll cover how we to plan and build a data-driven user interaction, rather than a reactive, snippet-driven mess.

September 22, 2015 — Backbone (and Underscore!) are bundled with WordPress – explore how you can leverage their power to deliver complex user experiences while keeping your code organized and maintainable.
~ When and why should you use Backbone?
~ How can WordPress help?
~ Backbone fundamentals
~ Backbone in core
~ A sample Backbone project
~ Using the JSON REST API

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July 17, 2015 — Backbone (and Underscore!) are bundled with WordPress – explore how you can leverage their power to deliver complex user experiences while keeping your code organized and maintainable.

First, we will explore why Backbone is awesome, and what it lets you create is amazing! We will look at some examples of where and how it is used to power web apps and increasingly large areas of the WordPress dashboard. Seeing these incredible user experiences built in Backbone will help get you excited about using Backbone in your next project.

Next, we will dig into Backbone fundamentals to get a crystal clear understanding of the fundamental concepts underlying Backbone applications: Models, Views and Collections. We’ll look at how these tie to templates, events and routes for rendering, interaction and state handling. We discuss using Backbone in themes and plugins: how to include Backbone, how to interact with the back end to get and put data, including using the new WP REST API. We will cover WordPress specific helper functions that help our Backbone projects.
Finally, we will explore several very simple Backbone applications that demonstrate interacting with WordPress using the Rest API.

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April 19, 2015 — This talk delves into a sample Backbone project and review major WordPress core components built with Backbone – including media, revisions and themes. And also covers using the JSON REST API to get data into and out of WordPress.

January 14, 2015 — A short demonstration of building a standalone backbone application powered by WordPress.

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November 21, 2014 — WordPress 3.5, 3.6, and 3.9 were media-centric releases. The code that powers media features is powerful and elegant, but the learning curve for jumping in and contributing can be steep. This talk breaks down some concepts: object-oriented JavaScript, the basics of Backbone/Underscore/MediaElement, and how to step through the code in core.

November 21, 2014 — Backbone (and Underscore!) are bundled with WordPress – explore how you can ‘grow a spine’ and leverage their power to deliver complex user experiences while keeping your code organized and maintainable. When and why should you use Backbone? How can WordPress help? Delve into a sample Backbone project and review major WordPress core components built with Backbone – including media, revisions and themes.

November 3, 2014 — Backbone is the foundation of several recent user-facing features in WordPress. This talk will explore how to leverage WordPress’ powerful Backbone view management tools to craft maintainable, modular UI for your plugin or theme.

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August 21, 2014 — WordPress revisions got a jolt of Backbone and a complete interface overhaul in WordPress 3.6 (as did media in 3.5 and themes in 3.8). Hear the revisions rewrite story and description of the effort involved, plus a code overview and ideas for leveraging Backbone (and Underscore) in your WordPress project.

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May 16, 2014 — A look at recent improvements in the WordPress.com Theme Showcase, the new WordPress.com Dashboard – Newdash – and the THX project.

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