JSConf.Asia 2019 is a 3 day long celebration of the web platform, its technology, impact and people. It is the seventh edition of Southeast Asia’s largest and possibly most loved community event, organised from developers for developers with the aim to educate, inspire and entertain around open source software and the web. 

Our curated line-up covers 40+ talks, lectures and workshops on the latest in web design, JS, CSS, UX, front-end web development as well as Node and software engineering fundamentals. 

This year will mark the first time that we are stretching our efforts into the arts as an additional, conscious component of the conference experience.

Join us and so many of the different people who create and build the web every day, enjoy our very special Southeast Asian hospitality, learn, make friends and be surprised. We're excited to welcome you. 

JSConf Asia

Hui Jing and Thomas open the 7th JSConf.Asia with a little gameshow about JavaScript and web development. Enjoy :)

Loop of Fortune

What does shape the current state of Web Design? How can we leverage CSS to support the art movement on the Web?

Let’s dive into art direction and trends to find a new way to express our design ideas in CSS. 

During my talk you will find more about the intersection of CSS code with collages techniques, anti-design aesthetics and much more. Everything will be combined with practical CSS and many examples you can use on your websites right away. 

I will be presenting some of my CSS experiments to show you that art has a true impact on CSS properties and new features.

Find your inner designer and join me on this artistic CSS journey.

artistic.css

In recent years, web applications have largely converged to a modular approach, where self contained components make up the basic building blocks of an app. Components have offered us a way to logic in bite size digestives but they can also grow to become huge unwieldy monsters.

Imagine you find yourself five years into a project, in a team of 10, over a thousand components, and a chance (albeit daunting task) to start with a fresh codebase. How would you begin designing the components?

Designing Components for Fun, Profit and Sanity

Variable Fonts allow typography on the web to adapt to the flexible nature of screens, environments and devices. We can use variable fonts with pre-existing technologies to improve our font performance, design, accessibility and usability of our websites.

We can start to design our typography to adjust to various inputs, situations or events which might allow us to modify our fonts to aid in storytelling, or achieve improved readability and legibility in different situations, environments or on larger or smaller screens.

Let’s begin to explore new and exciting creative opportunities for storytelling, design and expression in ways standard fonts could never provide us. This is just the beginning of our journey to discover what we can do with variable fonts.

Variable Fonts and the Flexible Nature of Screens and Devices

We can use Web Components to create reusable solutions. With Custom Elements, the Shadow DOM, HTML Templates, the Web Speech API, and a little ARIA, we can create a progressively more advanced solution for anyone who wants to listen to content; and when the Accessibility Object Model (AOM) lands, we'll be able to do even more.

Web Components and the AOM

ES Module support in Node v12 is not just a refinement of the support it has in Node v10, but is rather pointing to a direction in which Node and browser ES Modules converge into one system, a system which will enable ES modules to "just work" within the native npm ecosystem, without the need for transpilers or bundlers. 

This talk will examine this, and show how this will be possible in the upcoming years.

Navigating the Wild Seas of Native ES Modules

Most libraries and abstractions for creating graphics in Javascript are focused on 2D shapes (SVG and canvas) or simulating 3D rendering. The talk will instead explore generative graphics inspired by modular, analog video synthesizers from the 1970s, in which visuals are created by routing, transforming, and recombining multiple sources and outputs in realtime (such as cameras, videos, and application windows).

By using WebRTC to share video peer-to-peer, each browser/device can output a video stream, and receive and modify video streams from other browsers/devices. Transformations to the color, coordinates, and blending of a visual source are abstracted as separate Javascript functions which can be chained and composited to create complex visual patterns. 

The talk will explore technical, aesthetic, and collaborative possibilities of treating a web app as a series of interconnected and heterogeneous nodes, rather than as a specific “site” or “place”.

The Browser as a Modular, Networked Video Synthesizer

The Internet of today originated as an experiment in the West. But as it expands to accommodate a larger user base in Asia, huge gaps are created between what the consumers want and what engineers build in a digital solution.
- How can we build websites for illiterate people?
- How can we improve the performance of our websites in spite of terrible infrastructure?
- How can we come together to make the best digital experience we can for the people who have only started embracing the internet recently?
Because they will be the users of tomorrow.

Real World Problems - Internet beyond the 1st World Bubble

People make things. You make things. Most of the time you make Very Serious Things™️ that help your bosses sell more shoes or saxophones or those tiny coffee packets. And that’s good, because you gotta eat and stuff. But something else has gotta eat, too: your brain. 

Music is creation, art is creation, code is creation. I think it’s important to goof around with code sometimes, or make things that let other people goof around with code. And sometimes, that becomes the Very Serious Thing™️. Magenta.js is one of these things; let's talk about it!

Music and Art with ML

Surprised of too many things went wrong in your UI components? 🤔
Ever felt that freeing your components from bugs is a never-ending endeavour? 🤮
Familiar with this kind of code in React? 😏
Join Zains journey in solving those kinds of issues using State Machines and see how they go in action with React Hooks. 🥳

State Machines Meet React Hooks

Machine learning can have some pretty complicated concepts to grasp if you’re not a data scientist. However, recent developments in tooling make it more and more accessible for developers and people with little or no experience.

One of these advancements is the ability to now train and run machine learning algorithms and models in the browser, opening this world to front-end developers to learn and experiment.

In this presentation, we will talk about the different applications, possibilities, tools and resources, as well as show a few examples and demos, so you can get started building your own experiments using machine learning in JavaScript.

Machine Learning for Front-End Developers

Wondering how to build offline first web apps nowadays? Let's build our own recipes to iterate faster creating offline first web app with data synchronization capability.

Rapid Development on Offline First Data Sync

The Component-based API is a new concept of API which pushes further from GraphQL the boundaries of how much data can be retrieved in a single request, how data is organized into an effective hierarchical structure, and how fast can data be retrieved from the DB. 

We will learn what this new API looks like, how to use it, and how our application can become more modular through it.

Introduction to the Component-based API

The design of React Hooks requires a good understanding of closures in JavaScript. In this talk, we’ll reintroduce closures by building a tiny clone of React! This will serve two purposes – to demonstrate the effective use of closures, and to show how you can build a Hooks clone in just 29 lines of readable JS. 

Finally, we arrive at how you get Custom Hooks and the Rules of Hooks out of this incredible mental model!

Getting Closure on React Hooks

Many tools and processes go into modern front-end development: from component development to design and data fetching to testing and more. How does Stripe make these all work together? 

Join Paul Asjes from Stripe’s engineering team for a talk on how to make all these components and processes work in a way that makes the modern front-end greater than the sum of its many parts.

Making It All Fit Together with React and GraphQL

A short show-case of the results of the 2 day long Nodebots workshop with Pasindu. Always fun to see some robots, right?

Nodebots Are Back

As the author of Vue, I often get asked on how the major JavaScript frameworks today differ from one another. Typically people expect technical details: size, performance, ecosystem... but to me, what fundamentally differentiates frameworks from one another is where a framework lands on the primitives vs. conventions spectrum. This is usually a conscious design decision, and the major frameworks we see today manifests three different segments of this spectrum. 

In this talk I'll discuss how these design choices have affected the adoption and growth of these frameworks, and why there might not be one single optimal balance point.

Vue.js: Seeking the Balance in Framework Design

A brilliant journey through biological and artificial minds, exploring the intersection between Machine Learning and Neuroscience.

Why can't you tickle yourself? How do you know where you are? Why do DeepDream images look so trippy? Why does trauma come in waves, washing over us again and again? Computational neuroscience provides insight into these questions and more. 

In visually lush presentation, we'll go on a journey through biological and artificial minds, exploring how models of cognition informed by machine learning and computation can help us illuminate and reconfigure our own processes of being.

Learning From Machines

There are many exciting things happening with AI, from which, until recently, JavaScript developers were largely shut out. But things are changing, if you can do npm install @tensorflow/tfjs or make an API call, you can now do AI. 

In this fast-paced talk, I'll open your mind to what's possible by demoing several AI-powered JavaScript apps and show you how they were built using either TensorFlow.js or easy to use AI powered APIs. You don't need a PhD in Maths, you don't need years of experience, you just need imagination and the willingness to try.

The Future of JavaScript and AI

Do you lie awake at night wondering why you can’t count up past 9 quadrillion in JavaScript? Have you ever been troubled by numbers that don’t add up correctly or do what you expect (looking at you, 0.1 + 0.2)?

JavaScript’s numbers can behave a little… unexpectedly at times, and cause bugs that can have you scratching your head for hours on end. 

From incorrect arithmetic to Beyoncé showing up on your page twice as often as you expect, in this talk we’ll take a look at the quirks that come from numbers in JavaScript & the strange issues they can cause.

Double the Beyoncé: Navigating Numbers in JavaScript

"During an 'await' anything could happen." ... It’s easy to create race conditions in JavaScript if you’re not careful. This talk is about dealing with common kinds of race conditions based on my experience working on a real-time collaborative app.

Race Conditions in JavaScript Apps

No matter what kind of developer you are, in 2019, Internationalization is honestly kind of a big deal. Especially if you're building interfaces that transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Over the years, the community has developed a set of tools for solving the problems in this area but they are non-standard, hard to keep a track of and in the best case, pretty huge.

I will talk about the new Internationalization APIs in JavaScript, which solve these problems and give you a decent set of tools to build apps that work across different languages, currencies and cultures.

The *Other* Spec: Internationalization in JavaScript

Have you ever noticed the recent trend where no one uses ES5 anymore? AOT compilers became a trivial thing nowadays; everyone uses it but very few really understand how they work. 

With the knowledge that I'm gonna give you in my talk, a new exciting world of possibilities will open up for you; you will understand how popular compilers such as TypeScript and Babel work behind the scenes and you be able to build cool Babel plugins. 

With this knowledge you will be able to not only implement things which aren't possible to do during runtime, such as ng-anotate, but you will also be able to save some precious processing power and make your apps more efficient.

The Different Transformation Stages of AOT Compilers

80% of users are running browsers capable of running languages other than JS in their browser. It's a new change, but an important one; we're looking at a future where the web will be built not just on JS, but on C, Rust, even GoLang. 

Let's talk about WebAssembly; why it came about, what it's good at, and why it really doesn't spell doom for JS but instead allows you to truly enhance web experiences by augmenting JS with the ability to use modules written in other languages that can perform tasks faster or more efficiently. 

We'll go over what WebAssembly is, how to build a WebAssembly module, and why this may be a force that will shape not only how we think about JS, but the entire web experience.

Web Assembly: The Future of JS and a Multi-Language Web

npm has more data than anyone about who JavaScript developers are and what we’re up to. Using our unparalleled access to registry usage stats and the results of our 2019 ecosystem survey of over 33,000 developers, I break down the current state of JavaScript and where trends look like they’re headed, from frameworks through security best practices, so you can make more informed technical choices.

JavaScript - Who, What, Where, Why and Next

So you’ve heard about Pair Programming, but how much do you really know about it? Few are aware of the complexities involved, resulting in a waste of money, siloed knowledge and even internal scuffles!

With PALO IT’s 'Pair Programming Done Right', you will learn how to navigate this potentially chaotic practice. Join Kevin Aubry to discover how you can Pair Program the Agile way. To supplement your learning experience, you’ll also learn how to leverage on Test Driven Development to create even higher quality software in a fraction of time.

In this session, attendees can look forward to:
- A deep understanding of Pair Programming and Test Driven Development
- Better software through faster feedback
- Improved development speeds
- Purpose-driven formulation of solutions
- Higher job satisfaction and team morale
- And more…

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Have a recent Node.js, code editor and web browser installed. You'll need a Github account.

Having the first-hand experience using various programming languages to design and implement software applications, complemented by his advisory position, Kevin has proven to be a valuable asset to numerous successful projects. Constantly keeping up with innovation and new technologies, he enjoys challenges that take him out of his comfort zone.

Pair Programming & Test Driven Development done right

Come have a whirlwind tour of the Azure cloud where you'll be travelling through the seas of Javascript on a boat christened VSCode.

JS adventures in Azureland

During the workshop we will take a regular web application and convert it into a Progressive Web App. This workshop is for people wishing to learn more about Service Workers, Workbox.js and web performance/caching in relation to PWAs.

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Attendees should make sure that they have their favourite code editor, an up-to-date version of Google Chrome as well as NodeJS installed (either LTS or Current)

Unlocking Progress Web Applications

This workshop will show participants how to build applications using NuxtJS (A VueJS Framework), based on real-world experience in shipping products from scratch. In the process, we will also look at various means of building performant websites.

Within the 3 hours (remaining 0.5 hours will be for Q and A, as well as helping slower paced participants), we will cover the following:
- SPA, SSR and Static Websites, which one to use.
- Building for performance, code splitting, tree shaking, lazy-loaded resources
- Important points on NuxtJS such as architecture, configuration, SSR features & lifecycle, etc.
- Creating your first NuxtJS project and explanation on options available
- What are plugins, modules and which one to use
- Sign In Page & Crud Page
- Hands-on learning Of VueJS and NuxtJS concepts
- there will be a local backend API with authentication to test things out).
- Gotchas & Edge Cases
- Coding problems that can occur in SSR
- How to get dynamic Vuex store to work
- Deployment as SPA, SSR, Static Website
- Q&A Session

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Please have the following software installed before attending, we will not have time to troubleshoot installation issues
- NodeJS version 10 and above, NPM
- Git
- Code editor (VS Code recommended)

Practical NuxtJS

Ever wondered how to accept payments online from anywhere in the world with JavaScript? Learn how to build a simple payment system for an online shop using React, Node and vanilla JavaScript from Stripe engineers.

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Attendees should make sure that they have their favourite code editor, an up-to-date browser as well as NodeJS installed (either LTS or Current)

Selling all the things: Building online payments in JS with Stripe

We will demonstrate Mozilla’s WebThings Gateway, an IoT framework to protect user privacy and security, and to improve cross-brand interoperability. We will also show how to develop and build your own custom "web things" out of microcontroller boards. We will demonstrate javascript examples using the Moddable SDK, then get “hands-on” using MicroBlocks.

Requirements:
Bring your laptop to participate in microcontroller programming using MicroBlocks and come to the workshop with MicroBlocks pre-installed. You can download the installer for your operating system and follow the setup instructions.

Deploying and Building WebThings by Mozilla #1

You will learn about different image formats, their tradeoffs, how different formats are under the hood and the how the browsers handle images. 

Based on this, we will look at different techniques to optimise images based on the device, network and the browser the user is using. 

We will be building an image optimisation pipeline which you can extend upon after the workshop. Having built such a pipeline at Dexecure, I will also talk about the challenges in building and maintaining such a reliable at such a pipeline the different gotchas to look out for in terms of performance, security, reliability and scalability.

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Have Node.js and a recent web-browser, Git and NodeJS installed.

Advanced Image Optimisation for Websites

In today`s world the front end technology is evolving really fast. New frameworks are getting launched to simplify the developers life. But with the changing technology it`s really hard to move from one framework to another or update to the newest version. 

Web components is a relatively new standard enabling front end developers to create cross frameworks compatible components. it lets you write reusable components with native browser Api with zero external dependencies. 

In this workshop we will learn to build a web app with reusable components using web components (custom elements, Shadow DOM, Html templates, Modules). We will also get acquainted with helper library lit-element and how we can integrate these components with existing frameworks.

Requirements:
Prior knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS required in order to follow along.
Please bring a laptop, preferably with NodeJS and administrator permissions to install new software. Don’t forget your favourite IDE for JavaScript development.

Build next gen web apps using web components

There is a lot of developer and investment interest in JAMStack technologies, from the serverless movement to new authentication models to continuous atomic deployment to the static site generator renaissance. But with so many new terms and options, it is hard for people to figure out where to start.

This workshop will teach developers to set up a simple but state of the art Gatsby stack, which lets people create blazing fast sites and apps with React and GraphQL, backed up by a continuous deployment and serverless platform complete with authentication and CMS. 

It has never been easier to get a great Lighthouse score, or to deploy complex, secure webapps for free.

JAMStack Jumpstart - Gatsby

Web Assembly has arrived in all major browsers. With it being in plain sight instead of hidden behind browser flags we can start and bring our high performance applications to the browser. In this workshop we’re going to look at the basics of Web Assembly and see what is already in the browsers today and what is yet to come. From there we will implement a real performance heavy task in our browser. 

We will compare the performance of our Web Assembly code to a plain JavaScript version. Afterwards you will be able to decide when to use Web Assembly and what specific performance benefits It will give you.

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Have a recent web-browser, Git and NodeJS installed. If local wifi allows it we will be working with http-server package locally and access this from our smartphones. If not we might use a service like Zeit Cloud (https://zeit.co/now).

Webassembly: Expectation vs. Reality

Learn how to build and train Neural Networks using the most popular Machine Learning framework for JavaScript, TensorFlow.js. 

This is a practical workshop where you'll learn "hands-on" by building several different applications from scratch using TensorFlow.js. If you have ever been interested in Machine Learning, if you want to get a taste for what this exciting field has to offer, if you want to be able to talk to other Machine Learning/AI specialists in a language they understand, then this workshop is for you.

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Have a recent Google Chrome, Git and NodeJS installed. You will need to run a local web server and serve the contents of a directory if you don't know how to do that Asim recommends downloading VS Code and install the live server plugin.

Introduction to Machine Learning with TensorFlow.js

In this workshop, get your hands dirty with harp.gl: a new web-based, open-source, 3D map visualization framework from HERE.

You’ll learn how to:
- Build and integrate high-performing and visually appearing 3D maps into your web applications
- Customize the look and feel of your map to match your organization’s look and feel
- Store and manage your geodata in the cloud with HERE XYZ in order to visualize it on a map
- Develop compelling data visualizations with existing visualization layers and a data-driven styling grammar
- Visualize complex 3D objects on a map

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Have a recent web-browser, Git and NodeJS installed together with npm, yarn, and lerna.

Interactive 3D Web Mapping

Let's build PWA application with native mobile features such as push notification, background sync which will seamlessly work across Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and Linux.

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Attendees should make sure that they have their favourite code editor, an up-to-date version of Google Chrome as well as NodeJS installed (either LTS or Current)

Build your first mobile & desktop app as a Progressive Web Application

Unit tests... API tests... UI tests... mocha... chai... jasmine... cucumber... enzyme...?
Want to introduce test automation to your project, but not sure where to start and what tools to use? Join this workshop!

Learn strategies for planning your tests, bring your laptop for some hands-on on different testing techniques and libraries for testing the backend to the frontend on a RealWorld project, and finally let's hook your tests up to your favorite CI/CD!

Requirements:
Bring a laptop. Have a recent web-browser, Git and NodeJS installed.

JSConf Asia 2019

Jun 14 - Jun 16 | Singapore, Singapore