Chakra, the new JavaScript engine which ships with Internet Explorer 9 fundamentally changes the performance characteristics of the web - effectively redrawing competitive landscape for modern browsers. It is also one of the key components in IE9 which embraces web standards through support of ECMAScript 5, allowing the same-markup to be used across browsers. In this session, we’ll dive into what Chakra brings to the table by examining head to head performance and behavior comparisons with the other major browsers. We’ll also explore the significant enhancements in the F12 Tools which will enable web devs to develop and debug high-quality web sites with IE9.

Amanda Silver has been with Microsoft since 2001. She’s been on the Visual Studio team throughout her tenure working on various things from programming language design, high performance compilers and runtimes, to developing games for the Xbox and extensions for Office. She spent several years designing VB.NET through the golden age of Generics, LINQ, and Integrated XML. Most recently, she's been focused on ensuring that Microsoft is home to the world’s fastest and most standards compliant JavaScript engine.

Amanda Silver joins us from Redmond via Microsoft Lync video conferencing.

Knockout is a JavaScript library that helps you to create rich, responsive display and editor user interfaces with a clean underlying data model. Any time you have sections of UI that update dynamically (e.g., changing depending on the user’s actions or when an external data source changes), KO can help you implement it more simply and maintainably. Developers who’ve used Silverlight or WPF may recognize KO as an example of the MVVM pattern; developers more familiar with Ruby on Rails or other MVC technologies may see it as a real-time form of MVC with declarative syntax. In another sense, you can think of KO as a general way to make UIs for editing JSON data… whatever works for you :)

Modern browsers combined with the power of JavaScript frameworks like jQuery empower us to create rich native application experiences across in the browser. Transitions, prompt user feedback and speed are not only obtainable, they are easy to execute using built in jQuery and jQuery UI functionality. This session will demonstrate how to build a nice user experience incorporating these features while exposing you to site architecture that thinks outside the classic web page box.

Chris Love is currently developing all new web sites in ASP.NET 2.0/4.0, but still have a few in ASP.NET 1.1. I am also heavily involved with the online marketing invovled in promoting successful web sites, this includes PPC management and SEO strategies. I have been developing ASP.NET applications since ASP.NET was in Beta 1. So I have a wealth of experience with close to 300 custom built sites in that time frame. My first experience developing web pages was way back in college (NC State) in the early 90's. I quickly saw the great potential in the medium and started to preach the benefits to anyone who would listen that could give me a job after I finsihed my master's degree! First first job was less than interesting as it was developing Power Builder applications for a factory floor. My next job was a whole lot of fun the first couple of years, developing process utilization software for manaufacturing that integrated directly with Schneider Automation's (that's Square D to those of us in the US) PLC lines. I was able to build some web prototypes for our software suite, that now would be considered mobile applications (this was back in 1999). Finally I saw the future was looking pretty limited and looked around for web work, but just found office space jobs and contracts that were just not exciting to me. Finally, with my wife's blessing, I tore out on my own. The rest is current history, but a rugged one to say the least.