The first day was simple amazing. Great people, sessions and food ;) Berlin is a wonderful place. These are my impressions of the second and last day of the conference.

My second day at the Ruby on Rails conference 2007 in Berlin, was very intresting and I've learned about how to improve webapp in Europe, Slingshot and some testing tips.

Building WebApps in Europe: Economy, methodology, tips
In this session Nicolas Paton (Bloogk) describe some tips and methodology for people intent do build a webapp. They sostain that a webapp dont have to be a new Google to bring wealth and happiness to their creators, so invite anyone to open your mind to new markets. Another important point of view is the Design, not only the graphical design but technical design through tests, and economical design

Creating Hybrid Web and Desktop Applications with Rails and Slingshot
During the session of Luke Crawford (Joyent) i have said how to implement a synchronized online and offline application with Slingshot. Slingshot provide an ActiveRecord transport layer allowing easy customization of the data that gets synced to an online application. With the addition of about thirty lines of code, a Rails application can sync data from client to server. With another thirty lines of code you synchronize have file-based data. The framework also provides an extensible drag and drop abstraction layer.

Browser-based Testing of Massive Ajax-using Rails Applications with Selenium
To create a web application mostly similar to a normal desktop application we need a very good testing framework for the client side and not only for the server side. Till Vollmer (Codemart GmbH) spoke about Selenium, an open source framework that allows running acceptance tests in the browser directly. Recorded or scripted scenarios can be played back and the expected result verified. While this is very straight forwarded with normal page-based applications, without dynamic Ajax calls it is relatively tricky to implement tests for Ajax-based applications with a lot of dynamics and user interaction like drag and drop.

Continuous Validation: Pursuing Error-free Apps
Another important session about testing and validation has taked by Dane Avilla. He discuss the importance of output validation and demonstrate how to use WATIR and Rails filters along with a number of helpful open source tools -- JSLint, OpenSP, the W3C's CSS Validator -- to be sure "rake test" catches output errors long before they reach a client browser.

Unfortunately I had the flight sceduled at 5.35pm so can't see the last sessions.

I am totally convinced that the next 360Flex conference in Milan (7-9 April) is a fantastic chance for a profitable full immersion into Flex and Flex related themes, there including Adobe AIR.

Besided the fact that the previous editions which took place in the States have been tremendously successfull, this is the only event in Europe with such a strong focus and such a big concentration of interational technical expertise on Flex.

Who should really grab the opportunity to attend the 3 day conference (for just 360 euros)? Here is a synthesis from the 360Flex website (http://www.360flex.com/360flex_europe/):

- Flex developers (of course!)

- ColdFusion, COBOL, .NET, LISP developers, looking to move more into UI and RIA technologies.

- Flash developers, looking to leave timelines and keyframes behind

- AIR developers (or would-be ones)

- Those who think that Flex might be the technology direction their company will want to take

Don't miss out, only €360. This includes over 35+ speakers/sessions and free hands-on "Getting started with Flex" training. More details can be found at http://360flex.com/360flex_europe

To register http://360flexeurope.eventbrite.com/

If you're a FlexGala members there is a discount code to use during the registration phase. Register to FleXGala (http://www.augitaly.com/flexgala/index.php?cmd=register) and you'll receive it via the FlexGala newsletter.

Comtaste has just launched its new training courses on Adobe Flex3 and AIR for late spring-early summer 2008.

First courses to be scheduled are:

"Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3: Developing Rich Internet Applications with the new Flex 3 SDKs" (Milan and London 26-29 May, NYC-Manhattan 2-5 June)

"Developing desktop applications with Adobe AIR, Ajax and Flex" (Milan 14-17 April, NYC-Manhattan 9-12 June, London 23-26 June).

Our educational proposal, designed and set up by Flex expert Marco Casario, is mainly the result of our strong experience in real world enterprise projects.

Our courses reflect our clients' training needs that our consultants have encountered in the day by day running of enterprise-class projects, where Flex and AIR are also connected to backend applications under robust and rigid JEE architectures or other server side technologies.

Training programs and other details on company's website www.comtaste.com/en/training.htm