Backbone.js Screencast - Introduction and Views

I just went through the presentation.

> It covers Backbone Views and little bit of Events. And covers them nicely. Although, I would NOT suggest it to a pro developer (mainly due to 1 hr).

> Backbone Model, Collection, Router, Sync etc will be, hopefully, covered in the next rounds. (Somethings will need to be revisited when wiring models etc)

> A lot of time the presentations digresses.

> Didn't talk about the setup - how haml, backbone is integrated; though I agree that it shouldn't be focus when starting.

> Thanks to the video, I learnt a couple of things - views can be passed tagName..., params.name, haml each block

> Finally, I'll add that Backbone looks even more cleaner in coffeescript (errors due to missing comma? no more a problem!)

And jotted down comment after each 10 minutes into the presentation.

> 10 minutes: not really backbone (jquery, javascript gotcha mostly) - admitted at minute 11

> 20 minutes: nice smooth sailing - el, tagName

> 30 minutes: learnt a few things new things! but a bit slow for me :(

> 40 minutes: mostly jquery/inheritence, next minutes are going to be about jquery templates

> 50 minutes: focus lost in favour of templates, haml (but probably better for web-developer learning it)

Teaching and motivating is a tough thing. Keep up the good work, waiting for the next part.

Thanks for the cast, was quite informative. Kudos to you for trying to help others. Just a few suggestions for following casts. 1) Not sure if you are aware of it but there is a framework that you can use for the screencasts, just to make it look bit more professional: http://www.codeschool.com/code_tv/screencasting 2) Try give more screen space to code and browser. I personally, will rather have your code and your voice do all the talking. 3) In the beginning maybe have an outline, or list of concepts you are going to cover in the cast.

And for future casts topics request :). 1) Can you talk about testing backbone with Jasmine, maybe Sinon too? 2) Design patterns for managing your backbone code or how responsibilities should be shared among collections, models, views?

Again thanks a lot for the effort.

Cool, hadn't seen that framework before. I'll definitely check that out!

As for the video, I really like seeing other folks show themselves on video as they code, as I think it makes it a bit more personal. So that's why I like doing it myself for my own screencasts. I tried to make sure the position of the video didn't cover up any key areas of the screen that contained important information. But perhaps I could've done a better job at that.

And yes, I actually just gave my 2nd Backbone webinar the other day, which touched on Jasmine testing a little bit, as well as models and collections. You can view that here: http://bit.ly/qIDB2u

I do plan on doing a few more in this series to dive into some topics a bit deeper. Your suggestions are great ones!

Thanks a ton for the feedback, I really do appreciate it!

Great stuff. Eagerly awaiting future casts :)

Thanks for sharing.

I'm completely new to backbone and jQuery and I've only recently started learning javascript (I have a C++/Java background, and only tinkered with Rails a few years back).

I agree with bilalhusain, the talk does wander a bit, but as a jQuery newbie it was quite useful for me. YMMV.

I liked how you built up the use of the framework, gradually adding events, templating, iteration etc.

I would like to be able to follow along (doing the same steps myself), but I didn't understand the starting point of your project (is it a sinatra app?). Do you have instructions on how to get setup to that point? A screencast for setup would be great, but even a list of pointers would be helpful.

Keep up the good work!