I hope you are all having some nice time off; I just wanted to take the time to reflect on 2009 and what it was like for me.

Speaking and travel

I think career- and experience-wise, the biggest thing I did this year was starting to travel around and speak at conferences. And while the idea of it had been brewing in my head for a while, it it is really one person I owe a big thanks of gratitude too, and that is Rey Bango for pushing me over the brink.

Mozilla were to organize a large event in March in Berlin, and he contacted me and suggested that I should give a presentation about developing Firefox extensions (like a live version of my How to develop a Firefox extension article). What he also did was encourage me that I could do it and that I should be brave about it, and as a result, it opened up a year of traveling in Europe giving presentations. Thank you Rey!

Read more about it in The trip to Berlin and the Mozilla Add-Ons Workshop 2009. Berlin was really a starting point for my relationship with Mozilla, and I gave presentations at two more Mozilla conferences this year and was also a part of a panel about HTML5 at the Mozilla Camp Europe.

My next presentation in line was thanks to the trust of Peter Svensson who asked me to speak at the Scandinavian Web Developer Conference, where I was the only Swede presenting, and had quite a good time. Same week ended with me speaking at a joint event between Mozilla and Nokia (the Maemo division) in Copenhagen in Denmark, and it was also a great time, and a chance to meet my friend Morgan Roderick for the first time in person.

Week after that, I spoke at the Mozilla Swedish Community Meetup, where Mozilla came to Stockholm and treated us to a nice Mozilla evening. Following that, summer was calm and easy, and it didn’t really start again till the beginning of October, now with Mozilla Camp Europe, this year taking place in Prague. I wasn’t scheduled to speak, but due to some openings, at least I partook as a panelist discussing HTML5 with the audience, other panel members and prominent people in the Firefox team – it’s all summed up in Travel stories and session recaps from Mozilla Camp Europe Prague, 3-4 October 2009.

A few weeks rest, and then in November it really started taking off. With four speaking performances at major conferences within a month, I started to remotely imagine what it must feel like to be Chris Heilmann. 🙂

First out the door was Øredev, where I got to share the stage and then hassle (read: befriend) two of my major inspirations: Douglas Crockford and Steve Souders – The Øredev 2009 Conference adventure. Just three days later, the first instance of JSConf.eu took place in Berlin, and although I felt my own presentation was mediocre at best (I did much better at the other events), it was quite a good place to meet a lot of JavaScript people – The JSConf.eu conference and my visit to Berlin.

Following that was a conference that I had known about for quite some time, and given the setting of UK and the outstanding speakers that had been invited, I really wanted to make it a good one – and I think I did! What I’m talking about is Full Frontal, and I believe it was a personal highlight for me as a speaker this year (at least one of the top three) – My Full Frontal ‘09 escapades – The JavaScript conference.

Rounding off this conference year was a nice trip to Lisbon in Portugal, and a great time at the Codebits conference – My trip to Lisbon, Portugal, and the Codebits conference.

And just to make things better, December 23rd I received an invitation from Mozilla to the FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) in February! 🙂

So, thanks everyone for your trust and letting me speak at your conference, and thank you to Mozilla for believing in me!

Honorable mentions

The absolutely wonderful thing about conferences is the the fantastic people you get to meet, and the places and cultures you get to experience. I’ve met so many great people this year, too many to mention here, and without a doubt, my feeble mind is probably forgetting a number of you just right now. What I wanted to bring up, though, was a few names that I have met at more than one conference this year and have spent some considerable time together with.

William Quiviger

William is, amongst other things, an event organizer for Mozilla, and his out-of-this-world ability to handle pressure and make sure things work out, while at the same time sincerely caring about everyones’ wishes and needs, is extremely impressive.

Patrick Finch

Patrick is the European Marketing Manager for Mozilla, a fantastic and friendly guy, a Brit expat residing in Sweden, and, at least in my world, he sounds and looks like Remington Steele. 🙂

Brian King

Our first meeting was in Berlin, and then at every other Mozilla event this year. Brian is doing a lot of work for Mozilla in general, and add-on development in particular, and his friendly way and always being there to help has been highly appreciated by me, and I hope to meet him again many more times (a feeling I hope is mutual 🙂 ).

Remy Sharp

I think Remy and I share some kind of record on being at the same place at the same time this year. We met at SWDC in May, Geek Meet in June, then Øredev, JSConf.eu, Full Frontal and Codebits. Needless to say, he’s probably mighty sick of me by now, but for me, it has been great to meet him throughout the year, since he is both friendly and very talented (although his work/web dedication is sometimes a bit frightening, even to me).

Molly Holzschlag

I had the pleasure of meeting Molly first at the Scandinavian Web Developer Conference in May, and then have her over for Geek Meet in October. She’s a truly fantastic person, and even though how well-known she is, I really appreciate her taking the time to listen to everyone.

Morgan Roderick

I’ve known Morgan for a few years, but this year was the first time we got to meet – first in Copenhagen and then in Berlin. Morgan is extremely caring and I always act like a child around him, since he is just the nice guy that takes care of things. He seems to love Berlin, but who knows, one day we might even meet in Sweden? 🙂

Søren Skrøder

Søren is a Dane working with localization for Mozilla, and we first met in Copenhagen and then did a Prague city walkabout together in October. He is a very nice guy, and if you ever cared about beards, Søren has one to kill for!

Mark Wubben

Mark is also someone I have known for a number of years, but met for the first time this year when he spoke at Geek Meet in February. He then came to the Scandinavian Web Developer Conference followed by the Mozilla event in Copenhagen. For fun, I named him a stalker of mine, and haven’t seen him since… 🙂

Chris Mills

Ah, Chris Mills. Chris is the crazy heavy metal Brit working with developer relations for Opera, and he spoke at Geek Meet in June and then we meet at Full Frontal in Brighton in November. Extremely nice fellow, crazy stories, but I believe I actually made him flush at the Full Frontal after-party! 🙂

Conference information and presentation slides

Here are all the links to the events mentioned above and also to my presentation slides:

Mozilla Add-Ons Workshop, Berlin [Germany] – March 28th

Presentation: How to write your first extension (PDF 1.6 MB)
Event information: Mozilla Add-Ons Workshop Berlin, March 28th

Scandinavian Web Developer Conference 2009, Stockholm [Sweden] – May 25th

Presentation: Modern Web Development (View/Download on SlideShare)
Event information: Scandinavian Web Developer Conference 2009

Mozilla/Maemo Danish Weekend, Copenhagen [Denmark] – May 30th-31st

Presentation: How to write your first extension (View/Download on SlideShare)
Event information: Mozilla/Maemo Danish Weekend

Mozilla Swedish Community Meetup, Stockholm [Sweden] – June 2nd

Presentation: How to write your first extension (View/Download on SlideShare)
Event information: Mozilla Swedish Community Meetup

Øredev 2009, Malmö [Sweden] – November 4th

Presentation: JavaScript – From Birth to Closure (View/Download on SlideShare)
Event information: Øredev 2009

JSConf.eu 2009, Berlin [Germany] – November 7th

Presentation: JavaScript – From Birth to Closure (View/Download on SlideShare)
Event information: JSConf.eu 2009

Full Frontal JavaScript Conference 2009, Brighton [United Kingdom] – November 20th

Presentation: JavaScript – From Birth to Closure (View/Download on SlideShare)
Event information: Full Frontal JavaScript Conference 2009

Codebits 2009, Lisbon [Portugal] – December 3rd

Presentation: JavaScript – From Birth to Closure (View/Download on SlideShare)
Event information: Codebits 2009

The year of people dying

It seems like 2009 was a year when a lot of people died, especially on a celebrity level. Reading Famous People Who’ve Died in 2009 (so far) and delving deeper in Celebrities who died in: 2009 (page 1) it makes you wonder what was really going on.

Naturally, of all the people that passed away, Michael Jackson was by far the most famous one.

I just hope everyone will get to rest in peace.

All my posts in 2009

I first thought of picking out a few of my blog posts that I liked this year, but then again, it seems like everyone have their own favorite. Instead, I thought I’d list all of my posts in 2009 below for you to skim through them, and re-read the ones you like, or perhaps find one you missed the first time around.

December 2009

• 22: Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!
• 18: Releasing Inline Code Finder as a Google Chrome extension
• 17: Testing Object-Oriented CSS (OOCSS) for easier CSS development
• 14: Content Management Systems are a dying breed
• 08: The death of a friend
• 08: My trip to Lisbon, Portugal, and the Codebits conference

November 2009

• 30: Speaking at Codebits in Lisbon, Portugal
• 27: The HTML5 syntax options problem
• 25: My Full Frontal ‘09 escapades – The JavaScript conference
• 18: The JSConf.eu conference and my visit to Berlin
• 17: A faster web with Resource Packages – Mozilla suggestion to have just one HTTP request
• 16: The Øredev 2009 Conference adventure
• 09: Firefox turns five years old today – congratulations!
• 02: This just in: Speaking at JSConf.eu November 7th-8th 2009!

October 2009

• 29: Apple to patent CSS transformations and animations
• 27: Releasing Firefinder 1.01 – now with support for 8 languages
• 26: Speaking at Full Frontal – JavaScript Conference – 20th November 2009
• 21: Web browser market share and rounding errors
• 14: An introduction to HTML5
• 13: Speaking at Øredev 2009 Developer Conference, November 4th 2009
• 08: Help making Firefox better – share your thoughts!
• 07: Travel stories and session recaps from Mozilla Camp Europe Prague, 3-4 October 2009

September 2009

• 28: Invited to Mozilla Camp Europe Prague, 3-4 October 2009
• 23: Google Chrome Frame & Google Wave not supporting any version of Internet Explorer
• 22: One million downloads for getElementsByClassName
• 21: Geek Meet October 2009 – Molly Holzschlag will present about HTML 5 and other goodies
• 18: The passing of Patrick Swayze
• 15: Apple’s App Store and installing what you like on an iPhone
• 11: Getting caught for speeding
• 09: Fuck IE gently
• 07: Firefinder 1.0 released – code collaboration with the FriendlyFire feature, better integration with Firebug and more
• 02: Apple Mac OS X versions named after German tanks?

August 2009

• 31: 35
• 28: When the Wiimote (Nintento Wii Remote) stops working
• 27: How do you value an experience?
• 26: Hi Ho Silver – I’m back!

July 2009

• 05: Summer break 2009
• 01: Firefox 3.5 is released – information about having multiple Firefox versions and web developer extension compatibility

June 2009

• 30: PictureSlides 2.0 – highly customizable option to create JavaScript slideshows
• 26: The death of Michael Jackson
• 25: Microsoft’s recent marketing campaigns
• 24: Review of AC/DC at Ullevi Stadium June 21st 2009
• 23: Opera Unite – some questions and answers
• 18: Swedish Midsummer celebrations
• 18: New JavaScript features with native JSON support and JavaScript 1.8.1 additions
• 16: Do you take notes?
• 15: Thoughts on Microsoft’s move to ship Windows 7 without Internet Explorer in Europe
• 11: Impossible to uninstall Safari 4 in Mac OS X – Apple pretty much follows suit with Microsoft
• 10: Store information on the client side with DOM Storage/Web Storage – plenty of improvements available
• 09: My thoughts on Twitter
• 08: Poll: which JavaScript library do you use?
• 05: Geek Meet Charity June 4th 2009 was a success!

May 2009

• 28: Getters and setters with JavaScript – code samples and demos
• 27: Four years
• 26: Serious memory leak issue with 24-bit PNG images with alpha transparency in Internet Explorer
• 20: Mozilla/Maemo Danish Weekend May 30th-31st – addition to my two weeks of speak
• 15: As we were
• 14: Invasion of my public privacy
• 13: Mozilla Swedish Community Meetup in Stockholm June 2nd 2009
• 12: Firefinder for Firebug – an extension to quickly find elements matching your CSS selectors or XPath expressions
• 11: Mozilla Prism brings power to stand-alone web applications
• 07: The alt attribute is NOT for tooltips
• 05: Metallica live May 4th 2009 at the Globe arena in Stockholm, Sweden
• 04: Geek Meet Charity June 4th 2009 – Chris Mills and Remy Sharp speaking

April 2009

• 30: My father would have turned 70 today
• 29: Moving to new host, working out the kinks
• 27: Introduction, test cases and web browser compatibility tables for JavaScript 1.6, JavaScript 1.7 & JavaScript 1.8
• 24: D-A-D at Klubben, Stockholm April 4th 2009 – concert review
• 21: Speaking at the Swedish Web Developer Conference 2009, May 25th
• 20: Easier Source Control Management with Distributed Version Control System and Mercurial
• 15: A heading solution you haven’t seen before
• 03: Mozilla Labs’ online code editor Bespin

March 2009

• 31: The trip to Berlin and the Mozilla Add-Ons Workshop 2009
• 26: Search SmugMug photos easily with smug-search Ubiquity command
• 23: Bob Dylan club gig at Berns in Stockholm March 22nd 2009
• 20: An evening with Microsoft
• 16: Your end users shouldn’t have to know technology
• 13: What to know, what to learn
• 10: Speaking at Mozilla Add-Ons Workshop (MAOW) in Berlin March 29th 2009
• 09: Adobe AIR 1.5 issue – solution and support experience
• 02: Adobe Flash – pros and cons

February 2009

• 26: Headhunters
• 23: Review of AC/DC at the Globe Arena, Stockholm February 20th 2009
• 20: Reviews of the nominated movies for Best Motion Picture in the Oscar Academy Awards
• 17: Handle duplicate content indexing for SEO with the rel=”canonical” attribute
• 16: IE 8 – standards compliancy goes back to being an opt-in
• 12: Companies and social networking
• 09: Stop developing for Internet Explorer 6
• 05: New version of Inline Code Finder, with event filtering – and a download record
• 04: How to solve :first-child CSS bug in IE 7
• 03: Opera Web Standards Curriculum article: Handling events with JavaScript
• 02: Contribute to the Stockholm Sweden Twestival charity event

January 2009

• 30: What was your first hex code?
• 29: Geek Meet February 2009, with Mark Wubben
• 26: Microsoft force-installs Firefox extension
• 24: How to develop a Firefox extension
• 22: Flickr Gallery Plus! – better photo set viewing with Firefox extension and Greasemonkey userscript
• 19: Extending web browser functionality – Greasemonkey for all web browsers
• 05: Apple Macworld Expo keynote predictions

Happy New Year!

With that, I’d like to thank you for 2009, and here’s to a great 2010!

Happy New Year!