Description:

Just a few years ago, most computer users used just one computing device: their home computer. These days, more and more people have a number of computing devices, everything from the traditional home computer to netbooks, telephones and tablet devices. And as technology marches forward, even traditional consumer electronic devices like televisions have become more likely to serve double duty as computing devices.

In dealing with this changing environment, companies often consider these other computing devices as a completely separate ecosystem from their existing application. "Mobile strategy" has become synonymous with "build an iPhone (and maybe Android) app".

Instead, application developers should be thinking about the fundamental ways that the multi-device environment affects user behavior. Users don't think about their iPhone as an island separate from the web application, and neither should you. Instead, think about how your users behave when they leave your web application on their desktop computers and want to continue on their phone or tablet. Think about how things will change when even more devices, like televisions enter the mix.

In this talk, Yehuda will talk about how the multi-device user changes how you should build applications. As a core developer on the SproutCore and Rails projects, he will also cover specific ways that you can use web technologies to advance this objective.

The talk will be somewhat technical, but will also be appropriate for those looking to better understand the ways that application development is changing to meet the challenges described above.

About Yehuda Katz

Yehuda Katz is a member of the SproutCore, Ruby on Rails and jQuery Core Teams; during the daytime, he works as an architect at Strobe. Yehuda is the co-author of the best-selling jQuery in Action, the upcoming Rails 3 in Action, and is a contributor to Ruby in Practice. He spends most of his time hacking on open source - his main projects, along with others, like Thor, Handlebars and Janus - or traveling the world doing evangelism work. He blogs at yehudakatz.com and can be found on Twitter as @wycats.