WDN: Conference (1)

Day Two, February 7, 2007

Opening Keynote

Molly E. Holzchlag, whose last name I cannot pronounce (even after hearing it), started the Web Directions North conference off by reminding us of the error of our ways (back then, and even now - yes, even now I am guilty of doing some of these at my workplace), some of which include:

• scrolling marquees
• frames (do iframes count too?)
• scrollbar tweaks
• open tags
• empty paragraph tags/elements and tables for presentational formatting
• garbage code generated by software like FrontPage, MS Word, Dreamweaver
• "best viewed in" resolution and browser recommendations on the site
• *html hacks in CSS
• content/text using images and spacer gifs

Although I haven't heard of Molly prior to this conference, and I wasn't too sure what to expect with a talk titled "Crime Against Web Standards", I felt it was a good way lead into the conference - not too heavy, and somewhat fun (if not funny) as there were "forgiveness" gifts for the worst crimes. She even showed us some clips from Erik A. Meyer and Neil C. Ford.

Morning Session

I'm not much of a backend developer, so I decided to attend Cameron Moll and Doug Bowman Tantek Celik's session titled, "Design and Coding at the cutting edge". Cameron used his own website as an example in the session and spoke of designing for mobile devices (which I, considering the company I work for, really should start doing) and Tantek spoke about microformats, which I'm neither too familiar with nor really interested in, but at least I came out more knowledgeable about it than going in.

One idea that Cameron mentioned was chiasms (where abc parallels with c'b'a') in design such as print. I learned about chiasms in the context of parallelism in poetry and narrative, specifically in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). To see it apply elsewhere is quite interesting. The rest of the session reminded me of classroom material such as using typography as a part of design.

By the end of the morning, I decided to cave in and buy me a textbook. I chose Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Design, partially because the retail price was so high (and was then selling for $40) and admittedly, because the book was so pretty. Yes, I was captured by the colours, gloss, and the pictures (and of course, the content is relevant to my interests).

Lunch

A catered buffet lunch was served at Vistas with a Chinese fusion theme, with the restaurant actually revolving this time. This meal is where I again chat with Dennis (from Sydney, AU) and Rachel (a local Vancouverite), and Jason (from Ottawa) and Eric (Toronto) for the first time.

Afternoon Session

I have minimal interest in microformats as you now know, so there was not conflict in choosing to attend Andy Clarke and Aaron Gustafson's "Transcendent design with Javascript and CSS". Looking back and hearing what other's said, this was a brief summary of the workshop and parts of it sounds like what is in the book I bought. I was excited to hear about CSS3 and the possibilities of what it can do, such as:

• text across multi-columns (like newspapers)
• zebra striping (odd & even highlighting)

This is where I realised the reasoning for using -900px (or some ambigious number) to carry text off the screen, which although hidden to desktop users, remains readable for screenreaders and such (accessibility), which helped me partially understand parts of a web site I've been wrestling with at work and why text disappears after it loads (not because it's at -900, but maybe because of the way the style sheets loads/is called).

Closing Keynote

Joe Clark, from Toronto, used the TTC website as an example for his "fireside chat" on accessibility and usability. While the modernist couch, fake green plant, lamp and bookshelf really added a nice, cozy touch to the stage area, short people like me couldn't really see the speaker, unless they were sitting on the side.

A couple of key points:

• the TTC website was done in 1998 by an animation student and hasn't been redone since. There is actually a "fan club" of the TTC that meets.
• Try to avoid using PDF, PowerPoint and/or Word files. Use XML or plain text instead.
• Parts of the process: observation, ideation, evaluation, definition, testing, refinement(?)

Evening

Adobe finished the night by welcoming us with a reception. Unfortunately, I missed out on the drinks (though I did grab some hors d'oeuvres on the way out) as I had to run to the printers to finish up a publication that Alex and I have been working on. Finished off the night at Steamworks with its reputable fish and chips and their home brew root beer (which isn't too sweet so it suits my tastes).

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