Web Directions East 2008
Monday November 17, 2008
On Friday November 7th, Majides attended the Web Directions East ‘08 conference hosted by John Allsop. While other parts of the globe already had their version of the Web Directions series (“South” in Australia and “North” in Canada), this was the first one held in Asia, and was also an eagerly anticipated event as only few international speakers make it to Japan.
Majides was invited as a media partner and assisted with liaison translation during the reception.
Among the speakers were internet gurus CSS/HTML frontman Eric Meyer, Dan Cederholm from Simplebits, Andy Budd creator of Silverback, Mike Migurski from Stamen, Jeremy Keith, and Doug Schepers. During the day you could choose between Japanese or English speakers. Although we found the topics based on titles of the Japanese speakers as interesting (for example Atsushi Hasegawa speaking on information architecture), we chose to attend the English track - a nod to their long way to Japan!
As a web-designer, books on CSS such as “Bulletproof Webdesign” and “Webdesigning Standards” opened up a whole new world to me a couple years ago, and these books are still a major reference for coding and giving direction as well as improving website usability. Naturally, I was curious to hear what these people had to say.
Eric Meyer on ”State of the web” - ブラウザの多様化でみる最良のウェブ開発
Eric Meyer, who should be known to any who have worked with standard’s based XHTML/CSS coding, talked about the importance of new Javascript technologies as new browsers and types of media emerge.
Dan Cederholm - “Bulletproof A-Z”
Dan gave a number of very useful tips on CSS techniques and how to manage new browsers supporting CSS3 while also making older browsers like IE6 happy. We’ve all had our issues with IE6, knowing for example that although modern browsers support CSS3, 80% of a website’s demographic might still be using IE6. For Dan, making progressive enhancement and keeping older browser’s happy at the same time is the way to go. For me, it means not to let older browsers set the standard of your coding.
Jeremy Keith
Jeremy gave an introduction to the real meaning of AJAX, describing it as the server communicating with the browser. For most people it was probably more of an assurance as even among webdesigners like me in Japan we’ve heard the word AJAX plenty before. But it’s always good to be have a solid knowledge of the basics.
Andy Budd - “Guerilla Usability Testing”
Andy talked about the importance of usability testing and how you can improve usability and minimize issues with simple means. He introduced Silverback as an easy to use tool for testing, allowing testing from everywhere to save cost and time.
Mike Migurski
Mike showed some nice examples he did for data visualization stressing that breadth, depth, and speed are key points for visualizing massive amounts of data. I believe this will become increasingly important on the web as we see massive growth in the volume of information and it will become more and more challenging to perceive the data you are looking for.
Doug Schepers
Doug talked about the SVG and Canvas technologies and how modern browsers are going to adapt technologies for displaying graphics.
In all the conference was an interesting mix covering different levels of information regarding CSS, usability and AJAX. During the reception that followed, attendees had a chance to mingle with the speakers and took pictures with them.
Web Directions East plans to be an annual event, so keep a look out for WDE ‘09!
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