srj24

@media reflections

June 11th, 2005

Arrived home in Cambridge after a packed few days in London at the @media2005 conference. I took the opportunity to install a blog and start doing something else than just work work work on these damn computers

I have to say this was an excellent event. Well done to Patrick of Vivabit for organising it all. Although there was a lot of topics dicsussed (my head was spinning by the end of day two) there was a good range of speakers talking about different aspects of the whole web standards thing.

The speakers

There was of course the techy groundings in CSS and accessibility. A lot of it was already out there but having people at the top of thier field inform you on the best practise really saves a lot of learning.

My favourite presentations were Molly Holzschlag’s & Andy Clarke. Molly made some interesting points about using CSS to speed up wireframing in your workflow, and touched on how to manage large complex CSS files across teams. Andy’s overview of how he tackled the DisneyStore.co.uk redesign was illuminating, and he touched on a lot of useful workflow tips too.

There were loads of other great stuff too: zoom the web layouts by Joe Clark; a better approach to JavaScript with the DOM by Jeremy Keith; some gorgeously presented stuff on CSS design by Douglas Bowman; and a real eye-opener demonstraton of how visually impaired users view the web by Robin Christopherson. Anyway, I can’t mention them all - just turn up next year if you weren’t there!

We’re in the process of a long overdue design on the company site, but I’ve decided to CSS what we have - update the content - and then update the design once we’re ready. By using CSS it should make that final step a lot easier.

Thoughts

A few things for me came out of the conference:

1. Design shouldn’t be constrained by technology, but how do we communicate web design guidelines to non-techy designers (who we often work with) so we get pages we can actually build (validly)?
2. How to sell all this web standards thing to clients who only care about the bottom line
3. How do assistive technologies (screen readers and the like) actually cope with newer CSS/DOM techniques - we have some contacts at a local Uni so may try to explore this area

Networking

The evening events, especially day 2 for me, were great. Met lots of interesting people from all over the globe. Hope I manage to keep in touch! (though I tend to forget names after a few beers so if you remember me - let me know)

Overall feeling: feeling really energised about the web again. Excellent to meet so many people who share the same ideals and beliefs.. here’s to next year.

Entry Filed under: web stuff