Schedule
The conference will be a busy two days, packed with presentations explaining how to you can improve your web sites, given by some of the world’s leading experts.
There will also be plenty of time for networking in breaks and planned evening events. Each day will include lunch and refreshments.
Further information, including details of more sessions, will be posted nearer the date of the conference. Please note that all presentations will be given in English.
Thursday May 31st: Day One
Keynote Presentation
After introductions, the conference will kick-off with a keynote presentation by a leading industry figure to set the scene for the rest of the event.
A Best Practice Overview of (X)HTML and CSS
We all know what HTML is, right? We can all do it - it’s dead easy, innit? Well, yes, it’s not really that difficult. So why are so many websites still full of so much bad HTML? Today’s web lets us use HTML as it was always intended to be used - to structure content. We don’t need to abuse it to achieve a certain look anymore because it has a new friend that can do that so much better - CSS. Taking a look at how to best use XHTML and CSS and how they have their own specific, yet complementary, roles, we will see that a web standards approach is not only a viable option, it’s the best option.
A Best Practice Overview of (X)HTML and CSS will be presented by Patrick Griffiths
Making the Jump to Tableless Design
You’ve seen the benefits of “Web Standards” and understand the basics of CSS, but how do you build a whole site using Style Sheets alone? In this session, we will show you a typical table based site and then demonstrate how the same design can be accomplished Table Free. You’ll walk away from this presentation with all the ammunition needed to build your first tableless site.
Making the Jump to Tableless Design will be presented by Andy Budd
Web Accessibility Foundations
It is vital that the Web is accessible for people with disabilities, given its increasingly key role in education, employment, commerce, and government. This presentation explores:
- Existing accessibility guidelines for web sites, web applications, browsers, and authoring tools
- Strategies for harmonizing advanced international accessibility guidelines
- Material to help develop local support for Web accessibility, including: developing policies, promoting awareness, providing training, and evaluating accessibility of Web sites
- Opportunities for involvement in international Web accessibility efforts, including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Web Accessibility Foundations will be presented by Shawn Lawton Henry
To Be Confirmed
We are purposefully leaving a few slots open so that we can gague feedback and consider presentation proposals. Check back soon as we add more speakers and more sessions!
Friday June 1st: Day Two
Picking up where Day One left off, the second day will begin promptly at 9am.
More Than Layout: Ultimate Design Control with CSS
CSS has caught on in a big way; major web sites launch using CSS-based layouts every day. More and more designers and developers have picked up the CSS basics, so it’s time to talk about where to go next.
Dave Shea is here to show you some interesting CSS techniques that go well beyond anything the W3C specification ever taught you. How exactly do you create a design grid system within CSS? Besides syntax, what sort of typographical control does CSS allow? You’ve heard of the separation of structure and presentation, what about the separation of layout and styling?
He’ll also show you techniques for mixing and matching colour schemes within your CSS files, taming the browsers, using server-side coding to enhance your CSS, and ways of organizing and maintaining a CSS-based site that fit within a designer’s work flow.
More Than Layout: Ultimate Design Control with CSS will be presented by Dave Shea
The Behaviour Layer: Using JavaScript for Good, not Evil
This talk will include a basic introduction to using JavaScript and the Document Object Model. More importantly though, it will show how to apply the behaviour layer in a way that is accessible and allows for graceful degradation. Using the example of an image gallery, different implementations of the same script will be shown. Beginning with old-school inline JavaScript and finishing with a robust unobtrusive script, each iteration will steadily improve the accessibility and backwards compatibility of the image gallery. The aim is to encourage developers to think about the DOM in the same way as CSS: a powerful technology that works best when separated from the actual content. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
The Behaviour Layer: Using JavaScript for Good, not Evil will be presented by Jeremy Keith
The Broken World: Solving the Browser Problem Once and For All
The Web was meant to be interoperable, but as every web designer and developer knows, interoperability is the very thing we lack. As we build standards-based, flexible, accessible, well-designed sites, we find it’s the browser that gives us most of our headaches. In this session, you’ll learn to take better control not through hacks and filters, but through an understanding of why browsers work the way they do. You’ll learn the differences in layout engines, see visual models of the DOM and learn about the process of developing a Web browser. Finally, you’ll see how their flaws and features play into our daily work, and how we can all make our lives easier by advocating for better software and implementation.
The Broken World: Solving the Browser Problem Once and For All will be presented by Molly E. Holzschlag
To Be Confirmed
Just like the open slot on Day One, more will be revealed nearer the time of the conference.
Hot Topics
To Round off the conference, a panel of some of the conference’s speakers will debate issues that are of specific interest to you. We will ask for topic suggestions during the event, and we’ll compile a list of questions to put to the experts.
