An Event Apart 2009
I had the opportunity to attend the An Event Apart conference here in Chicago at the beginning of this week and I must say–this being my first time at their event–I was truly impressed. The presenters were greatly in tune with the advancements and shifts occuring in the industry and I found their insights and expertise really enlightening.
Presenting at the two day conference were some of the big names in the web world including Eric Meyer, Dan Cederholm, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Jason Santa Maria. Eric's presentation pertained to the advancments of Javascript over the past few years in part due to the advancement of rendering engines within our browsers. With the help of toolkit sets such as JQuery (one of our favorites), Modernizr, and MooTools web developers can create all kinds of dynamic features that take almost no time to load and run at lightning speed. One prime example he cited was Google Maps. Remember how just a few years ago to move the map around on the page you would have to click an arrow on the side of the map and wait for it to reload? Thanks to the ever-increasing power of Javascript rendering engines, browsers can now do much of the work on the fly.
Dan Cederholm (from Simplebits) provided a glimpse into his book Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design and discussed what he coined "progressive enrichment" with CSS3. Rounded corners, drop shadows, transitions, text shadows, the capabilities of CSS3 are a big step forward and you as a developer should start to make use them of now. One key theme of the conference–and Dan's talk–was the idea that websites do NOT need to look exactly the same in all browsers (to support this idea Dan created a quick example). As long as the added CSS techniques don't impede or disrupt the user's experience in a particular browser we should feel free to reward the users who work with browsers that support them (Firefox and Safari for the most part).
And those two talks were just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Jason Santa Maria discussed thinking small, Aaron Gustafson introduced the audience to eCSStender, and Andy Clarke talked about designing within the browser. I'm certain I'll be revisiting all the slides this weekend, as well as using them for reference in the future. To anyone thinking of taking part in a conference from An Event Apart, I highly recommend the experience.
Dan Rubin giving his talk "Designing Virtual Realism".
Aaron Gustafson explains the inner workings of eCSStender.
Jason Santa Maria fields questions from the audience.
On November 6, 2009, Kara said:
Great coverage of the conference!
I work for Peachpit Press/New Riders and I thought you and your readers would be interested in our contest going on through November 23rd. We’re giving away a few passes to An Event Apart, San Francisco (an $895 value). Details on how to win can be found here:
http://www.peachpit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=137440
On November 7, 2009, Nick Gracilla
said:
Thanks Kara! I highly recommend to any web professional to attend AEA — we've gotten a lot of value out of them over the years. San Francisco Ho!