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Coding | Web Directions

Podcasts, slides and other presentation materials

Patrick Lee - One paper clip, a box of matches, and some JavaScript

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Whoever you are, if you’re writing JavaScript, there’s some aspect of your development that you would love to change if you had the chance. But the reality is you’ll never find yourself working in this ideal environment: dealing with legacy browsers, platforms and content management systems will be your constant as a developer. Patrick Lee is going to show you some tools and techniques that will help you make your peace with this fact.

This session will explore how you can find ways to do the cool stuff you really want to do with JavaScript whilst working in the real world. And you won’t even have to sell your soul in the process.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• CMS
• coding
• forms
• javascript

Emily Boyd - Creating great user experiences with Ajax

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

How does the way we build user experiences change when we incorporate Ajaxian techiques? How can we delight our user, make their experience seem magical, diminish the frustration that often comes with sites and applications?

In this presentation, Emily Boyd, from the hugely successful task management web app, Remember the Milk, looks at some of the ways you can use Ajax techniques to make your user experience even better.

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• Tags
• ajax
• coding
• javascript
• user experience
• web apps

Andrew Downie and Grant Focas - Javascript and other coding for good or evil

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

When Version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is finally released, the status of Javascript will be quite different to that assigned to it in Version 1.0 back in 1999. Back then, Javascript was to “degrade gracefully”. Currently AJAX offers increased usability for visual users, but may detract from accessibility. In future, use of JavaScript will be encouraged but, of course, must enhance rather than detract from accessibility. During this presentation, Andrew and Grant will demonstrate how Javascript, when implemented well, offers enhanced accessibility. By way of balance, they will also present examples of scripting that causes problems. Importantly, they will provide corrections to the errant coding.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• accessibility
• ajax
• coding
• javascript
• wds07

Adrian Holovaty - Being smart about your data

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

The Web is full of information that is presented inefficiently - both for machines and for humans. Adrian Holovaty shares philosophies and strategies for efficient data collection and information design, drawing from his experiences at data-heavy news sites lawrence.com, washingtonpost.com) and side projects such as chicagocrime.org.

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• Tags
• coding
• data
• wds07

Aaron Gustafson - Learning to love forms

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Forms. We all have to make ‘em, but few of us love ‘em. Aaron Gustafson believes that this is because we don’t understand them. In this session, we will explore forms from top to bottom, examining how they work and how their components can be incorporated with other elements to maximize accessibility, improve semantics, and allow for more flexible styling. You’ll get to see the complete picture with forms, including error, warning and formatting messages, styling and its implications, as well as best practices for manipulation with Javascript and Ajax.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• ajax
• coding
• css
• forms
• html
• javascript
• wds07

Bert Bos - A new life for old standards

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

CSS level 2 became a standard in 1998. The last revision of HTML4 dates from 1999. That’s long time ago in Web years, but they aren’t forgotten: after several years of work, CSS is close to a revision and browser support is better than ever. It’s necessary, because CSS needs to grow: vertical text, columns, print support, complex layouts and much more is increasingly demanded. Likewise, there is a big effort to revise HTML. Interest is so high, the W3C is trying a new process, to let more people participate in the editing work. There are also new forms, standards for combining SVG and HTML and new work on the security of forms. Bert’s here to tell us: we haven’t seen the end of the Web page yet.

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• Tags
• coding
• css
• html
• wds07
• web standards

Jeremy Keith - Explaining Ajax

• In: Resources
• By: Guy Leech
• September 30th, 2006

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2006.

Apart from being the buzzword de jour, what is this Ajax stuff that everyone is talking about? Take a look at some implementations out there and start thinking about how Ajax can add value to your site.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• ajax
• coding
• javascript
• wds06

John Allsopp - Microformats

• In: Resources
• By: Guy Leech
• September 30th, 2006

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2006.

The problem of bringing richer semantics to the world wide web has been challenging standards bodies and developers for several years. Approaches like “The Semantic Web” promise much, but require us to throw away the accumulated efforts, skills and tools of more than a decade. Over the last year or two, an evolutionary approach to richer semantics for today’s web, based on HTML, current developer practices, and tools, called Microformats, has been spreading like wildfire among tool developers, and web publishers large and small.

In this presentation John Allsopp looks at why microformats are necessary, what organisations like Yahoo! are doing with them, and how your organisation can benefit from them right now.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• coding
• microformats
• wds06
• web standards