Workshops | Web Directions South 2010

Workshops

Three great full day work­shops to choose from

October 12 Workshops

• Juliette Melton — Develop effective user expe­rience research plans
• Craig Sharkie — jQuery <3s designers

October 13 Workshops

• Dan Rubin — Real world CSS3 for designers
• Ben Schwarz — HTML5 Right, Now

jQuery Loves Designers

Presenter: Craig Sharkie

Venue: The Power­house Museum, 500 Harris St, Ultimo

Date: Tuesday October 12 2010, 9.00am to 5.00pm

Pricing: $450 conference attendees /​ $550 standalone

Register now!

JavaScript is taking front and center on the web stage these days, and jQuery is helping that change happen.

No longer considered a toy programming language, JavaScript is being seen more as a serious tool for business. But it’s still a programming language. jQuery goes a long way to changing that.

Where once only anoraks and pocket protectors roamed, today designers and HTML coders are more and more famil­iarising them­selves with the oppor­tu­nities that jQuery offers.

In this day-​​long hands-​​on workshop, JavaScript and jQuery guru Craig Sharkie will take you through all the basics of jQuery. Through fast-​​paced and inter­esting prac­tical examples you’ll walk away with the confi­dence and skill to apply jQuery to your current projects and ideas.

jQuery presents a new way to look at JavaScript and offers a new way to add benefit to your team and your skill set: and you’ll come away from this very full day with an appre­ci­ation of just how much fun it is as well.

What will be covered?

Basi­cally, where it all begins.

• Making friends with the DOM.
• Selecting the right selector.
• Eventful events.
• Cleaning up your ajax.
• Playing nicely with others.
• Plugins for fun and profit.
• jQuery UI OK!
• Progres­sively enhancing your progressive enhancements
• Acces­si­bility for all.
• Outstanding unob­trusive coding.

Who is this workshop for?

Web designers who have an under­standing of CSS and want to know what all the devel­opers are getting excited about. Front-​​end devel­opers who want to know what the other devel­opers are getting excited about.

This workshop will be unapolo­get­i­cally entry level jQuery.

About Craig Sharkie

A degree in Fine Art may seem an odd stepping stone to a career in coding, but its a step that’s led Craig Sharkie on a journey lasting over 15 years. With tenure at the Australian oper­a­tions of Ziff Davis, AOL, Yahoo! and Atlassian, Craig’s seen the Internet bubble, burst, and be rein­vented, and at each turn his foun­dation in visu­al­ising the Web has stood him in good stead.

Focussing on acces­sible, exten­sible, and usable HTML, CSS, and JavaScript solu­tions to both leading-​​edge and legacy devel­opment issues, Craig continues to use the best of his disci­plines to deliver inter­faces that marry a user’s goals with corporate aims. From onclick to Unob­trusive Scripting, via the DOM and Ajax, he enjoys coding stan­dards based solu­tions even more than cham­pi­oning them, but perhaps on par with writing about them.

Follow Craig on Twitter: @twalve

HTML5 right, now

Presenter: Ben Schwarz

Venue: The Power­house Museum, 500 Harris St, Ultimo

Date: Wednesday October 13 2010, 9.00am to 5.00pm

Pricing: $450 conference attendees /​ $550 standalone

Register now!

There are no excuses for writing HTML4 or XHTML anymore. HTML5 is here and it’s ready to rock.

In this intimate, full day workshop you’ll be able to ask ques­tions, share expe­ri­ences and gain perspective on what’s on the horizon for the modern, open web‚ and what’s already a lot closer than that.

This is a prac­tical workshop that’s focused on the web’s future, not on its past. The material is aimed at producing usable & beau­tiful expe­ri­ences, with a focus on making them cross-​​browser where possible.

What will be covered?

• Who are the WHATWG? What do they do?
• New semantic elements, with real world examples
• Micro­formats & Microdata
• New form elements and device experiences
• Applying script, intel­li­gently and unob­tru­sively to add support for older browsers
• Video and audio for everyone
• Going mobile: Offline appli­ca­tions, local storage
• Intro­duction to Canvas & SVG
• Intro­duction to Web sockets

Who is this workshop for?

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re really doing it right, have become cynical to the ways of the ‘semantic’ or ‘open web’ or just plain want to get into sync with the platform you work with every day, then this workshop is for you.

About Ben Schwarz

Ben Schwarz is a well known Melbourne Rubyist who funds his love of good food (at home) and sake (in bars) by designing sophis­ti­cated web appli­ca­tions using standards-​​based tech­nology. More than anything else, he is driven by a maniacal desire to produce not only elegant code, but also beau­tiful software in the hands of its users.

Real World CSS3 for Designers

Presenter: Dan Rubin

Venue: The Power­house Museum, 500 Harris St, Ultimo

Date: Wednesday October 13 2010, 9.00am to 5.00pm

Pricing: $450 conference attendees /​ $550 standalone

Register now!

Designers rejoice! Web Stan­dards are not just for people who care about acces­si­bility and compat­i­bility across devices and plat­forms anymore: they are fast becoming the core tools of some of the best sites, apps, and expe­ri­ences on the web; and with the latest browsers including support for all of CSS2.1, much of CSS3 (and increas­ingly, HTML5), designers can now call these tools our friends.

In this full day of prac­tical examples and exer­cises, Dan will show you how today’s leading sites are using advanced CSS to move some of the visual heavy-​​lifting to the browsers. We’ll examine live sites, then take them apart to see how their designers are using CSS to implement visual design, and how they degrade in less-​​than-​​modern browsers. We’ll also build and test an example design to see just how easy (and prac­tical) it is to incor­porate advanced CSS in your designs, so you’ll leave with the expe­rience and confi­dence of having put these capa­bil­ities to use.

What will be covered?

• Advanced selectors and browser support
• Rounded corners (and how to design for when they aren’t there)
• CSS3 Gradients (and an easy way to create them)
• Text Shadow and Box Shadow (using them to your advantage)
• Bitmaps vs CSS (when to use each and how to choose)
• CSS Tran­si­tions (and their potential downsides)
• CSS Anima­tions (and how they compare with Javascript alternatives)
• Browser-​​specific CSS (aka vendor extensions)
• The future of CSS (exper­i­ments and anything which lacks support)

Who is this workshop for?

Designers who are already familiar with and using web stan­dards (basic HTML/​CSS) and are ready to start including more advanced CSS in their projects.

About Dan Rubin

An accom­plished designer, author and speaker, Dan Rubin has over ten years of expe­rience as a leader in the fields of user interface design and web stan­dards, specif­i­cally focusing on the use of HTML and CSS to streamline devel­opment and improve accessibility.

His passion for all things creative and artistic isn’t a solely selfish endeavor either—you’ll frequently find him waxing educa­tional about a cappella jazz and barbershop harmony, philosophy, web stan­dards, typog­raphy, psychology, and design in general.

In addition to his contri­bu­tions to sites including Blogger, the CSS Zen Garden, Yahoo! Small Business and Microsoft’s ASP​.net portal, Dan is a contributing author of Cascading Style Sheets: Sepa­rating Content from Presen­tation (2nd Edition, friends of ED, 2003), tech­nical reviewer for Beginning CSS Web Devel­opment (Apress, 2006), The Art & Science of CSS (Site­Point, 2007) and Sexy Web Design (Site­Point, 2009), coauthor of Pro CSS Tech­niques (Apress, 2006), and Web Stan­dards Creativity (friends of ED, 2007), writes about web stan­dards, design and life in general on his personal site, Super­fluous Banter, and spends his profes­sional time on a variety of online and offline projects for Sidebar Creative, Webgraph and Black Seagull, consulting on design, user inter­action and online publishing for Garcia Media, and speaking and teaching at events, confer­ences and work­shops (including An Event Apart, @media, SXSW Inter­active, Future of Web Design, Web Direc­tions, and various Refresh and AIGA events) around the world.

Photo: © John Morrison /​ Subism Studios

Follow Dan on Twitter: @danrubin

Know Your Users: Develop effective user experience research plans

Presenter: Juliette Melton

Venue: The Power­house Museum, 500 Harris St, Ultimo

Date: Tuesday October 12 2010, 9.00am to 5.00pm

Pricing: $450 conference attendees /​ $550 standalone

Register now!

You can dramat­i­cally improve your websites when you pay attention to how they are being used. Under­standing user behavior can be chal­lenging, but there lots of ways to get started. User testing doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and shouldn’t only happen at the end of the product devel­opment cycle. The best and most useful research is distributed throughout the product life­cycle and is done in a way that clicks with how your orga­ni­zation works.

At this workshop, Juliette Melton will show you how to build an effective user expe­rience research program from scratch and how to keep it going over time.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for those who want to under­stand how to learn about user expe­ri­ences, including project/​product managers, designers, and usability professionals.

What will you learn?

• A struc­tured approach to building a user testing program
• Web analytics basics
• Writing effective surveys
• How to include coworkers in your research
• How to perform task analysis
• When to use remote research tools
• Tips for recruiting testing participants
• Best prac­tices for sharing research findings

About Juliette Melton

Juliette Melton is a user expe­rience researcher and design strategist based in San Fran­cisco. Her back­ground in web devel­opment and product management gives her a prac­tical perspective on how to conduct effective user expe­rience research. She advo­cates building products that delight users while supporting orga­ni­za­tional realities.

Juliette holds a master’s in education from the Tech­nology, Inno­vation, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she focused on devel­oping models for inno­v­ative networked learning appli­ca­tions. She runs Deluxify, a boutique UX consul­tancy, writes about her various projects at juliemelton​.com, and makes lots of terrariums.

Follow Juliette on Twitter: @j

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