Announcing the program for Hover, our CSS focussed conference - Web Directions

I love CSS. I’ve developed with, developed tools for, written articles, tutorials and even whole books about, delivered workshops and presentations on CSS since almost its very beginning.

But it’s always been a bit of the odd one out when it comes to web technologies.

CSS arrived just as techniques for developing relatively sophisticated designs using HTML (with <font>, tables inside tables inside…, and images everywhere) were really hitting their straps–and as we started realising how poor those solutions were.

But these “killer” techniques were, and remained for a long time, the status quo. Developers had invested a lot of time and effort creating them and mastering them. And CSS in those early days (from its first appearance in IE3, through to IE6 more than half a decade later) was often poorly supported, and full of inconsistencies across browsers.

If you’ve not been developing for the Web for more than a decade, it’s unlikely you’ve encountered much, if any, of this. But it took almost a decade from the earliest implementations of CSS, to its wide spread adoption in large scale production sites.

In recent years, CSS has faced a different challenge. With JavaScript and its ecosystem becoming the dominant way many sites are built, and developers often most familiar with JavaScript and frameworks like React, rather than the DOM, HTML, and CSS, CSS’s idiosyncratic, declarative model, in particular the cascade, inheritance and specificity, have caused headaches for many developers.

Which ironically has come at a time when CSS has blossomed in terms of capabilities–incredible layout tools like flexbox and grid, animation, typographical sophistication, and much more.

CSS really ignited my passion for the Web, right from its inception. And while once I was familiar with every value of  every possible property, as well as their level of browser support, now while I still use CSS most days, I need to look things up much more.

At our conferences, we’ve always covered CSS, but it was alongside HTML, accessibility, the DOM and browser APIs, and of course JavaScript.

But CSS deserves more–it is a rich, powerful, sophisticated language, which has for long been treated a bit too much like a toy. While a sophisticated ecosystem and set of patterns, idioms and practices have emerged around JavaScript, this has happened far less for CSS.

Despite the fact everything about the appearance of everything you view on the web is almost solely a function of CSS, it’s often relegated to an ancillary skill in job descriptions. 

Personally, I find this unfair to CSS (though you probably shouldn’t anthropomorphise programming languages), and to there people who have developed their skills in the language. And we feel it’s time to do something about it.

So today we’re really excited to be launching the program for Hover, our online, global, CSS focussed conference.

Who and What are on the program?

Instead of a presentation or two like you might find on CSS at most front end conferences, Hover is all CSS all the time. We’re covering the latest in CSS technologies, practices and techniques, with fantastic speakers from around the world including

• Miriam Suzanne, whose efforts on the W3C’s CSS Working Group have been instrumental in helping developers most long-wished-for CSS feature see the light of day. Miriam will talk about the current state of container queries.
• Ananya Neogi will explore how variable fonts, layout grids and custom properties give us superpowers to create practical dynamic type systems that are accessible, performant and work across various screen dimensions.
• Mark Dalgleish will look at the current state of CSS-in-JS and examine the trends that are driving the space forwards.
• Rhiana Heath will take us through the CSS Typed Object Model and examples of how we can start using and benefiting from TypedCSS.

And that’s just the start, we’ll cover the current and emerging state of CSS– sophisticated layout with grid and flexbox (with who else but Rachel Andrew), the state and future of media queries, CSS comparison functions (like min, max and clamp), real world custom CSS properties, and deep dives into new CSS features like aspect-ratio, and new CSS logical properties that give us a lot more power to control our websites, no matter which type of language we are using ( English, Arabic, Japanese, and more.) We’ll also be treated to a special episode of Webbed Briefs from Heydon Pickering, and more as well!

What’s the format?

Hover (like all our 2021 events) features more than a dozen in-depth presentations, following our “slow conferences” philosophy. The conference runs

• Across two weeks, sessions taking place on a Friday (with replays available immediately afterwards if you can’t make a session). Hover is on April 23 and 30.
• Each session runs for around 4 hours, with downtime, and time to connect with speakers and other attendees, built in.
• We’re excited to announce each session also takes place 3 times on the same day, so that no matter where you are in the world, you’ll be able to watch at a convenient time.

What’s it cost?

Affordability and equitable pricing are important to us. Each conference starts from around $145, and adjusted for relative developer salaries around the world.

Register now!

Why not attend the whole series?

You can also attend all 6 of our planned front end focussed conferences across 2021, plus get access to our complete library of hundreds of videos from past Web Directions conferences (plus other conferences around the world like Performance Now, and Pixel Pioneers, with more coming soon) for just $595, or a monthly $59.95

Hope to see you at Hover, and indeed all our 2021 events!

In 2021 we have a whole series of events for Front End Developers

Across 2021 Web Directions is presenting a series of online conferences for front end designers and developers. Focussed deep dives, they go far beyond what you might expect from conference presentations.

Learn more and register now

Across the year we have 6 conferences planned, the first 4 announced, focussing on CSS, Front End Performance, JavaScript and Progressive Web Apps, with more to come.

Priced individually from $145, or attend all 6, plus get access to our conference presentation platform Conffab for just $595, or $59 a year.

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