Weekly Links–the what's new in '22 edition - Web Directions

I’ve been thinking more than a little lately about just what it is I do at Web Directions. On one level the answer is pretty straightforward–we run conferences for web and digital folks.

But the more important question is what do we do for you and folks like you? Those who visit our site, attend our events, watch our Conffab videos, read the newsletter?

And what I feel (and certainly hope) it is I do is help you keep up with a very fast changing professional landscape of the Web-it’s technologies and practices.

I spend a lot of time keeping track of what is happening with the Web landscape–here’s just some of what I’ve come across this week–and make sure you follow @webdirections on twitter for much more like this.

Cascade Layers

Only last week I made reference to Cascade Layers, a new CSS feature to help tame the interwoven complexity of specificity and the CSS cascade. Ahmad Shadeed has this recent detailed introduction to what will become a standard part of CSS that I highly recommend.

We’re also covering cascade layers at Hover, our CSS conference coming up in late April.

What’s new in the Web Platform in early 2022?

I don’t think there’s ever been a time of more rapid evolution of the Web platform than right now. So how can you keep up? Well, you can read pur newsletter, attend our conferences and so on. But to see what’s new in 2022 here’s a new series from Rachel Andrew, covering so far January and February 2022.

Oh coincidentally Rachel is speaking at Hover. I didn’t choose these links because of the connection, it’s more we have a lot of great speakers who make huge contributions in many ways to the Web!

ARIA Live Regions

If you build Web apps, or content that updates frequently, making that content accessible to screen readers and their users has traditionally been a challenge. ARIA Live Regions are a not particularly well known, but very powerful standards-based solution to this challenge (we use them in our online conferences and elsewhere to make our accessible slides feature available to screen readers).

Scott O’Hara details what they are, when to use them and how to use them in this recent post.

If you have an interface where content is dynamically updated, and when the content is updated it does not receive focus, then you likely are going to need a live region.

We also had a great presentation on Live Regions at our AAA conference last year.

Reducing The Web’s Carbon Footprint

Way back in 2019 Asim Hussain presented Save the World, one line at a time, at our Code Leaders conference (returning in Sydney late 2022) focussing on the then novel idea that the Web had a large and growing environmental footprint and it was in no small part our responsibility as developers to address that impact.

Since then the issue has gained much more prominence, and here Michelle Barker considers how we can reduce the Web’s carbon footprint, and improve the performance of our sites, with a particular focus on social media embeds.

Free Confab Videos for next week

This week we started something new on our streaming platform Conffab, where you can find hundreds of talks from past events (ours and other organisers), as well as attend our live conferences.

Every day starting this week we feature one video, no need to signup–and here’s what’s coming up next week. But keep in mind you only get 24 hours to watch, so if there’s something you really want to watch, put it in your calendar!

Monday March 14th: Understanding display Rachel Andrew

Yes, it’s Rachel again, in no small part because she is one of the most prolific and generous contributors to the Web platform in so many ways. This presentation from Hover last year goes deeeeeep into the various values for the display property in CSS, and will give you a much better understanding of how display works (it did for me and I’ve been steeped in CSS for more than 25 years).

Tuesday March 15th: Rethinking the JavaScript ternary operator James Sinclair

From last year’s Global Scope, our JavaScript focussed conference a great presentation on JavaScript’s ternary operator. Often considered a tricky concise way of creating if then statements it’s more than that, as James Sinclair explains.

Wednesday March 16th: On the Cutting Edge: a Glimpse into the Future of Web Performance

At Lazy Load last year Rita Kozlov gave us a glimpse into a new edge computing approach that is part of what we believe is an important growing trend.

A Lazy Load this year we’ll be going into this topic in much more detail.

Thursday March 17th: Planning Your Progressive Web App Jason Grigsby

You need a Progressive Web App. So where do you begin? How do you decide which features of a Progressive Web App make sense for your users? What tools can make the process easier (or harder)? In this practical session from 2019 Jason Grigsby guided us through the key design decisions you’ll need to make about your Progressive Web App and how those decisions impact the scope of your project.

Friday March 18th: Design for Security Serena Chen

Security has never been more crucial, yet it’s a rare topic outside of ISM teams and hackers. And through the design lens, it’s completely missing.

In this Summit ’19 presentation, Serena Chen, interaction designer on the security teams at Google Chrome and Chromium, shows us how good user experience design is necessary for good security. We can craft paths of least resistance that match paths of most security. We can educate our users on what is good practice and what is security theater. We can build secure flows that are usable, not obstructive or annoying.

That’s a pretty fine lineup–but remember each one is only available on the day (or with a membership any time! There’s free memberships that give you access to anything older than 2 years old, or from $19.95 a month get access to everything including new conferences content as it comes online for our 2022 events.)

In 2022 we have a whole series of events for Front End Developers

Across 2022 Web Directions is presenting our series of online conferences for front end designers and developers. Focussed deep dives, they go far beyond what you might expect from conference programs.

Learn more and register now

Priced individually from $195, or attend all 6, plus get access to our conference presentation platform Conffab for just $595, or $59 a month.

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