Phazm Design Blog

Web Directions North was a very informative conference.  While they did not get much into specifics, the ideals and philosophies of best practices was very beneficial.  The “theme” of the conference was standard based table-less design, with a strong emphasis on accessibility and usability.

WEDNESDAY

Molly E. Holzschlag was the first speaker, and she spoke about “Crimes Against Web Standards” – she went though several examples of sites that are committing crimes every day by serving “Tag Soup” (Tag Soup is the non-separation of content and layout)

She then asked several audience members to “Confess” their past crimes, and many did so.  One person said after a client contacted him to make a website from some word documents, he actually just took a screenshot of the pages and put them on their own separate pages.  There were all sorts of “crimes” like this, including using spacer gifs and using CSS incorrectly (basically, using CSS the same way as tables, just nesting divs, assigning classes to everything, etc.)

The next session I went to was “Web Apps – Ajax Kung Fu Meets Accessibility Feng Shui” by Jeremy Keith and Derek Featherstone.  Jeremy went first, and discussed the benefits of unobtrusive JavaScript (which means there are no JavaScript hooks in the HTML, except for calling the .js in the head) – I ended up buying his book ‘Dom Scripting’.  He also talked about accessibility though “universal accessibility” – basically, everyone should be able to access the information, even if it is displayed differently.

Probably the most important, however, was his talk about Progressive Enhancement.  This is a technique that ALL developers should use, and is what I have been doing for years.  Essentially, start by making a basic site, just links, etc, then start adding enhancements, (CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, etc) – that way, when the user doesn’t support one of them, the site still works, due to the basic framework of the site.
Jeremy showed several examples of proper Ajax use, as well as dispelled some myths for what Ajax really is.  He showed us a shopping cart applet, which was wonderful to watch.
He also said that all validation should be taking place on the server, because that’s a variable you control.  That way, you don’t have to worry about what browser or operating system the end-user is using.

Derek delved a bit deeper into accessibility, and talked mostly about how Ajax needs to be optimized so as to not further confuse those with physical disabilities (blind, etc) – Such as users using a keyboard to navigate, and the interaction between screen readers and Ajax.

The next session was with Andy Clarke and Aaron Gustafson, both excellent speakers. They talked about training your mind to see everything as markup, such as a picture of several motorcycles, and asked, “How would you mark this up?” – In an unordered list, perhaps, or maybe an ordered list, by color.  They both dialoged throughout the session, but they went over some very interesting things, such as the advanced layout features in CSS3.  Aaron had written a JavaScript translator for the CSS3 spec “Multiple-column-layout” and Andy created a proof-of-concept.  Andy advocated everyone looking at the specs and trying them out, so we can make suggestions on them for when CSS3 goes live.  I bought Andy’s book as well, Transcending CSS.

Joe Clark led the closing keynote for the day, about accessibility in the design process.  He delved into a very well-thought-out presentation about a local subway system (TTC), and how they could improve their site with API’s, features, etc.  Certainly one of the most entertaining speakers, he laid out a detailed map of the technologies that could be put into place to help customers (SMS messages notifying when the train was near, etc)

THURSDAY

The opening keynote speaker was Kelly Goto in “Designing for Lifestyle.”  She talked about being a design ethnographer, which is basically figuring out the cultural impact of design.  She focused on mobile integration and lifestyle design.  She said that the biggest thing for us on the horizon is mobile technology.  I don’t remember the exact stats for Japan, but the market there is VERY saturated, and they all carry two devices, one is used as a phone, the other simply as a social statement.  Mobiles are the new cigarette of cool.  Obviously, designing your site with web standards from the ground-up is the right place to start, but integrating services with mobiles will be a must in coming years.

The next session starred George Oates and Paul Hammond. George works on the wildly popular Flickr service, and spoke about Flickr through most of the session.  They talked about web applications, mainly, and integration with them.  API’s were a pretty big point.  Paul advocated using a templating engine for the backend of all sites.  I agree with this, it would certainly help clear up any confusion as to who is supposed to do what.  It’s all about separation of content and behavior.  A templating engine allows the front-end developers work separate from the backend developers entirely, so neither can hurt the others work.  The only downfalls I see are legacy applications and the somewhat steep learning curve.

Session 7 had Dave Shea and Veerle Pieters talking about the design process.  Veerle showed some slides of different office environments, some messy, some very clean.  She noted that everyone has a different way of working, and their workspace needs to be personalized for them individually.  Dave said that some areas have places you can rent a single workstation that has a nice view to help you work better.

The closing keynote speaker for Thursday was Jared Spool.  He was, in my opinion, the most fun to watch out of everyone.  His points were all valid, and he added a quirky sense of humor to the whole bit.  He spoke mainly about accessibility, and showed several examples of sites that were hard to navigate or confusing.  I think I got the most out of this single session than all the others combined.  One example was a site that used ampersands to designate optional fields, completely ignoring the norm of having asterisks next to required fields.

Jared also had some deep insight into the design approval process.  He said that if you go to any major company, you will see that they change their approval process nearly every 2 months, simply because it does not work.  Jared said that the best solution is not approval, but training.  Train the designers how you want it to be, then test how that goes.
In that scenario, “mistakes” are actually treated as good things, as it adds to the list of things not to do.