Notes of the inaugural Scottish web conference organised by Alan White

An early start from Brighton to attend a conference in Edinburgh, with an interesting title. As Edinburgh is not in the highlands, but perhaps a great subtitle of progressive enhancement to attract us southerners to make the trip across the borders.

Aim of conference: The first Scottish conference based on progressive enhancement demonstrating what we can do today for tomorrow > learning the correct methods of web development > progressive enhancement of the web.

Photo of Jeremy Keith’s Secret Fling

Keynote by Jeremy Keith

Progressive enhancement - ‘a new way to learn, a new way to rewire our brain - and a new way to see the world’.

“pattern recognistion” > refers to zx81’s in the 1980’s and how we had to learn a new language to write programmes. We had to rewire our brain to do this.
refers to ‘Snowfire’ and ‘babel-17′ books > where the language is introduced as a virus

The difference between:

progressive enhancement and graceful degradation

CSS Zen garden is an example of progressive enhancement

To use corporate sites like wired and espn has helped convert more to this way of thinking..

Jeremy Keith looking at past, then every speakers looking at real life examples, ideas, graded browser suport..

Progressive enhancement > is unobtrusive javascript

Progressive enhancement > is ajax, but should you?

Progressive enhancement > is microformats

>> getting brain rewired!!

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Graded browser support by Mark Norman Francis of Yahoo

“support does not mean that everybody gets the same thing”
article on the YUI developer network.

“availability and accessibility of content should be the priority “

Users should be served the content in the html, everything else - rounded corners, gradients, javascript should all be an enhancement to the site.

Progressive enhancement > more forward, future proof approach.

Rather than site not showing correctly, and degrading gracefully.. you can build a site and add the enahncements if the browser can accept it.

Slides of the Graded browser support presentation

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The Future of CSS by Andy Budd

> Andy last year felt that CSS has reached a plateau, so he got more involved in user experience design.

CSS3 is organised into modules so can be understood better, and so different workgroups can on each modules > css working group

made up of academics from big companies, however only 1 designer (invited expert > Andy Clarke) and not typographer to decide issues for CSS for next 10 years. held in California every quarter

CSS2is now buggy and doesnt really cover all aspects of web

CSS3 selectors we can use now:

> CSS3 opacity > supported now in IE
> multi column layouts

>> supported mostly only in FF and safari.

>> Andy believes if we start using the css3 selectors we can force browser manufacturers into giving more support for more css3

> a lot of little features and design elements that can be used already for the main browsers.

Thinks we need another intermediary step, css2.2? may take another 4-5 years either way

We working web, designers and practitioners we need the functionality now.

We as the developers should be saying we want it this way, rather than big companies choosing what they should be putting their money into.

External pressure to get things done.

A good example is whats happening to the microformats movement from a grss roots up level, rather than trying to get information into an inpenetrable political group.

Slides of the Future of CSS presentation

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Microformats: Can your website be your API? by Drew mclellan

or ‘can my website become my API?’

data is dead, html without correct meaning is dying

html semantic example on news artlcie

> technorati export hcard function created by brian suda

hcard for address information > a translation of vcard

‘fn’ - formatted name

Can you remove the API and rely on your markup thru microformats? yes.. being done already eg: corkd

Can i add enought sematic info so i get an API thrown in for free > hell yeah! marking up with Microformats is the best place to start

The API drewmclellan.getName alrady exists “rel=me” so in theory everyone aready has their own API based on the content and information architecture of your site.

You can get the latest contact details from some one thru their websites if they have implemented microformats on their site.

Therefore, you dont need to know the email address of someone directly.

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Progressive enhancement using Javascript and AJAX by Christian Heilmann

Javascript should help you to get to your aim quicker..

don’t make your product depend on jscript.

death to xhref=”" mce_href=”"
death to onclick=”"
dont mix html and jscript > use the dom > the dom is your API

Testing for DOM support is easy.. “getelementbyID” is available

Prepare for unreliable connections

Set a timeout and abort the connection

Make sure you avoid caching ussiues by setting an expried HTTP header on your ajax calls
define a success and failure case for any connection > user still wants to get data/info

Why use jscript at all? > as it can be turned off.. make sure if it cant be loaded or displayed the page can still work.

View slides of Progressive enhancement presentation

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What has AJAX done for us anyway? by James Edwards

James’s order of priority for websites:

1. accessibility
2. usability
3. aesthetics

If what we are doing doesn’t embrace universality, we are not embracing the point of the web

Tim Berner’s Lee vision for the web, also applies to using AJAX and new technologies

Don’t believe the hype > new innovation often inspire us to do things that we don’t really need the new technology for us, it’s simply that the change in approach and easy capability inspires new ideas.

AJAX has given us the new boost of passion and enthusiasm > this is a new concept, and not technology.

Consider every instance of its (AJAX) every use carefully, beginning with the premise of not using it at all.

View slides of What has AJAX done for us anyway? presentation

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Beyond progressive enhancement by Andy Clarke

progressive enhancement is not just about technology’s, it’s about learning new skills and interactivity

Unlearn from the web, as we dont know where we are going with the web, we are still in early days and still learning.

The web standards community is quite insular, we need to embrace things going on in the mainstream web. Not happening at the moment.

This is why people from the big brands do not attend these events, we need to try to bring them in, and pass on both parties knowledge to progress the industry.

How do we do it? There has to be a better way to drive Progressive enhancement:

• blogging
• articles
• questions
• suggestions

People are listening and can actually use your work and ideas. eg: Andy’s CSS3 multicolumn layout has been picked up and used by the W3C for the next CSS3 guidelines.

Web design is always so exciting and challengng as you can look at new ways of making things work.

Andy sets up google analytics on sites that he redesigns to see exactly what type of visitors are visiting the site. eg: screen resolution, browser version. Then he decides on best technology to use.

However, he also has contract to explain that old browsers may not display size and layouts like modern browsers. eg: Old television compared to new HDTV sets. Old vs. new iPods.
>> It works but in a different maner. This is same principle for web site technologies.
Download slides of beyond progressive enhancement presentation (zip file)
Further resources from Andy Clarke

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Photos from the event on flickr from Christian Heilmann.

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