Fronteers — vakvereniging voor front-end developers

Fronteers 2011 sessions

This year we've covered 14 sessions again, in a single track.

Accessibility for the Modern Web by Derek Featherstone

In this session Derek will explore the true meaning of accessibility for the modern web. Long-established principles of progressive enhancement help ensure a baseline level of functionality in your sites and applications. We want to make them truly useful experiences. We'll look at how the right mix of modern technology such as CSS3, HTML5, ARIA, JavaScript help you create functionality on web sites that works for everyone, including people with disabilities.

Video and transcript

CSS3 Secrets: 10 things you might not know about CSS3 by Lea Verou

By now most of you know how to use the popular new CSS3 features in your stylesheets, like embedding custom fonts or creating rounded corners, drop shadows, and scalable designs with media queries. However, below the surface, there are many other things that CSS3 brings and most web developers have never heard of. In this talk Lea will present many CSS3 features that are useful but underrated, as well as uncommon ways of utilizing the CSS3 features you already know about, in order to do much more with even less images and code.

Video, slides and transcript

CreativeJS – beauty in the browser by Seb Lee-Delisle

Now that Canvas and SVG are available natively in all major browsers, JavaScript developers have much to learn about creative visual programming.

From particle systems to blending effects, optimised animations, gaming and good old maths creativity, Seb Lee-Delisle (@seb_ly) has more than a trick or two to share with us. If you’re interested in bringing a little visceral beauty to your websites, apps and games, then this is the session for you.

Video, code examples and transcript

Go with the flow by Stephen Hay

In this session, Stephen will introduce, discuss and give examples of CSS3 Regions.

Browsers have begun to introduce actual layout mechanisms like Flexible Box Layout and Grid/Template Layout. For this, we kneel humbly and are thankful. But while we're at it, why settle for rudimentary layout tools when we can add content flow to the mix? CSS Regions attempts to bring the power of content flow from print to the Web. Think of Regions as Multi-column layout on adrenaline. Regions can be extremely powerful and useful on their own. When combined with other CSS3 modules they will give web designers and developers creative freedom which rivals that of printed media.

Video, slides and transcript

HTML5 Forms - KISS time by Robert Nyman

This talk will go through one very important, and often painful, part of the web. That is, how can end users interact with a web site through forms, and for web developers, how do we develop them in the most efficient manner?

Video, slides and transcript

HTML5 Semantics: you too can be a bedwetting antfucker by Bruce Lawson

With all the whizzbangs of canvas and multimedia, the Ooh!s of the History API and the Aah!s of Appcache, the 30 new elements in HTML5 are often overlooked by developers coming to terms with what's new in the HTML Hood.

But semantics aren't the boring old comfortable cardigan in your developer wardrobe - they're the studded leather codpiece around which the rest of your Mighty HTML Warrior's armour is built.

We'll look at how the new HTML elements came about, note problems with their current specifications, then wonder whether those problems are actually features rather than bugs. We'll also consider the WHATWG's penchant for "teleological semantics" and, back in cardigan mode, propose a middle ground.

There will be no Turkish dancing videos.

Video, slides and transcript

In your @font-face by Jake Archibald

We finally have the ability to serve custom fonts to all popular browsers. However, like everything in our profession, there’s a minefield of gotchas and peculiarities between browsers, devices and operating systems.

Although fonts are a design asset, this talk will be technical. We’ll look at what goes into a font file and how you can get rid of bits you may not need without damaging rendering for particular users.

We’ll investigate common pitfalls in performance made by almost, if not all, font delivery networks. We’ll also discover how the legal fluff surrounding typefaces can be a massive road-blocking joy-void.

Video, slides and transcript

jQuery and the Open Source Process by John Resig

This talk will cover how the jQuery project has worked to provide the best possible experience for its users and has fostered a community around contributing back to the project. We'll look at what the project has done to create this environment and see how it can apply to other projects or companies.

Video and transcript

Passion. Purpose. Promise. Pursuit. by Leslie Jensen-Inman

Passion. Purpose. Promise. Pursuit. These are the 4 P's that create a Map for Awesomeness. Discover how to: embrace your passion, define your purpose, foster your promise, and engage your pursuit. Learn how to do this in a creative environment that encourages collaboration.

Questions Answered:

  • How do we create opportunities that allow us to live the lives we want while being successful and happy at work?
  • How do we build opportunities to connect with others and collaborate with the community?
  • How do we align what we value with the actions that we take?
  • How do we make awesomeness?
  • How do we do good?

Video, slides and transcript

The Future is Native by Aral Balkan

The Internet sits at the head of a long table of technologies that have revolutionised our world. Built on top of the base Internet stack, the World Wide Web has further democratised access to information, opened hitherto closed doors to human self-expression and communication, and laid the foundations of a semantically-rich and interconnected body of knowledge the likes of which have never been seen before.

So the Internet is a Big Thing™. And, both by association as well as by personal merit, so is the web.

And yet, on most devices, the web is currently a second-class citizen confined to life inside another application: the browser.

Furthermore, as pervasive and unstoppable as its progress may seem, the web can still be lost if we don’t temper ideological extremisms that preach ‘the one web’ above all else, including pragmatism and user experience.

In this (no doubt rather controversial) session, Aral Balkan will outline the essential role of user experience in our age and demonstrate how the web must embrace user experience if it is to compete with native. Flawed ‘native is laserdisc’ analogies will be shattered as Aral demonstrates how, in the Age of User Experience, the only possible future is a native one where focused, optimised, and expertly-crafted experiences empower, delight, and thrill users.

Video and transcript

The Future of CSS - Current Experiments and Near-Future Reality by Tab Atkins Jr.

Modern CSS is amazing, but even more wonderful stuff is in the pipeline and currently being experimented with in browsers. Tab Atkins will explain the soon-to-be-new hotness in simple terms and show how it will drastically change the way you write web pages for the better.

Video, slides and transcript

The New Developer Workflow by Divya Manian

Working on websites is no longer a task that requires notepad and a browser to complete. The previous web developer revolution was about the semantics, but now we have real technologies that are being specced out and browsers in a race to implement. Your website is no longer a static page with headings and semantic markup.

With overwhelming array of choices, where do you begin?

In this talk I would like to go through what it takes to get a web development process right, including:

  • Web developer tools you should know, including using them to debug remote devices
  • Learning efficient CSS with server-side frameworks such as Sass or LESS (mainly Sass)
  • Progressively enhancing your site for supporting browsers from the most limited to the most powerful
  • Using a version control systel for managing your site (and why Git is awesome)
  • Vendor prefixes in your code — when are they appropriate to use?
  • Polyfills, when to use what (or even if it’s necessary)
  • Tools to help you along the way for all of these.

Video, slides and transcript

The prestige of being a web developer by Chris Heilmann

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". You show something ordinary and build up anticipation. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. The third act, the hardest part, is "The Prestige". This is when you bring the extraordinary back to the real world. As web developers we nowadays seem to be addicted to magic tricks and we want to see more and more extraordinary things on stage and in blogs and articles to distract us from the mundane day to day jobs we have to do. This is not healthy and it is time to remember what we are here for. We do live in a magical world of development and it is time we start to use it in the real world and change our "best practices" and methodologies of the past to accommodate the needs of today. In this talk Chris Heilmann will show how each and everyone out there can do their part to make us all part of the magic instead of sitting back and consuming the show without learning the tricks.

Video, slides and transcript

Web Components and Model Driven Views by Alex Russell

There's a lot of tension between today's markup and the semantics we're trying to express in our apps. HTML5 adds a few new types to help describe common cases, but what about when there's no allegory in markup for what you're building? What we need now is infrastructure, not guilt about being "non-semantic". This talk explores new standards-track work in WebKit that's going to enable say-what-you-mean development in completely new ways.

Video, slides and transcript