ivantohelpyou

An Event Apart
Boston, Mass.
March 27, 2007

Below, I have some notes from the second day of An Event Apart Boston 2007. But first, here are a few reflections about the event itself.

Reflections

As the tagline indicates, it's a great event "for people who make websites." More specifically, it's the perfect opportunity to listen to people who write books about making websites. People genuinely enjoy hearing their favorite authors speak, and I overheard several occasions where an attendee would approach one of the rock stars to say "I love your work" or "thank you."

However, the crowd of 500 people tended to produce a passive learning experience. It's intimidating to ask questions in front of a crowd, and for those who did, there was no microphone stand nor a roving assistant with a wireless microphone. In addition, even though most of the presentations were very polished, with telling anecdotes, well-crafted laugh lines and fun visuals, they weren't particularly inviting for questions. That's the trade-off from the one-track model. You get everyone sharing the same experience, but at the expense of interactivity and participation.

Also what it wasn't: a networking show, job fair, or opportunity for vendor selection. The typography of the conference badge says it best: a big font for the first name, a small font for the last name, and nothing at all for company name or city. I'm told that this is by design, intended to foster a collegial atmosphere. Personally, I would have liked to get a sense of the types of businesses interested in Web standards by noting which organizations have the foresight to ante up the conference fee, but that's either proprietary or irrelevant, I suppose.

So, what I got out of the conference was a better idea of how to evangelize web standards within an organization, and a two-day run-through of the skills required to build standards-compliant sites. I learned that as long as I can fake my way through the following topics when speaking to a potential client, I'll do just fine.

1. Understanding the client
   
2. Copywriting
   
3. Graphic design
4. User interface design
   
5. Typography and iconography
6. Technical details of using stylesheets
7. Enabling accessibility
8. Preparing for browser differences
9. User testing

AEA Second Day Notes

On the second day of the conference, to the extent my battery capacity allowed, I used my laptop to take notes. During those presentations, I was able to visit the Web sites being discussed by the speaker without having to squint at the screen from the very back of the room. I'm old enough to consider it somewhat rude to be using a laptop during a presentation, but if you're following along the presentation it's probably an acceptable use from an etiquette standpoint. You know full well that the people sitting behind you are looking over your shoulder at your screen. If you're reading your e-mail or surfing unrelated sites, it can be a distraction. But if you're on the same site as the presenter, even if you're clicking different buttons, your browsing can serve as an adjunct to the presentation rather than a distraction. I wonder what Miss Manners would say.

Since the speakers' presentations are not available to the public online, I will instead focus on some of the Web sites they mentioned in their presentations, with my own comments.

A few sites mentioned in Cameron Moll's presentation

• Perceptive Pixel. This is the "Minority Report" vision of computer interfaces. But what problem would this technology solve? Offhand, I can think of two. First, why have a character in a movie hunched over a computer screen when you can get Tom Cruise to wave his hands in the air in front of a translucent screen? Second, if you're in front of an audience giving a presentation, working directly on the screen trumps having to use a separate control device. Other than that, forget about it. I can just imagine the cubicle politics that would erupt were this technology to be adopted in an office. Picture a sweaty accountant radiating body odor every time he clicks a button on the top of the screen. Or an overenthusiastic cut-and-paster who's not wearing a sports bra. Count me out.
• National Gazette. A newspaper for "millennials" (Americans born in the 80s-90s), designed by A-Lister Jason Santa Maria. Very clean design, textbook markup and adherence to Web standards. But where's the RSS/Atom link, so that I can subscribe via my favorite feed reader?!? You'd think that a publication for millennials would get that right. And what's with the term "millennials" anyway? Personally, I'm relieved that the millennium is seven years gone, so that I don't have to listen to the spellchecker bark at me for missing that second "n." And the term doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Since we're talking about the young adults born in the Clintonian reverie between the Bush presidencies, I propose that we name the generation after Millie, Barbara's dog. "The Millies" – apt successors to the Baby Boomers. [UPDATE: the term "Millies" is already in wide currency. However, as for linking the term to the Bush family dog, I haven't seen that elsewhere yet.]
  
• First Principles of User Interface. Good summary of how user interface should work. I wonder how Fitts' Law ("The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.") applies with the Perceptive Pixel approach when the distance is measured in feet rather than pixels.

A few sites mentioned in Ethan Marcotte's presentation

• CSS Zen Garden. The site that started the CSS craze, and a great place to see for yourself what CSS means to web design.
• An interview about the ESPN.com redesign. Useful case study for the application of Web standards.
• New York Magazine. One of Ethan's clients. I was a regular reader back in the day.
• The Today Show. Another one of Ethan's clients. I know what it is, but I've never really watched it before. But judging from these viewer-submitted dog photos, I am totally missing out!!
• Position is Everything. Compendium of browser bugs.
• Where Our Standards Went Wrong. Ethan's article on how to sell the Web standards concept.

The rest of the afternoon

Eric Meyer gave a very nuts-and-bolts presentation. No links, but some good recommendations for how to deal with the fact that each browser implements Web standards slightly differently.

Molly Holzschlag provided a cogent explanation of the six reasons each browser implements Web standards slightly differently.

I can boil it down to three reasons:

1. Browser-makers use their preferred development tools and methodologies, and then add features that aren't in the specification to gain competitive differentiation.
2. Standards-makers come up with incomplete specifications with margin for variable interpretations, partly because it's complicated and partly because the browser-makers help to set the standards.
   
3. Users don't really care about web standards. They just want their sites to work.

Jeffrey Zeldman gave a primer on how to pick clients, when to run like hell, and how to build trust in a business relationship. He then gave some great ad-agency-style examples of how to pitch a client. For example, don't walk into a meeting with one design when you can put together two or three separate themes, each keyed to a perceived problem that the customer is trying to solve.

By the way, I spoke to Jeffrey, who had read my blog post about the first day of the event. He gave me some encouraging feedback, and I intend to submit an article for publication in A List Apart. Maybe something about Adobe Flex, just to go punk-rock among the guitar virtuosos. We'll see.

Labels: ALA, web design, Web Standards

An Event Apart
Boston, Mass.
March 26, 2007

Eric Meyer started the event with a presentation titled “Secrets of the CSS Jedi.” From the beginning, I was a bit cautious. From what I recall, in order to become a Jedi you have to fly to some swampy planet to face down your innermost fears, where if you leave before graduation you’re at risk of succumbing to [deep voice] THE DARK SIDE.

As much as I like the idea of web standards, if everyone on a Web design team has to visit a swamp to learn from a wizened Muppet, it will never sell in the corporate world. Companies don’t need standardization in results. They need standardization in training and equipment. Everyone wearing the same white helmets and body armor, marching in formation, blasters at the ready.

In Eric’s example, he was able to take an HTML page containing a few columns of numbers and then, almost entirely using CSS, he turned it into a vertical bar graph. The process took in the neighborhood of 70 to 100 lines of code. He then showed another version, also hand-coded, with a horizontal bar graph. Now what would it take to make a bar graph using Adobe Flex 2 with Charting or some other non-standard Web framework? Just a few lines of code, once you’re up and running. And if you wanted to turn it into a pie chart or plot it on a logarithmic scale? Change a parameter and you’re done.

So, which approach should the average Web designer choose: The theoretically pure approach with a steep learning curve but impeccable results, or the toolkit-framework approach that gets the job done at the expense of semantic clarity? Or is there a middle ground?

Jeffrey Zeldman spoke well about the importance of good copy, with many illuminating examples. One such example: Basecamp, which instead of prompting for "login," contains the prompt text: "Please log in first and then we'll send you right along." This enhances the brand image as a "fun and easy" tool to handle the "tedious, frustrating and miserable" task of project management. But one audience member pointed out that Basecamp operates as a private label service – in other words, if I want to use Basecamp to manage projects with my clients, I send them to ivantohelpyou.seework.com. Clients see my logo, but with Basecamp's "fun and easy" text. That’s nice, but what if someone wanted the login prompt to say, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" or some other inspirational quote? Not so easy to do with a hosted service. Which means that the insufferably perky 37 Signals philosophy goes viral along with its software.

Jason Santa Maria went through design stuff while I answered client e-mails. I only caught a small segment involving dancing leprechauns.

Steve Krug promoted the concept of usability testing, including demos of how to use Camtasia and Morae from Techsmith. He may have also mentioned something about a book.

Andrew Kirkpatrick from Adobe spoke about accessibility. It was very code-heavy. My mind started wandering, and I started to wonder whether it would be possible to convert HTML to MIDI, so that a web page could be converted into a catchy tune with lyrics describing the content, and the rhythmic, melodic and harmonic patterns describing the structure and behavior of the site. You’d load a webpage, and the music of the spheres would fill the room; you’d say "pow!" on the downbeat to activate a link, and the music would segue into something new, something wonderful. If you saw me there, my eyes were closed so that I might have some sense of what it would be like to be blind; and if you saw me drooling into a puddle on the hotel banquet table, that was me simulating loss of muscle control. And that smell…never mind.

Dan Cederholm also spoke last month at WebDirections North, at a session devoted to microformats. This time, he spoke about color schemes, typography and favicons before repeating the pitch on microformats. But I wasn’t bored by the repetition – first, it’s an interesting subject, and second, it gave me a chance to listen to how he was saying it rather than what he was saying. He’s an effective speaker, taking what could be a dry topic and relating it in a just-folks, non-techie manner. Yeah, right, he doesn't remember what API stands for. And I think that IPO stands for India Pale Oil.

From my perspective, the main problem with microformats is that I’m too lazy to add them to posts like this one. Sure, it’s easy. But it means that I’d have to go through this very entry and mark-up at least six entries with hCard information, and it has been quite enough effort for me to do this write-up of day one. Maybe if ivantohelpyou gets an editorial assistant, I’d be on board with it. Until then, sweet dreams.

Continued coverage of day two...

Labels: ALA, blogging, NV07, Web 2.0, web design, Web Standards