d.Construct Experiences

Well I am back from Brighton now and sitting at home contemplating d.Construct.
The range of speakers was wide and varied and each seemed to have their own take on what web 2.0 actually is. I think this just goes to reinforce what Andy Budd said in his introductory session "What is web 2.0?" - Web 2.0 isn't a thing... It's a state of mind.

My take on the situation is that Web 2.0 is whatever it means to you as a web designer/developer.

The stand out presentations for me were the first 3 of the day. Probably as these appealed most to the geek in me.

To Andy Budd, Web 2.0 is using existing technologies in innovative ways, community features, open data formats and users owning their data.

Andy's presentation was a great pace and scene setter for the day. When he had finished there was a full understanding of the main concepts. Andy didn't try and claim that he knew exactly what Web 2.0 was and he concentrated mainly on giving attendees the facts so that they could decide for themselves. Which was certainly the best way to go about it.

Next up was Stuart Langridge who aside from being some sort of Javascript/DHTML genius is an air guitar/keyboard legend too!

Stuarts presentation content was spot on and so was his presentation style; just the right mix of information and humour.

Stuart talked about DOM scripting, unobtrusive javascript and also highlighted the importance of making sure that there is a graceful degradation when javascript is unavailable or turned off.

Again Stuart agreed with Andy Budd's theme of taking existing technologies and using them in new ways. Stuart said "Stand on the Shoulders of Giants". I am pretty sure he wasn't the first person to say it but it is sage advice.

Simon Willison of Yahoo! was next. Simon's presentation was very focussed on what Yahoo! / Flickr are doing with AJAX and their API (Not really a surprise as the presentation was called "Ajax and the Flickr API").

We all know that Flickr is one of this/last years great success stories. Most people "in the know" have been using Flickr for some time now, but I think that people are just starting to using Flickr in the way that they want to.

This is made possible through the Flickr API and the excellent API documentation
So next time you see clever people using Flickr on their own site you will know how they managed it.

Simon has forgotten stuff that I will never know. I am also now "in" on the joke that all the speakers seemed to share at @Media when they said that Simon couldn't come as he couldn't get the time off from Hogwarts. Very true, in the nicest possible way of course. I am sure it isn't the first time he has heard it and I am sure that he doesn't mind. Magic would explain how he does all the things that he does though.

Overall the conference was a big success. Based on the amount of time the Clear:Left guys had to organise the event it was very impressive. The social after the event was also great and I got chance to put a few names to faces and meet some people for the first time.

I met quite a few people including Andy Budd, Richard Rutter, Stuart Langridge, Ryan Carson, Paul Hammond, Mike Stenhouse, Ben Ward and Steve Marshall

Finally, A big thanks to Clear:Left for putting on a great (well priced) event and thanks to all the speakers and the people I met for being nice guys.

Same time next year?

Off to d.Construct

Tomorrow I am off down past "that London" to a place called Brighton for the d.Construct conference that is taking place on Friday. I am going down the day before as there is no way to actually get to Brighton for 9:30am if you live anywhere past Watford.

For anybody reading in London, Where I live is past Watford. Imagine that, further north than Watford!

I believe my esteemed colleague, and partner in this trip, Patrick H. Lauke said that he caught a glimpse of a map in London when we were attending @Media 2005 and all it said about the north of England is "Here be Dragons"

Some facts about Brighton:

• Its a long way away (From here evidently)
• Fatboy Slim lives there
• Many scenes for cult film Quadrophenia, depicting the Mods and Rockers clashes of the 1960s, were filmed in the city. (Malarkey should like it then)
• Swedish super group Abba won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in the Brighton Dome with the song Waterloo.
• For some reason 60% of all the UK's web gurus live there

Joking aside though I am really looking forward to it as the lineup is pretty damn good.
Stay tuned for a full report when I return...

When good Mice turn bad

In the first case of it's kind that I have heard of a large corporation has turned it's back on a well designed, CSS based, standards compliant accessible website in favour of a "new" web site.

First off I checked the date and it was indeed the 2nd of November and not the 1st of April as I had assumed. Then I saw it with my own eyes.

On first glance the store looks to have suffered considerably in the aesthetics stakes.
Gone are the crisp images and the (dare I say it?) sensible Flash only to be replaced with a main branding image that is poorly optimised that can only be described as "fuzzy" at best.
The rest of the images don't actually look much better. The buttons at the bottom advertising other services/sites provided by Disney are especially poor quality to be honest.

Under the hood is where this site really lets itself, and Disney, down.

The pages take an age to load which is due to the code bloat associated with table based layouts and the fact that they are littered with obtrusive poor quality (Dreamweaver generated?) javascript wont help either.

I wouldn't like to get their bandwidth bill thats for sure. No wonder Mickey mouse talks with such a high pitched voice. The hosting services must have him by the balls.

Apparently they are also using a new tag: (note the mixed case)

It must be in the XHTML 2.0 spec or something as I have to admit I haven't heard of it before. Although they state in their DOCTYPE definition that they are using HTML 4.01 Transitional (allegedly) so that must be a typo ;)

I always associated Disney with quality. Disney has many imitators which, as they say, is the sign of a great company. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery after all.

I really feel that Disney have let themselves down with this one and has delivered a real kick in the teeth of the push for web standards.

Are Disney a quality brand anymore? Undoubtedly they are.

Why then, did they create a "new" site that looks like it is straight from 1998? They already took the plunge and scored a smash hit with a standards compliant, accessible web site which has been held up the world over (literally) as being an exemplary site that should be used as a benchmark for how all websites should be done.

Maybe Disney reached their own 12 o'clock and "Cinderella's coach" really did turn back into a pumpkin.

No Tricks and a lovely treat from Apple

Safari is now frighteningly good.

With the latest update released by Apple yesterday (Halloween, to explain the puns) their flagship Internet browser now passes the Acid 2 test.

I got the software update popping up and down looking for my attention this morning telling me that there was an OS X update. Namely update 10.4.3. I clicked for more details and found a little surprise:

Safari, Internet, and networking

• Safari can now pass the "Acid2" test.

I downloaded the update and unsurprising they were right.

Safari 2.0.2 / 416.12 is the first (non beta, non preview) browser to do this and therefore the Mac community can be even smugger.

Not content with the best looking equipment and the best OS, Apple now have the best (Well technically the most standards compliant) browser too.

This is probably the reason I will be getting a mac for home soon. More on that later though.