Web Directions Podcast
196 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 12 years ago -Sessions from the Web Directions conference series. Sessions are © Web Directions and the respective speakers. See individual sessions for license details.
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Episodes
Kevin Yank - CSS frameworks
November 05, 2009 22:09 - 58 minutes - 22.5 MBWith the proliferation and widespread adoption of JavaScript frameworks, smart developers have wondered if a similar approach to smoothing over the rough spots of CSS might work. Thus, CSS frameworks like Blueprint, YUI Library CSS Tools, Boilerplate, and many others were born. In this session, we will survey the landscape of CSS frameworks and consider how each of them deals with the unique challenge of creating generalised, reusable CSS styles. There are a number of different approaches, a...
Tania Lang - Using AJAX to enhance UX
November 04, 2009 23:35 - 42 minutes - 15.7 MBAJAX is changing the way that users interact with websites - it has the potential to provide richer and more interactive online user experiences but also introduces its own set of usability and accessibility problems. This session will present views from leading usability experts from around the world from an experienced practitioner workshop conducted at the Usability Professionals Conference in USA. We will also discuss key usability issues we have unveiled through our own usability testin...
Deborah Schultz - It's the people, stupid!
November 04, 2009 00:15 - 49 minutes - 18.7 MBThe most interesting problems on the web are social, not technical. Once the open, social stack moves into wide use, the real work is going to be on us to create ongoing experiences that inspire, inform, evolve. Avoid this talk if you want to hear about monetizing community, gaming the newest social site for a quick spike in your user numbers, or how to get a [insert cutting edge social platform] strategy for your brand. Instead, we’ll diagram (sentence-like) real examples of marketing and r...
Rob Manson - Pervasive computing
November 03, 2009 22:38 - 52 minutes - 19.7 MBAt Xerox PARC in the early 90’s Mark Weiser predicted a fundamental shift would move the user’s experience of computing away from the desktop and out into the "real" world. During the late 90’s the web brought the first wave of pervasive "anytime, anywhere" applications like search and webmail. Over the last few years the mobile web has driven a fresh wave of networked applications like Facebook and Twitter that are being used at the beach, in the car and in bed. QR Codes, Wifi Access Points...
Dmitry Baranovskiy - Canvas
October 23, 2009 01:28 - 48 minutes - 18.2 MBSince the earliest days of the web, perhaps the single biggest missing piece of functionality has been a standards based, browser native way for developers to do 2D (and 3D) rendering. Now, the Canvas element, supported in all contemporary browsers other than Internet Explorer, and part of the HTML5 specification, provides these capabilities, and is being widely adopted in cutting edge websites and applications. In this session, JavaScript ninja Dmitry Baranovskiy takes us into the heart and...
Matt Webb - Opening keynote: Escalante
October 20, 2009 02:30 - 50 minutes - 9.51 MBThe long run to the turn of the millennium got us preoccupied with conclusions. The Internet is finally taken for granted. The iPhone is finally ubiquitous computing come true. Let’s think not of ends, but dawns: it’s not that we’re on the home straight of ubicomp, but the beginning of a century of smart matter. It’s not about fixing the Web, but making a springboard for new economies, new ways of creating, and new cultures. The 21st century is a participatory culture, not a consumerist one....
Mark Stanton - Best practices for speeding up your site
October 19, 2009 02:37 - 48 minutes - 18.4 MBAs we pack our pages with AJAX and RIA goodness we often lose sight of the fact that the key to exceptional user experience is the responsiveness of your site. Inspired by the excellent work by Yahoo!’s Exceptional Performance team, this talk will have something that every site can benefit from. You will learn how to analyse what your end users are experiencing and how to reduce your load times by 25-50% using a range of simple techniques. Mark Stanton is a specialist in internet systems des...
Grant Robinson - Visualising the user experience
October 19, 2009 00:59 - 51 minutes - 19.9 MBDesigning for dynamic web applications and mobile devices poses a new set of challenges. Web designers are increasingly being asked to apply their skills to where the page model no longer applies. We need new ways of exploring the user experience and communicating behaviours involving sub-page changes and movement. Enter rapid prototyping. Widely acclaimed as one of the best ways to create great user experiences, it isn’t without its own pitfalls. This session will discuss the pros and cons ...
Elliot Jay Stocks - Progressive Enhancement
October 18, 2009 22:18 - 59 minutes - 22.5 MBIn the summer of ‘07 in a flood-soaked Oxford, England, Elliot appeared on stage for the very first time. His presentation, ‘Progressive Enhancement & Intentional Degradation’, looked at how to reward modern browsers with the latest CSS tricks and punish IE by dropping certain site features. Over two years later, what has changed? We’re starting to see the ideology of progressive enhancement — especially with CSS3 — spread throughout the web design community, but more work needs to be done. ...
Rob Mitchell & Mike Williams - Test your JavaScript
October 17, 2009 08:00 - 46 minutes - 17.7 MBIncreasingly, web-application behaviour is split between logic running on the server, and JavaScript logic running in the browser. Automated testing of the server-side component is fairly common, but too often the browser-side logic is left out in the cold. Mike Williams and Rob Mitchell will explain why you should test your JavaScript code, what to test, and how to go about it. They’ll talk about full-stack browser-based tests, as well as true unit tests, and explain where each are appropri...
Andrew Fisher - Cloud computing
October 16, 2009 03:17 - 52 minutes - 20.1 MBInfrastructure and service costs are always a priority for any business, whether client-side or agency-side, especially now when we’re all trying to be particularly spend-efficient. A cloud technology can comprise infrastructure (Amazon’s S3, Google Apps for Domain), software services (Salesforce.com, Google Docs) and less tangible application services such as APIs (Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Google Maps, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc). Cloud services change the way a business ...
Luke Stevens - Data driven design
October 16, 2009 01:40 - 46 minutes - 17.6 MBFar from being the enemy, data can be a designer’s best friend. So much so that it just might be the backbone of the next evolution of web design. Data doesn’t mean less creativity and experimentation, it means more. We’ve learned how to design sites that look good, and we know how to mark up our pages with web standards. Now it’s time to figure out what performs best. In this session you’ll learn not just the fundamental concepts of this ‘new web design’, but how you can get started with da...
Lachlan Hardy - The open web
October 15, 2009 23:28 - 47 minutes - 18.3 MBThe Open Web is an evolving term that encompasses technologies from web standards stalwarts like HTML, to almost-mainstream buzzwords such as OpenID, and on to emerging specifications like PortableContacts, but it’s more than that. It is a philosophy. It is the dream of technical building blocks that mesh together to discover and define identity, authorise accessible data, and validate membership of social or professional groupings. It’s one big personal data party and everybody on the web i...
Pete Ottery - Designing for suits
October 15, 2009 22:55 - 57 minutes - 21.7 MBDesigning websites in amongst the "suits" and their business models, targets, projections and synergies (ha!) can be death by dot point. Or fun. What are manager types actually thinking when they brief (or don’t) you. How do you translate their KPI’s into interface designs that 1. get their point across & achieve their targets 2. contribute to a profitable business 3. are easy to use (who would have thought the users get a say! ;-) Pete gets on their case, video camera in hand, to ...
Suze Ingram - Would you like service design with that?
October 15, 2009 02:43 - 50 minutes - 19.3 MBService design is a new discipline which focuses on understanding what customers want, then designing services which meet their needs. Sound familiar? Web designers have focused on user-centred design for years to create websites and applications that are user friendly. Service design is well established in Europe and North America and there’s already a handful of Australian businesses offering service design. What is it? Does experience in designing for screen interaction translate to desig...
Cheryl Gledhill & Scott Gledhill - Beyond SEO
October 15, 2009 00:55 - 49 minutes - 19 MBSearch engine optimisation (SEO) is a unique mix of marketing, usability and technology which can often cause confusion on how it is implemented across different organisations. An important part of your SEO strategy is getting the most out of your SEO dollars. This session will explain what your developers, designers, producers, content authors and marketers should all know about SEO to ensure you’re getting the maximum return on your SEO. A lot of SEO work undertaken by external agencies of...
Jeremy Yuille - The social life of visulization
October 15, 2009 00:46 - 35 minutes - 13.4 MBWhen visualization is coupled with collective intelligence it becomes a very powerful tool for making sense of the data that is now an increasing part of our personal and organizational experience. But how do you design social web applications so they can use visualization effectively? In this session I’ll present a model for using visualization on the social web; discussing why social settings are a great match for visualization and how more general UX ideas can be applied to the design of ...
Donna Spencer - Information seeking behaviours
October 14, 2009 22:09 - 46 minutes - 17.8 MBWhen people use websites and intranets they are doing more than just ‘finding’ information. They may be looking for something they know about or exploring something brand new; filtering through large volumes then comparing results; getting an overview of a topic or diving deep. They may even think they want to find one thing, but actually need something entirely different. Each of these information behaviours needs very different approaches to information architecture, information design and...
Christian Crumlish - Designing social interactions
October 14, 2009 04:11 - 56 minutes - 21.3 MBDesigning for social interaction is hard. People are unpredictable, consistency is a mixed blessing, and co-creation with your users requires a dizzying flirtation with loss of control. Christian will present the dos and don’ts of social web design using a sampling of interaction patterns, design principles and best practices to help you improve the design of your digital social environments. Christian Crumlish has been participating in, analyzing, designing, and drawing social interactive s...
Kelly Goto - Keynote: WorldFLOW
October 14, 2009 01:21 - 47 minutes - 18.1 MBShift your thinking, alter your process, and create a dynamic of doing rather than spinning. Workflow veteran Kelly Goto leads you through a fast-paced session designed to help transcend obstacles and develop a culture of adaptation, progress and flow. Learn the fundamental principles behind The FLOW Method, an actionable series of steps utilizing new processes and techniques to re-invigorate your organization and team. Whether you are an independent, small business owner or the manager of an...
Cameron Adams - Keynote: Making Waves
October 14, 2009 00:57 - 51 minutes - 19.7 MBIf you work on the web, it was hard to miss the announcement of Google Wave in May. It was especially exciting because this project, designed to leapfrog current modes of online communication, was developed right here in Australia by a Sydney based team. Wave’s interface designer - Web Directions favourite, Cameron Adams - will give us some unique insights into the challenges of bringing such an innovative product to fruition, the problems you face in designing a desktop application in the br...
Ben Galbraith - The state of developer tools
October 13, 2009 23:56 - 50 minutes - 19.3 MBFor many years, developing for the web left quite a bit to be desired when it came to the tools at developers disposal, particularly in comparison with the sorts of development environments available for desktop applications. But the rise of browser native tools, in Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera, browser based add-ons like Firebug, web based tools and more mean that developers have a vast array of powerful tools to help develop, debug, profile and otherwise improve their applications. ...
Myles Byrne - Internationalization - a guide to dealing with the web’s favorite 20-letter word
October 31, 2008 02:37 - 45 minutes - 17.7 MBSo, you’ve decided to tap into a whole new world of business oppportunities by stepping outside the anglocentric world. That’s great! But the process of internationalisaton can be a genuine minefield for the unitiated, so take a few tips from someone who’s been there before. In this talk Myles will cover what internationalization is, when to do it, and how to implement it. Topics include: localization, organising your content for translation, finding and managing translators, and dealing with...
Dmitry Baranovskiy - Start using web vector graphics today
October 30, 2008 01:30 - 48 minutes - 18.3 MBWith the growth of interactivity in web applications we are pushing Javascript to its limits, not to mention the limits of HTML and CSS. And so we spend our days resorting to Flash, waiting for that distant time when browser support for CSS3 will come to our rescue and allow us to create the UIs we dream of. But this is not the way it has to be: there is a little known secret weapon right here in most modern browsers. Yes, even in IE6. Dmitry Baranovskiy is here to tell you about Canvas, SVG...
Mark Pesce - Closing keynote: This, that, and the other thing
October 29, 2008 23:59 - 28 minutes - 11 MBThis is what it feels like to be hyperconnected: a new kind of community - pervasive, continuous, yet strangely tense and tenuous, like a balloon inflated to the point of bursting. The limits of the neocortex meeting the amplifier of the Human Network. That creates unique opportunities: we can come together at a word, self-organize around or against a blog post, a live-streamed video, an automated reply from a faceless, rent-seeking organization. Nothing can stop us. We can’t even stop oursel...
Jina Bolton - Creating sexy stylesheets
October 29, 2008 03:13 - 48 minutes - 18.5 MBBeing a CSS expert is about more than just memorizing selectors. It’s also about working to improve the maintainability and efficiency of your style sheets, planning for the future, and mastering your workflow. This session will look at pushing the limits of CSS to create stunning interfaces using clean, meaningful markup. We’ll also look at CSS 3 and at what the future of Web design could look like when CSS 3 finally becomes mainstream. Jina Bolton is a designer and artist, working and resi...
August de los Reyes - Predicting the past
October 29, 2008 01:25 - 57 minutes - 22.3 MBA new inflection point in human-computer interaction is upon us. Along with other technologies, Microsoft Surface marks a departure from graphical user interface or GUI into the world of Natural User Interface or NUI. This talk begins with discussion of emotional design and its importance in the future of society. The lens shifts to how one design team is thinking about designing for a new era in which emotional intent and intuitive interaction are the imperative. Using theoretical models dra...
Michael (tm) Smith - A jungle cruise through the wild regions of HTML5 and surrounding territories
October 28, 2008 05:46 - 55 minutes - 21.2 MBYou’re invited to join a narrated exploration into the exotic regions of HTML5 and surrounding territories. Your journey will begin with a preparatory briefing about what to expect from HTML5 - what’s different, what’s new, what to look forward to, what to watch out for. During the cruise, we’ll make some short excursions into surrounding territories adjoining HTML5, and you’ll learn a bit about their history and relationship to HTML5. Michael (tm) Smith is co-chair of the W3C HTML Working G...
Ruth Ellison - Integrating accessibility into design
October 28, 2008 04:02 - 53 minutes - 20.1 MBWhen developing websites or web applications, we often follow the principles of web standards, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and other accessibility guidelines. But is this enough? In this session, Ruth will look at how we can develop accessible web products by taking a holistic approach to web accessibility. She will look at different ways of incorporating accessibility into the design process to produce accessible and useful user experiences. This presentation will focus on the user ...
Douglas Crockford - Ajax security
October 28, 2008 02:45 - 52 minutes - 19.9 MBSecurity design is an important, but often neglected, component of system design. In this session, Douglas Crockford, creator of Javascript Object Notation, will outline the security issues that must be considered in the architecture of Ajax applications. The design of the browser did not anticipate the needs of multiparty applications. The browser’s security model frustrates useful activities and allows some very dangerous activities. This talk will look at the small set of options before u...
Myles Eftos - Web APIs, Oauth and OpenID: A developer’s guide
October 28, 2008 02:20 - 50 minutes - 19 MBOnline web applications are big business, with many people relying on the cloud for data storage and workflow. These days, an API is an essential part of any online system, but this presents authentication and authorisation issues for the humble web developer. Learn how to create Web APIs, how OpenID and Oauth works and what you need to do to implement them. Myles is a Perth-based Web developer who feels as at home building INNER JOINS as he does calculating the specificity of CSS selectors....
Laurel Papworth - The business of being social
October 28, 2008 00:33 - 51 minutes - 19.4 MBIt’s not true that there are no proven monetisation models for online communities; in fact, there are distinct revenue streams that have been successful over many years. This session looks at the soft returns on investment for engaging with user generated content, communication and collaboration with the consumer and then moves into how social networks earn money for their investors and developers. The aim of this session is to limit the slapping of banner ads on every niche community online...
Daniel Burka - Changing successfully: Adapting your interface over time
October 27, 2008 23:37 - 51 minutes - 19.8 MBUser interface design is an iterative process - the design of Digg and Pownce have been a study in evolution and adaptation. This talk will inspect the why and how of these iterations by looking at specific case studies from the two projects as well as previous client work Daniel has tackled. The case studies will examine specific user interface challenges that have arisen and will chop them up into their various bits. How do I identify a challenge? What is the best approach for getting star...
Lynne d Johnson - Opening keynote: New media - new business
October 27, 2008 00:47 - 59 minutes - 22.7 MBLynne will set the tone of the conference this year with insights into the future of media drawn from her wealth of experience in business, media and online communities as Senior Editor at Fast Company. Lynne d Johnson is the Senior Editor/Community Director for FastCompany.com, a leading website and community for people passionate about business ideas that also offers the complete content of Fast Company magazine. She also writes Digital Media Diva, a technology blog following web, media, a...
Jeff Croft - Elegant web typography
October 24, 2008 05:43 - 55 minutes - 21.3 MBEven in our day of web videos and podcasts, text is still the king of content on the web. Great typographic sensitivity is one of the hallmarks of sites that exude a professional confidence. From type sizing and coloring to leading, kerning, and measures to proper usage of quotes, dashes, and bullets, to choosing appropriate typefaces, this session will demonstrate using CSS and other modern web technologies to display type on screen with elegance and impact. Jeff Croft is a web designer and...
Gabriel White - Sensing context in mobile design
October 24, 2008 04:36 - 42 minutes - 16.5 MBMainstream mobile devices are being loaded with sensors. These devices can be used to create experiences that are tailored, adaptive and responsive to the way people live and work. Location-awareness allows devices to respond to place, networked address books enable socially rich communication experiences, and motion and gestural sensors empower designers to respond to context of use. All these elements are creating a ’sensitive ecosystem’; mobile devices that adapt gracefully to context and ...
Nick Bolton - The evolution and commercialisation of online video
October 24, 2008 01:08 - 51 minutes - 19.7 MBInternet video has come a long way from the postage stamp generic media player to the commercial success it is today. This session looks at this journey, and examines the multitude of online video options available. We will look at content creation (simple single piece, to multi-platform, and user generated), distribution methods and publishing strategies. Then once the video is published, how do you justify it (the ROI), commercialise it (leverage the content) and monetise it through syndi...
Hurol Inan - Informing experience architecture with quantitative insights
October 23, 2008 05:40 - 51 minutes - 19.7 MBQuantitative insights gathered through online analytics can contribute greatly to the design and optimisation of online experience architectures. Analytical techniques can be used to understand - Who is really using the site - What they are using it for - How well the site responds - What needs changing to enhance the experience These insights not only provide you with behavioural profiles of users for consideration throughout the design process but also can help you make important decisio...
David Peterson - Semantic web for distributed social networks
October 23, 2008 03:28 - 53 minutes - 20.5 MBHear how Drupal, Semantic MediaWiki and other bleeding edge tech were enlisted along with pixie dust, FOAF, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, Linked Data (basically all the Semantic Web stuff) to build a distributed social network. The focus will be not on evangelism (I don’t really care about that) but how disparate open source platforms can talk and work together. This stuff actually works and makes development more fluid. These technologies make local development easier, but when it is time to broaden you...
Diana Mounter - Custom V CMS - don’t take sides
October 23, 2008 02:43 - 44 minutes - 17.2 MBWhen I was introduced into the role of managing web projects, I naively believed a Content Management System would solve all my problems. Growing my little empire of content authors I had little idea of what was to come- before I knew it I had created a monster. I went searching for a white knight to slay this monster and was tempted by the delights of custom builds, agile development, and ruby on rails. And off I went following the trail of breadcrumbs into the forest eating them as I went,...
Kay Smoljak - Starting & Running a Web Development Business
October 22, 2008 05:17 - 45 minutes - 17.4 MBWorking for yourself is a dream that many web designers and developers have. You can pick and choose your clients, work in your pajamas, and sleep in until 10am every day if you want to. But there’s a more serious side to starting a business, and lots of factors to consider if you decide to head out on your own. Kay will share the story of Clever Starfish’s journey from a seed of an idea to a thriving small business, with lots of handy hints for both things to do, and things not to do, along ...
Pete Ottery and Tim Lucas - Developing for iPhone
October 20, 2008 03:05 - 57 minutes - 22 MBThe release of Apple’s iPhone brings new opportunities for web sites and web apps on handheld devices, though not without its share of challenges and best practices. Tim and Pete will look at the best examples out in the wild and share their experience creating iphone.news.com.au - one of Australia’s largest news sites, news.com.au, tailored to the iPhone. Pete has been designing web sites for about 9 years. Having previously worked as the Head of Design at Fairfax Digital and Creative Dire...
Grant Young - Strategies for social media
October 16, 2008 01:07 - 58 minutes - 53.3 MBWith so many social networks blooming, all with different participants and methods of interaction, it can be hard to determine where to invest your energy, time and $$. The session will provide ideas and a "background briefing" to help you answer the question: - why is social media important to my organisation? - what is the ROI for social media? - how can I evaluate which approaches are right for me/my organisation? - what sort of activities can/should I undertake in these spaces? This is...
Jeffrey Veen - Designing our way through data
October 01, 2008 05:12 - 53 minutes - 20.8 MBThe hype around Web 2.0 continues to increase to the point of absurdity. We hear all about a rich web of data, but what can we learn from these trends to actually apply to our designs? You’ll take a tour through the past, present, and future of the web to answer these questions and more: - What can we learn from the rich history of data visualization to inform our designs today? - How can we do amazing work while battle the constant constraints we find ourselves up against? - How do we reall...
Social computing for knowledge management - Matthew Hodgson
June 23, 2008 05:20 - 53 minutes - 21.6 MBThe world is abuzz with social computing: Facebook, My Space, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, blogs, wikis and other spaces powered by Web 2.0 technology. It’s a social revolution, empowering individuals to communicate, share what they know online, and help others locate information that is important to them in both their private and working lives. Some see all this as a big waste of corporate time, but is it? Is there value in handing over control of collaboration and sharing knowledge to indiv...
Web mapping - exploiting location based information through eGovernment - David Hayward
June 23, 2008 05:01 - 49 minutes - 20.2 MBGovernment has huge amounts of information but how can this be effectively managed and delivered through the web? This session will ‘lift the lid’ on web mapping technology and identify some of the key issues that must be addressed to achieve a successful outcome. The NSW government SIX Viewer web mapping portal will be used as a case study to demonstrate how terabytes of data can be integrated and delivered via the Internet. David is the national lead for spatial (location based) solutions...
Usability: more than skin deep - Lisa Herrod
June 23, 2008 03:48 - 49 minutes - 20.2 MBWeb Usability is far more complex than user testing and interaction design alone. And while interface design is an important consideration, there’s more to a usable site than what’s on the surface. We all know the importance of accessibility and web standards, so let’s take that knowledge one step further and into the realm of usability. In this session Lisa Herrod will redefine the common definition of usability by introducing a greater focus on accessibility and web standards. By taking a ...
One paper clip, a box of matches, and some JavaScript - Patrick Lee
June 23, 2008 03:03 - 53 minutes - 21.4 MBWhoever you are, if you’re writing JavaScript, there’s some aspect of your development that you would love to change if you had the chance. But the reality is you’ll never find yourself working in this ideal environment: dealing with legacy browsers, platforms and content management systems will be your constant as a developer. Patrick Lee is going to show you some tools and techniques that will help you make your peace with this fact. This session will explore how you can find ways to do th...
GovDex - Collaborating online in a secure environment - Ralph Douglas
June 23, 2008 02:57 - 38 minutes - 15.8 MBThis session will look at the government collaborative tool Govdex, how it is currently used by agencies, what it provides, and how you can use it for your projects. GovDex is managed by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) in the Department of Finance & Deregulation. AGIMO is working with agencies to measure how GovDex can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their information technology investments, and to thereby generate a savings dividend to the Australi...
Opening up government data - Jenny Telford
June 23, 2008 01:57 - 49 minutes - 20.8 MBMapping and other mashups have taken the web world by storm - driving innovation in business and government alike. While much of the focus has been on the actual mashup applications, without the data to mashup, we have no mashups. Government, from local to Federal level, collect and manage a significant amount of data, across a very broad range of areas. But giving access to this data to web application developers has technical, policy and legal challenges. In this presentation, Jenny Telford...