Secrets of the CSS Jedi

Eric Meyer

How much time do you spend either desperately fighting or blindly accepting browser defaults? More than you might think. Truly understanding both sides of this struggle is critical for anyone who wants to be a CSS Master. This will be an in-depth exploration of how CSS really works, and how this knowledge can make your work easier.

Civil Disobedience in Interactive Media

Mike Davidson

Since the web standards movement began, designers and developers have faced a choice: follow the letter, follow the spirit, follow both, or follow neither. Nine years on, some of us break rules left and right while simultaneously championing the cause of good craftsmanship. This talk will look at rule-making and rule-breaking on the web and ask if disobedience in the face of artificial constraints is the best way to move the medium forward.

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Writing the User Interface

Jeffrey Zeldman

Drop-shadows don’t fill shopping carts. Aside from a few buttons and arrows, nearly all of the work of a user interface is performed by words. Yet most designers don’t question the text their clients dump on them, and most budgets don’t cover editing and writing. Learn how word choice can drastically improve design, branding, and usability—and how to edit web content effectively, even if you’re not a writer.

From Dots to Design: The Basics of Grid Usage Online

Khoi Vinh

Online design is getting more complex, but a grid-based layout can help simplify user experiences. This session will examine the long-standing principles of this graphic design staple, and discuss why grids can complement—and conflict—with the challenges that designers face when building online interfaces. We’ll roll up our sleeves with their basic building blocks, discuss their development and implementation, and look at how and when to use them, as well as when not to use them.

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Design Your Way Out of a Paper Bag

Jason Santa Maria

Rethinking an existing brand can be a designer’s most exciting (and most perilous) challenge. Happy Cog’s Jason Santa Maria should know, having recently redesigned AIGA and A List Apart. Learn how color, typography, and visual metaphors can change the way people experience even the most familiar sites.

Evolving an Interface

Shaun Inman

Attractive, usable interfaces don’t just happen. Knowledge of user goals and existing conventions can help inform our initial efforts, but application-specific usage patterns only emerge once someone is actually using our interface on a regular basis. Learn how to develop a UI philosophy based on your initial understanding of the problem your application sets out to solve and then use that philosophy to inform your initial design decisions and balance user feedback to grow and evolve an interface people will talk about.

Lunch

Co-sponsored by Adobe

Reporting From The Engine Room

Tim Bray

“As the magnificent curves of the ocean liner slice through the waves, the captain, standing tall far above the water, granite-jawed, his uniform gleaming white, barks directions into the speaking tube at the hunched, grease-besmeared figures sweating in their noisome haunts far below the water line, tending to the engines. I’m one of those, you should see my coveralls. It looks different down here now than it did last year, and it’s going to look different again next year, and we think the Captain Should Be Told.”

The State of CSS in an IE7 World

Eric Meyer

After five quiet (and increasingly frustrating) years, the 800-pound gorilla is awake once more. We know that Internet Explorer 7 fixed a lot of bugs and added new support, but with IE6 still hanging around like an annoying party crasher, has anything really changed? We’ll take a look at where we are and where we’re going in an IE7 world.

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Getting Real with Accessibility

Shawn Henry

Accessibility isn’t about checklists, it’s about making your site more usable to more people in more situations. This session puts standards and guidelines in perspective, and shows you a new approach for developing effective accessibility solutions efficiently. Get hands-on screening techniques that anyone can use, and guidance on including people with disabilities in your project to learn how they really interact with your site.

Selling Design

Jeffrey Zeldman

It takes talent, knowledge, and experience to design great websites. But what’s the use if your client (or boss) consistently kills your best work? Great design requires great clients, and they are made, not born. Learn to identify receptive clients and bosses and develop an inclusive, collaborative process that builds the level of trust needed to sell great work.

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Are You Experienced?

Andy Budd

As technology becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives, it is no longer sufficient to build things that simply work. We need to build products that are easy and fun to use, and add real value to people’s lives. In short, we need to build better experiences. In this session you’ll learn about the emerging practice of user experience design and how it encompasses the fields of usability, information architecture and design psychology.

Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps

Jeffrey Veen

The hype around Web 2.0 continues to increase to the point of absurdity. But what can we learn from these trends to actually apply to our designs? In this presentation, Jeffrey Veen will look at how new thinking is being infused into design practices in the following trends:

1. new technology integration with Ajax, syndication
2. design trends in tagging, progressive enhancement, and anticipatory interaction
3. philosophical shifts in business towards openness, generosity, and collaboration with your users

Opening Night Party

Sponsored by (mt) Media Temple

• Belltown Billiards
• 90 Blanchard Street (Seattle Weekly review and map)

Open Bar, Finger Foods, Billiards

Closing Night Party

Sponsored by Blue Flavor and Microsoft

• The Big Picture
• 2505 First Avenue (directions)

Food, Drinks & Gaming