Advancing the web without breaking it?

Development for the web has become much more complex in recent years. We have lots of tools, the languages we use evolve and there is a constant call that we now "build apps, not web sites" and thus we need to change our ways.

In this talk Chris Heilmann of Microsoft is going to talk about ES6 and other technologies and how to use them without breaking the web as we know it.

SVG Lessons I Learned The Hard Way

Even though SVG is not difficult to learn if you come from an HTML-CSS-y background, working with SVG is not as straightforward as working with HTML because they are fundamentally different in many aspects.

We tend to work with SVG and expect it to behave similar to the way HTML does, or maybe expect the tools, properties, functions, etc. that we use to work with SVG just like they would work with HTML. But, unfortunately, our expectations are not always met, and we are stuck trying to figure out what went wrong and why what we expected to work simply didn't. Why isn't the element translated as I expect it to? Why are those coordinates wrong? Why aren't my styles applied? why isn't the script working?

Sara has had a lot of these moments while working with SVG, got a few headaches in the process, and learned a few lessons. In this talk, she wants to share some lessons with you that I have learned from working with SVG for some time, hopefully saving you some of those moments in the future.

Animating the User Experience

Since the widespread adoption of CSS animations and transitions, animation has started creeping back into web design. Loading screens and “flashy” intros are back, as well as subtle UI interactions that invisibly improve the user’s experience. Rachel Nabors explains the six components of motion design, how you can apply them in your own projects, and when to start planning animation in your process.

A Brief History of Web Design

The web is almost 25 years old, but the chances are that your professional career started much more recently than that.

Web design has been around almost since the beginning, but what it means to build a web site has changed as dramatically as the web itself. From grey backgrounds to font tags and tables, from simple style sheets to responsive sites, from 640x480 to the thousands of screen sizes we encounter today, the march of progress continues.

But as we move forward, it's useful to consider lessons from the past. And that's a rapidly-fading past; links rot. References fade. Information disappears. During a career that started during the Browser Wars, Dave has seen a lot of it first hand, and would like to reminisce about how things were so we can avoid repeating past mistakes.

Designing Interfaces That Think

We are in a consequential shift in design as it relates to human-computer interaction. Design, at its core, has never been primarily about creating objects; it is fundamentally about solving problems. Aesthetic and functional forms and patterns—be they visual, cognitive, or tangible—are the product of problem solving. One of the most formidable problems that we will face when designing user interfaces in the emerging paradigm of ubiquitous computing, is how to manage the limited bandwidth of user attention.

This talk will address the need to extrapolate new models and metaphors of interaction in order to manage the burgeoning volume of features and signals in the software that mediates so much of our lives. In this world, user interfaces must become more transparent and unobtrusive. This means that they will need to do more than simply present features and information, they will also need to be able to know when to hide these things from us as well. Interfaces will have to be designed to proactively think ahead of us, and anticipate what we need before we need it.

The Emerging Global Web

The web was first conceived 25 years ago, by an Englishman. Fifteen years later, as the first crop of dot.coms were going bust, close to 60% of its users (and all Alexa "top 20" sites) came from developed nations. Fast forward to today, and the picture is strikingly different.

Almost half the Alexa "top 20" now comes from emerging economies. Economies where close to 3 billion people have yet to use the web, but thanks to mobile — won't have to wait much longer to discover it.

This presentation will introduce you to fascinating and innovative services that are re-shaping the web to serve the consumers of tomorrow. Driven by mobile, the power of personal relationships, and the breakneck pace of globalisation, these services provide a glimpse into the business models, opportunities and challenges we will face, when growing a truly global web.