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@media 2006: In Review

Another @media has come and gone, and if perhaps the blogosphere buzz was not at the same level as 2005, the conference itself was far, far bigger.

For most of the two days, simultaneous presentations were taking place, bookended by keynotes and panels. This approach, although one I suggested in my write-up of last year’s event, had both a positive and negative effect; obviously the dual tracks meant that there were more speakers, more topics and more to choose from; but it also meant that on occasion there were two sessions that I wanted to see that clashed. One of my comments on the obligatory feedback form was that perhaps a more strongly-themed separation might work, with perhaps code examples and practical theory in one, while the other featured design and business-related talks.

Anyway, on with the write-up.

Day One (day)

Eric Meyer kicked off the conference in grand style, with a look back at the last 10 years of CSS development. Much the same as Zeldman’s 2005 keynote, it was fascinating to hear from one of the true pioneers of that time just how that development progressed, and what events triggered the proliferation of CSS design that we make our living from today; it is easy to forget that such a relatively small group of people changed the world of web design completely.

I forewent Jeremy Keith’s Using DOM Scripting to Plug the Holes in CSS presentation in favour of design supergroup Jon Hicks, Veerle Pieters and Cameron Moll, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the event. While it was less of a moderated panel than three individual presentations tacked together, those presentations were all excellent, and I personally found them particularly useful.

Working as a designer but coming from a development background, I sometimes have to remind myself to go back to the basic principles of design. The three talks, on Grid Design (Moll), Type (Hicks) and Colour (Veerle) all emphasised the things I already knew but often ignored, and also introduced some new principles that I will be taking back with me and applying to my own work. I’ve already taken Jon’s advice and requested a copy of FontFont’s catalogue, although I’m not sure the wife will appreciate it as bathroom reading…

For the next session I was initially tempted by Dave Shea’s Fine Typography for the Web, but on reading the conference programme it sounded like little more than a round-up of image replacement techniques (which in fact was exactly what it turned out to be), so instead I saw Chris Wilson of Microsoft talk about IE7 and Beyond. As you’d expect, there was a fair bit of MS cheerleading, but tempered by a reasonable and objective look at what lies ahead for the browser.

A couple of interesting and non-web-standards points I noted down were the new Open Search <link/> element that, when included in your page, adds your site to the searchbox in the browser toolbar – pretty cool, although as Kate points out it could lead to confused customers wondering why your site was there one day but not the next – I’ll be adding it to this site soon to see how it works, and will write up the relevant details. The other thing was IE7’s built-in RSS feedreader. This could prove the tipping point for RSS among non-technical users, and is perhaps something that companies should start to think about when offering services that would benefit from some kind of notification system.

After lunch (bland), a panel comprising Andy Clarke, Patrick Lauke, Gez Lemon and Ian Lloyd discussed the new WCAG 2.0 documents and guidelines. I’ve read some comments about this panel that complain of the lack of actual accessibility advice, but I think they miss the point. The title of the presentation was pretty clear IMO – the only problem seemed to be that they had booked the wrong Clark/e. I think a lot of people were hoping (expecting?) to hear more of the same sort of thing that Joe published, rather than the level-headed interpretations that were delivered. It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes are made to the 2.0 guidelines before they reach Candidate Recommendation or whatever the final stage is called.

Unfortunately we missed Jeff Veen’s final presentation on Web Apps (but really, who needs to hear any more about web apps?), so headed straight over to the after-party.

Day One (evening)

There is one thing to remember when attending a party in an underground London club that is also screening the England match – forget about socialising. After a dull first-half, we left to go to the NotMedia dinner at a tiny Japanese restaurant off Leicester Square. It was great to finally put names to faces and meet people that I had only previously corresponded with (hi Paul, Ben, Glenda, Ann, Matt, Faruk, Hanni), and the food wasn’t bad either (thanks to Kate for her excellent recommendations).

Back at the party, the too-loud football had been replaced by too-loud music (I’m getting old, darn kids) so after a few more shouted conversations and some Multipack hellos, we returned to our hotel before midnight.

Day Two

With a 9:00am start (which we barely made), people continued to trickle into the auditorium for the first ten minutes of Dan Cederholm’s presentation on (what else) Bulletproof Web Design. Nothing new, but no harm in hearing it all again.

Next was the first big decision of the day, strangely reminiscent of actual working decisions – DOM or accessibility? While I would have liked to see Robin Christopherson again, I had heard that there was not a great deal of new information compared to his similar presentation last year, so in the end we chose the hugely entertaining Javascript Libraries: Friend or Foe panel, made up of the leading lights of DOM scripting.

Perfectly moderated by Cameron Adams, it was I think the only panel where you felt you were watching an actual discussion between experts rather than a dull round-robin of questions and answers. Simon Willison was particularly erudite and informative. The answer, by the way, seems to be a resounding “Meh”, although I may have to take a closer look at Dojo in light of the praise it received.

Another decision next – Moll or Molly? While I got the feeling that both of these presentations had been doing the rounds for a while, I eventually ended up going for Mobile Web Design as it seemed more relevant to my work. Cameron’s strong recommendation was on delivering a separate, mobile-specific experience for those users, which is an approach I agree with, and hopefully can explore in more detail soon.

After lunch, it was time for yet another tough choice. Strategic CSS Management sounded extremely relevant now I’m part of a design team, but I was hearing good things about Nate Koechley’s Yahoo vs. Yahoo case studies. I regret that in the end I chose the CSS panel, as I learned nothing from it (I also notice now from looking at the schedule that Andy Budd was supposed to be on the panel), although I suppose that learning that I do things the same as Dave Shea has to be some consolation.

As at last year’s event, Andy Clarke had the final presentation slot, although being up against Tantek Çelik’s Microformats talk probably had an effect on audience numbers. Once again, Andy’s barnstorming, passionate performance was a stand-out for the conference, although his casual brushing aside of corporate concerns about delivering different experiences to different browsers was rather cavalier when you consider the pressures an in-house designer faces every day.

Still, food for thought, and his dismissal of the dull, workaday grids that are used by far too many sites was inspiring. Quote of the conference: “You don’t have to wait to do the cool stuff.”

The final Hot Topics panel chaired by Jeremy Keith covered a variety of audience-submitted questions, ranging from the accessibility of AJAX to the panellists favourite furry animal (Hicks: “Tribble”; Çelik: “I was going to say that!”) – Stuart Colville has a good transcription of the session on his site, so I won’t write up any of the specifics here.

And with that, it was over, and we were off at a run to catch the train (sorry about your knees, Pete – hope you’ve recovered!)

Molly

During one of the breaks between sessions on Day Two, Gareth Rushgrove and I fell to talking with Molly. We chatted briefly about the lack of women in web design before heading off to the next presentation; unfortunately, I don’t think either of us had seen her blog entry of the previous evening – if we had, the conversation would certainly have run a different course. Sorry, Molly, if we seemed not to care about what you were going through, I think we owe you a hug at the very least. :(

Notables of note

What else will I remember from @media 2006? Well…

• Subtraction screenshots managed to pop up in at least half the presentations – perhaps because it is shaping up to be…
• The Year of The Grid (blame Mark Boulton)
• Some of the most popular (re)designs of recent months were featured by Andy Clarke to illustrate how boring web design has become
• Everyone from last year was there this year
• I spent 30 minutes chatting to both Ryan Carson and David Stone and completely missed the chance to ask what the hell Amigo will be

And that’s about it! It was great to see everyone again, and roll on next year.

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