Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

The Easter weekend got off to a fine start for all the Sydneysiders who made it along to What Do You Know last Thursday night.

Thanks for coming along if you were there, and if you weren’t, make sure you are following @webdirections, or receiving our newsletter, to be the first to know about upcoming events. For now we’re focussing on Web Directions Code in Melbourne on May 2 and 3, but later in the year there will be definitely be another What Do You Know series around the country.

I’ve pulled together some handy resources that came out of the presentations, so see below for everything from functional JavaScript to better web typography.

We kicked off the evening with a word from our awesome sponsors, as Shane Weddell showed us how to use SilverStripe CMS and framework to create the web.

Next up rookie presenter Fiona Chan did an outstanding job of her first presentation ever by showing us how to create a living style guide. To refresh your memory, Fiona’s slides are here, and here are some useful resources for taking it further

• a collection of front end style guides and pattern libraries
• Anna Debenham’s 24 Ways article on front end style guides
• Making front end development a team sport

Then David Rennie from Reactive demonstrated presented on responsive design, and in particular how pen and paper are the most powerful web design tools. To follow up on this check out David’s awesomely good value workshop – Jedi responsive design workflow – on this Thursday here in Sydney.

Patrick Catanzariti, always entertaining, showed us some <video> and <canvas> element experiments.

Dhanji Prassana dived into functional programming as applied to JavaScript, which was always bound to be controversial, but to their credit the polite Sydney audience kept heckling to a minimum. To find out more, start with the Wikipedia article on Functional Programming. Got that? Then check out Underscore.js, a light and easy functional programming framework for JavaScript, whose creator, Jeremy Ashkenas, will be speaking at Web Directions Code. And then when you’re ready, Functional JavaScript.

Elle Meredith showed us Better Web Typography with Modular Scale. Her slides are here, and she also sent through a very useful collection of resources to follow up with

• Tim Brown – More Perfect Typography (video)
• More Meaningful Typography
• Type-inspired interfaces
• R(a|ela)tional Design
• The Secret Law of Page Harmony
• Page Proportions (PDF)
• Composing the new canon
• The Typographic Scale

David Lewis showed us how to build an HTML5 game in 5 minutes, using Construct 2. Here’s the game – keep Ned Stark’s head off the ground! – plus David has also done a write up of another game he built using the same tech.

And then finally to close out the show Elijah Glover showed us some HTML5 Mobile Apps tips and tricks. He also shared an ultimate guide to mobile emulators and simulators, as well as a table for HTML5 compatibility on mobile and tablet browsers.