Workshops in detail
Tuesday September 25
- Andy Clarke — Transcending CSS
- Laurel Papworth — Building and maintaining vibrant social networks for your business
- Dr Nic Williams — Beginning Ruby on Rails
Wednesday September 26
- Aaron Gustafson — Progressive enhancement with JavaScript
- Brian Fling — Mobile web design and development
- W3C SIG day — W3C experts detail the future of web standards
Andy Clarke — Transcending CSS
Modern techniques for designing a beautiful web
Tuesday 25th September 2007 9.00am to 5.00pm
Description
Do you feel that we have reached our full potential for what is possible using currently practical CSS? Do you wish that there are ways to achieve the striking, the radical, the beautiful with CSS?In this full-day session, designer and author of the best-selling Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design will challenge you to think differently about creating inspired design for web using meaningful markup and CSS. The session will be packed full of visual inspiration, backed up by practical techniques for creating amazing work for the web.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop is not designed for beginners or newcomers to CSS. It will not teach you the basics. To get the most of this workshop you will be an intermediate to advanced user of CSS and be familiar with meaningful, accessible markup.
If you are a visual designer looking to advance your CSS skills with new techniques and technologies, or a technically minded developer who wants to understand more about working visually, this workshop will take your knowledge of CSS to the limits of what is currently possible and beyond.
What are the learning outcomes?
By the end of the day you will be able to
- see markup in a new light, from the content out
- create ‘advanced’ CSS selectors and know how best to use them
- know how to push what is possible with today’s CSS floats and positioning
- create exciting layouts and interfaces from the most minimal of markup
- tackle browsers issues within a progressive web design workflow
- move forward with progressive techniques in actual client work
Laurel Papworth — Building and maintaining vibrant social networks for your business
Tuesday 25th September 2007 9.00am to 5.00pm
Description
People are aggegrating on the net in social networks and online communities. Successful corporate sites are moving away from static information portals and are now enabling visitors to talk to each other and contribute content using Web 2.0 tools. In this full day workshop you’ll learn all the main features of a social network as well as how to build and maintain a community online around your business. The technical tools are not enough — there are plenty of beautiful, feature rich digital graveyards out there — so let’s make sure that your social applications incorporate the greater social context!We start by looking at the various types of purpose of a social network and then work our way through creating spaces for different types of connecting, aspects to keep in mind when developing personalisation modules and encouraging the different roleplayers in the community (volunteer and otherwise). We then move onto really enabling initiators of user generated content, developing in-depth rules of engagement (code of conduct, FAQ, newcomers welcome), moderating member forums and chat rooms, layering social texture through events and rituals and encouraging members to implement word of mouth campaigns in swarms to grow the network. At all times we are focussed on how business needs can be met by supporting an online social network.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop will benefit anyone who is interested in building a community around their business’ online presence. To get the most out of this workshop you will be prepared to spend a day focussed on the social and community side of the Internet. This is not a technical course but a reasonable grasp of user applications such as blogs, wikis, and tagging will be assumed.
What are the learning outcomes?
By the end of the day you will be able to
- look through a social network and pinpoint what weaknesses in purpose, spaces, personalisation, roles and so on may cause a lack or slowing of membership
- evaluate tools and techniques for building the best possible network for your purpose
- assist people to create personal connections and maintain relationships through your site
- examine ways to increase number of visitors and length of stay to your site, brand recall, brand loyalty, and decrease technical and customer support through a peer-to-peer online community
- amaze your boss and be the envy of your colleagues as you rattle of the 10 primary features of a social network, the 5 fundamental needs of supporting community and 6 tips for expanding your network
Successful online communities are not a matter of luck but rather the result of the rigorous application of these tried and tested ideas and techniques. This full day workshop will help you find your way.
Dr Nic Williams — Beginning Ruby on Rails
Write beautiful code for beautiful web applications, fast!
Tuesday 25th September 2007 9.00am to 5.00pm
Description
Ruby on Rails is a full-featured, industrial-strength framework for web applications. It’s very fast to learn and get started, and will provide a life-time of programming pleasure.Ruby on Rails is only a few years old but has taken the web development world by storm. Everywhere you look there are new, advanced web applications coming online, built in only a few months, with small, agile teams, using Ruby on Rails. It sure beats failing to go live, after several years of development with huge teams using older technologies.
The really good news is that getting started and productive with Ruby on Rails is incredibly fast. Useful web applications can be developed after one or two days of education. This workshop will give you that education to get started.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop is perfect for anyone who has basic programming skills in any language and a desire to find out more about Ruby on Rails, and put it into practice. Have you
- Written PHP applications and exhausted yourself maintaining the spaghetti?
- Written Java web apps but found it took so long to get started you lost the excitement?
- Designed websites, but thought learning to write the code was for Geeks and Nerds?
- Wondered how to spend more of your time solving interesting application problems instead of configuring a database?
- Wished programming could be pleasurable again?
- Wanted to write applications twice as fast as before?
It is very useful if you already know:
- HTML
- Basic programming skills in any language
- Knowledge about object-orientation
- Database design and access using SQL
To do the exercises during the day you’ll need to bring:
- Laptop (Windows, OSX)
What are the learning outcomes?
Ask for your money back if you don’t learn how to
- Start a new Rails application in 5 minutes
- Read and write to a database without using any SQL statements or advanced knowledge
- Use the Model-View-Controller method of application design
- Create dynamic HTML using the data from the database
- Generate models and controllers so you don’t have to type as much yourself
- Work with “convention over configuration” — Rails makes a lot of decisions for you!
- Write tests for your applications so you know instantly if something has gone wrong
And ultimately, feel confident that you can do it all yourself the next day after the workshop! This workshop will be an enlightening, practical day that will stand you in good stead as you move deeper into developing apps with this new framework.
Aaron Gustafson — Progressive enhancement with JavaScript
Hone your DOM Scripting skills
Wednesday 26th September 2007 9.00am to 5.00pm
Description
You’ve written a few scripts, played with some of the libraries, and even wrapped your head around the whole Ajax thing, but you can’t help feeling there’s so much more to JavaScript. In this one day workshop, DOM Scripting guru Aaron Gustafson will walk you through the current best practices in JavaScript development.Using clear examples, Aaron will demonstrate the benefits of progressive enhancement and unobtrusive scripting techniques. During a portion of the workshop, Aaron will also offer his one-on-one mentoring skills to help you tackle a hands-on JavaScript challenge. You’ll walk away from this workshop with a solid understanding of modern JavaScript development and the methodologies to tackle just about any DOM scripting challenge.
Who is this workshop for?
To get the most out of this workshop you need a decent familiarity with JavaScript (i.e. you’ve written some scripts, know what an object is, etc.) and web standards. An interest in accessibility and user interface is recommended, but most of all you need to be ready and eager to learn.
You should also bring a laptop with your favorite text editor installed and a willingness to work with other attendees on a group project.
What are the learning outcomes?
After this very full day you will be able to
- break complex interactions down into discrete actions
- identify obtrusive scripting and right its many wrongs
- reduce your scripts’ markup dependencies
- create scripted interactions which layer perfectly on top of traditional ones
- build scripts which enable themselves and their associated styles only when they run properly
- leverage available JavaScript libraries to improve your development speed
Brian Fling — Mobile web design and development
Everything you need to know about creating sites for the mobile web from start to finish
Wednesday 26th September 2007 9.00am to 5.00pm
Description
Mobile technology is poised to revolutionize how we gather information. Already today mobile technology can display information and services relevant to the users physical location and activities, creating a whole new world of interaction possibilities. By 2010 half the population of the planet will have access to the internet through a mobile device, making the mobile web an essential part of our lives. Yet the mobile industry has few if any resources to help would-be mobile developers from diving in other than applied experience from within the industry.This full-day workshop will be one of the most comprehensive and in-depth tutorials on not only designing and developing mobile websites from concept to completion, but also how to integrate mobile technology into desktop websites and web applications. Participants will walk away from this workshop with a firm understanding of the mobile ecosystem, how to develop an integrated mobile web strategy, mobile design and development principles and best practices and most importantly practical techniques and information to start creating mobile websites.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop is perfect for anyone wanting to get into the mobile web. Web designers, web developers, information architects, product managers, usability professionals, content publishers, essentially anyone with a website will benefit from the content covered throughout the day. A basic knowledge of how to code XHTML markup by hand will be helpful, but not required.
What are the learning outcomes?
After this very full day you will be able to
- assess the value of the mobile web for your business
- plan your own mobile web strategy
- integrate web and mobile technologies
- employ mobile web design principles
- apply mobile development practices
- implement mobile standards and best practices
- create a mobile information architecture
- conduct mobile usability testing
- work with mobile service provider requirements
- analyse content adaptation strategies
- understand location-based services
- understand messaging services
W3C Australian Office — W3C Special Interest Group Day
W3C experts detail the future of web standards.
Wednesday 26th September 2007 9.00am to 5.00pm
Description
This year at Web Directions we are proud to be hosting the W3C’s Special Interest Group day, in conjunction with the W3C’s Australian Office at CSIRO. It’s a whole day seminar covering the latest developments from the World Wide Web Consortium.
This full day features presentations from
- Bert Bos, co-inventor of CSS
- Chris Wilson, chair of the HTML W3C Working Group
- Sofia Celic, Vision Australia, on W3C accessibility guidelines
- Renato Iannella, from National ICT Australia, on Policy-Aware Web
- Anne Cregan, from National ICT Australia, on Dealing with Uncertainty in the Semantic Web
- Marcos Caceres, from QUT, on Web Applications Formats (Widgets, XBL2)
and a number of other domain experts on W3C standards, covering a range of topics such as
- CSS3
- The future of HTML
- “Web 3.0″ and the semantic Web
- RDF
- W3C Accessibility Guidelines
- OWL
- Webapps
- XForms
- SVG
and more.
This day will be a great opportunity to hear high level technical presentations, and hear where the web is going, as well as engage with those people at the heart of the organisation which is “leading the web to its full potential”.
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