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

Respond started life as a “pop-up” single-day conference in Sydney, addressing the specific challenges associated with web design in the age of multi screens.

Initially, the focus was very practical and revolved a lot around CSS – and specific responsive patterns – to do with images, navigation on small screens, accessibility on mobile devices, and so on.

But front end design has come a long way in the relatively short time since we held that first event, and so Respond has evolved to more broadly address the challenges of designing great experiences.

But a central part of this continues to be the technologies we work with to build these experiences – CSS, HTML, SVG, and more.

At Respond this year, there’ll be more than a little focus on these, though if that’s not what you work with every day, there will still be considerable value in gaining a sense of what’s possible today in our browsers that you can incorporate into your designs or product roadmaps.
 

 
First up, Vitaly Friedman, one of the foremost experts in responsive design and development, will survey the current browser technology landscape, HTTP/2, Service Workers, Responsive Images, Flexbox, SVG and Font Loading APIs, and consider how we can use them to create great experiences. For the more technically inclined, this is a great how-to, while for those who don’t live in the code, it’s an eye-opener as to what’s possible. It’s leading edge today, but these will be baseline requirements not too far from now.

Rachel Nabors, who knows more about animation on the web than just about anyone, will look at the tools available to create engaging dynamic animated experiences. Again, motion design is already a key principle to master for the emerging web.

Mike Riethmuller will look at how type responds to the user’s screen size, orientation and resolution – a holy grail of responsive design – and the CSS we need to make it a reality.

In a related session, Mandy Michael will look at various features of CSS to help create eye-catching text effects.

Brett Snaidero will complement Rachel’s presentation by giving us a look at how SVG combined with CSS enables animation with little pain, and no need for complex code.

If your primary job is building the front end, and working with CSS, HTML and SVG, there’s more than enough here to considerably extend your skill set and inspire you, while if you’re focused more on UX, CX, IxD, and Product Design, come and see what tools are now available to create even more compelling experiences.