Google, via its rich snippets, has reported that microformats has a 94% usage share (as compared with RDFa etc.). So how does the future look for microformats? In this session, we’ll look closely at real problems with implementing microformats in HTML5 and how this can be done, and whether there will be a continuing place for them. We’ll also look at emerging technologies and techniques, such as RelMeAuth and discuss advanced user techniques. As Microformats passes through it’s 5th birthday, we’ll discuss the highs and lows of the project.
Tagged with “sxsw”
(29)
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The Future of Microformats
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Cure for the Common Font
Hundreds of new typefaces are released every year by hundreds of vendors. Some of these fonts are good for nuts-and-bolts text, some for showing off. Some work well on the web, while most are just awful. A select few are destined to be classics. The sheer volume and variety of options can be overwhelming. So, understandably, most designers just stick to the same old safe standbys they’ve always used — the ones that came with their computer or they learned about in school. The panelists, all typographic experts, will show how they broke free of tired text, sharing their secrets for selecting type, including best practices and personal case studies.
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Game On: Design Patterns For User Engagement
How do you drive up user engagement? What game-like design patterns get your users to complete the sign-up, bring friends and come back? This session will expose the design patterns of engagement and incentives, including relevant metrics. Led by Nadya Direkova, Sr. Designer at Google and game designer, it will teach useful techniques that can drive up - and keep - your user base. You will leave with an arsenal of 7 design patterns to: design effective sign-up sessions and tutorials, promote virality, invite return visits, and apply game mechanics beyond points and bagdes. About the speaker: Nadya Direkova is Google’s local search designer and a game mechanics consultant - helping millions of users find knowledge and fun. She comes from the world of game design, having created fun games for Leapfrog and Backbone. She’s taught design at M.I.T. and spoken at IXDA’09 and SXSW’10.
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Where Web Typography Goes To Next
The future of web typography is as uncertain as any other aspect of the medium, but one thing is for sure: it’s got momentum. At no other time has typography been taken so seriously by so many involved in the web, and that means there’s an awful lot of change and innovation to keep up with if you want to stay on the cutting edge of online type. In as much depth as 60 minutes will allow, this presentation will cover recent proposals and additions to CSS 3, from ligatures to hyphenation, synthesis to capitalisation, and much in between. It will cover the reasoning behind the new aspects of CSS 3, and reintroduce older properties which only now are becoming implemented and useful (and thus browser support will not be ignored either). No session on web typography would be complete without discussion of webfonts. There is still much learn in this field, both in what CSS can provide, and the technical implementation within browsers. But web typography is not just about CSS, or even good type setting. The bit that touches us most closely is the medium through which most of us read: text rendering and screens, and this presentation will discuss and demonstrate the cutting edge of both. Web typography is a hugely exciting part of web design, and the field that is moving most quickly. This presentation will give you everything you need to know to keep right on the spur of the serif, the apex of the ascender, and the edge of the curve.
Tagged with sxsw2011 sxsw web typography
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No Excuse: Web Designers Who Can’t Code
Some of the most important design decisions happen in code. In 2009, I gave a talk at the Build conference in Belfast with what I thought was a fairly uncontroversial premise: web designers should write code. Since then, the subject has sparked more than a few debates, including a particular heated pile-on when Elliot Jay Stocks tweeted that he was "shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs. No excuse." In a recent interview, Jonathan Ive said "It’s very hard to learn about materials academically, by reading about them or watching videos about them; the only way you truly understand a material is by making things with it." He’s talking about product design, but the principle is just as relevant to the Web (if not more so). "The best design explicitly acknowledges that you cannot disconnect the form from the material—the material informs the form…. Because when an object’s materials, the materials’ processes and the form are all perfectly aligned…. People recognize that object as authentic and real in a very particular way." As our industry grows and roles get more specialized, it’s possible to become a "web designer" without more than a cursory understanding of the fundamental building materials of the Web: the code. Is this just the price of progress? Are the days of the web craftsman soon to be in the past? Or is a hybrid approach to web design and development something worth preserve?
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How Not to Design Like a Developer
Open source projects, in particular, have long skimped on presentation and packaging (basically, they are the equivalent of "she has a great personality!" in the world of blind dating). This talk is on how designer (graphic, UI & UX, all deft ninjas of the visual and editorial) organize and contribute their visual hacks to open source projects, working in tandem with engineers. Specifically, we’ll look at how designers can get involved with Mozilla’s Creative Collective, as well as how developers can leverage some of lessons learned by Mozilla’s workflow and community-organizing techniques to foster their own design communities and inspire individuals to contribute to other open source projects of all sizes. People who have contributed to or are working on an open source project, do so in an effort to create and distribute free software (free as in “free speech” v. free as in “drinks on me tonight!”*). This is a great opportunity to get involved with a team and movement (or start your own) that making a better and more awesome internet. As a bonus, contributing to open source is also a great way to enhance your portfolio, discover the brightest people, and create career-inspiring opportunities for yourself and your peers.
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The Why & How of Decentralized Web Identity | SXSW 2011 panel
The big players in social networking are setting a plodding pace of innovation. New startups, keen to offer useful and exciting new means of communication, have migrated wholesale to platform-based approaches. Constrained by what it means to be boxed into 140 characters or Facebook’s vision of a lifestream, we’re left without a compelling view of what "social" means on the web. It’s time to take back our identities, and with it the web. We’ll discuss examples of how the web is more Awesome when people are a part of it (and not just a layer on top of a few companies’ databases). We’ll talk about what kinds of approaches make sense in this new world (and which don’t), and discuss some successes (and failures) that have happened along the way. Parts of this discussion will be technical; you can’t build the web without some HTML, and we can’t build a social web without getting our hands dirty. However, tech is boring. You can always look up how to do something - knowing why you want to do something is the hard part. We’re going to look beyond the modern gold rush, and talk about ideas that have lasting value for content providers, producers, and consumers, and why you should care.
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Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom
How individuals and groups can maintain some shred of dignity and support themselves by creating ad and sponsorship programs that benefit and respect publishers, readers and advertisers. Presented by John Gruber of Daring Fireball and Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and The Deck Network.
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149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!
John Gruber (DaringFireball.net) and Merlin Mann (43Folders.com) discuss the current state of blogging as a medium for creative expression, weighing the opportunities and challenges of building a thoughtful online presence in a world where everybody owns a printing press. They’ll consider the ascendance of Digg-friendly "problogs" and debate the subtler pleasures of careful writing that reaches smaller, but potentially less "profitable" audiences.
- John Gruber, Daring Fireball
- Merlin Mann, You Look Nice Today
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A Touchy History of the Future
We pinch it, tap it, shake it and poke it. We’re so enthralled with finally getting to touch our products. But there’s so much more to direct manipulation than just tapping it with our fingers! Let’s explore some progressive interaction models that go beyond touch and into movement, infrared, wearable computing, sound and ambient data to really give us an idea of what our immersive interactive future may hold and how we might curate that future now.
Tagged with sxsw sxsw2010 conference touch interface ui interaction