My @media2006 report.

Atmedia 2006 - In a short breath here’s my take on atmedia 2006:

2 jam-packed days of being inspired, informed, motivated and entertained by a selection of the world’s finest web evangelist’s and a chance to hang out with fellow like minded web designers and developers.

Day 1

I arrived at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre at about 8:15am. As like last year, lots of people from all over Europe. I even heard some Brazilians! I instantly started spotting people who I saw at last year’s atmedia2005. I think there was some hidden code of nodding and smiling at people who you had seen last year in the start of the morning.

This year atmedia had 2 tracks of programmes running side by side for most of the day. I had a few cases where it was really hard to choose which event to go to. The hardest one came on day one, right after Eric Meyer’s Keynote Presentation. Good Design vs. Great Design or…. Using DOM Scripting to Plug the Holes in CSS….? Very hard call, because I really wanted to see Veerle present, because recently she has been talking at some cool events. However Jeremy is one of those speakers who has a great skill of translating scripting issues into basic English steps and taking them to working javascript/DOM snippets. And for me (I am a visual person!) this kind of presentation to get my head around scripting concepts is extremely useful.

Using DOM Scripting to Plug the Holes in CSS
Jeremy talked about how we can target elements on our web pages via the DOM and use javascript to help combat some of the CSS browser issues and annoyances such as wanting the stripy tables effect (without having to manually add an class=”alternate” to each td). As I’d hoped we were walked through some working examples of how to do this. Thanks Jeremy!

IE: 7 and Beyond
Firstly…. I am was delighted to hear that :hover is fixed on ie 7 for all elements!! I was sure I read somewhere that this was not fixed initially, however Chris Wilson did have this in his presentation and said it is fixed! So yay! Not, to get too excited on just the :hover fix (it’s because I find it adds a lot of readability on long lists of information and table elements) from what I saw it seems there are some important css fixes that will make a lot of designers happy. From listening to Chris talk about how they approached fixing css issues, Microsoft said they tackled the most complained about css bugs and worked their way down that list. I am happy that Microsoft have done this, however it’s just a case of hoping we do not have to wait another 5 years for them to give us the next installment. It’s all about action from Microsoft at this stage. Get ie7 out the door and keep up with those updates on css and standards support as well as looking after your user’s security. But we have a part to play to and I came away with this message. I will be making a conscious effort to test on ie7 and make my sites old and new work on ie7. Roll on more long nights of CSS battling! Oh joy.

The new accessibility guidelines: WCAG 2.0
This is a beast! I went along to this presentation because I felt it just had to be done, not because I wanted to. Also from reading Joe Clarks To Hell with WCAG on alistapart I thought I’m gonna need all the help I can get in understanding this beast! Well, it turns out I was right. The panel did a good job of picking out examples from WCAG 1.0 and comparing the same in WCAG 2.0. There’s a lot of new terminology to learn for interpreting this document. WCAG 2.0 has been written to be technology-neutral, which has resulted in bloated success criteria (there’s another new word for priority level) that no human unarmed with a new found WCAG 2.0 dictionary can understand! Anything good to say about WCAG 2.0? Well in my opinion, no not at this stage. I felt drained and unexcited about the task of looking through this document when it becomes final. On that note I am moving on! Thanks to the panel for helping decode some of WCAG 2.0 so far and outlining some of the important points it would have taken me a lot of time to get to.

The Next Generation of Web Apps
This session was great! Jeffery Veen is an animated presenter who injected a lot of passion and great ideas to his presentation. For me Jeffery did a fantastic job is illustrating how to put information at the users fingertips. He got me thinking about what to consider when I have to present information. Think about how the user might want to view and utilise that data and how can you make it more interactive for them and let them have more control. I really hope this gets a pod cast somewhere!

To wrap up the first evening, atmedia secured the Sugar Reef for football fans and after event drinks. Luckily, I managed to find some non-footy fans (you know who you are) and we went off for a few beers and a Thai green curry before the atmedia evening do. After we went onto the Sugar Reef to trade in our beans for liquids!

Day 2

Bulletproof Web Design
I am pleased to say that many of the smart ideas Dan Cederholm talked about in his presentation I am already doing in my web designs. It’s not always a bad thing to hear about methods that you are already using in your own work. Especially when you hadn’t read about it elsewhere and just implemented them yourself. It’s great to think “hey, I have been doing that for ages and Dan Cederholm does that too”. So for me Dan’s talk just re-enforced ideas that I am already doing to make my sites bulletproof. Such as, making sure you allow for scaling of text breaking out of their boxes and handling background images and colour appropriately etc.

Beyond a Code Audit
Robin Christopherson did an excellent job on highlighting issues for users of the internet with visual impairments, mobility difficulties and learning difficulties. This year Robin had some videos that were really eye opening. I am hoping they are going to be available for download!

Mobile Web Design
I had no idea what to expect from Cameron Moll’s presentation. I haven’t done anything for the mobile web but I was interested in hearing what the state of play was. I was a bit disappointed to hear about the multitude of mobile browsers and limited supported for css on such platforms. Cameron also highlighted the need for a community for the mobile web, as there are a lot of folk out there who are doing things blind and have to figure out a lot for themselves.

Strategic CSS Management
Presented by a panel of css experts this proved to be a solid presentation/Q&A. CSS management can be a tricky business when you are dealing with CMS, multiple web editors, large sites with various page layouts etc. Some common sense concepts to help you keep your css management in order.

The Fine Art of Web Design
Matching lasts years quality appearance, Andy Clarke secured the last slot of the show and woke us all up and had us standing on our seats! Literally. Andy delivered some intriguing views on how we should be thinking creatively about our web designs. Getting away from all the current styles that we have done; and done so well, but keep doing again. It’s time to see some new ideas and start pushing through some new CSS techniques and try not to be scared to take advantage of the browsers that do support them! Well said Andy, I’ll be thinking a lot about what you said in my work ahead.

All in all, atmedia 2006 was 2 days of double the amount from atmedia 2005, which was well thought out and worth the trip. Thanks to Patrick at Vivabit and everyone else who was involved in organising this unique mammoth event.

The peeps list

It was really great to meet some of you from last year and new people! I am hoping to meet up with some of you again in the future! So here’s my list of people I met up with again and new found friends I hope. Please feel free to get in touch! I am sure I gave out my details to most you.

• Dru Hill
• Richard Payne
• Simon Clayson
• Bruce Lawson
• Gez Lemon
• Matt Machell
• Jim Callender
• Andy Croll
• Simon Collison
• Chris Mills
• James Smith
• L-J & James
• Veerle
• Rachel Andrew

I didn’t get everyone’s web addy and last name! Let me know.
My only complaint is the lack of drink during some breaks.