Session Detail

Keynote: RESPECT!

Jeffrey Zeldman, Founder and Executive Creative Director, Happy Cog

Architects, attorneys, and firefighters get something most web designers don't: the respect of the community. Our work drives the information age and powers the economy, yet nobody outside the field understands exactly what it is that we do, or why it is important. Learn why journalists, clients, and employers underestimate our abilities and ask for the wrong kind of work—and what you can do to enhance the profession and get buy-in on good web design.

General Session: Extreme Markover — Web Edition Challenge!

Bill Cullifer, WOW Executive Director

The Extreme Markover — Web Edition is an event testing Web professional proficiency and talent while giving back to the community.

This December, the Extreme Markover Committee will tap into the expertise of a panel of leading Web Professional experts attending the Web Design World Boston event to support the initiative by reviewing the charitable organizations Web resources and making recommendations for improvement.

Expert advice will include recommendations for improving markup and scripting, visual design, functionality, Web accessibility and Web marketing and we would like to invite you to participate by contributing your Web professional expertise.

The opening day of the conference WOW will publish the list of recommendations outlined by our panel of experts and Web Design World attendees will be called upon to incorporate the suggestions. While being launched at the Web Design World practicing Web professionals from around the globe who have interest in contributing their services for charity are also eligible to participate. The WOW organization will podcast the process with interviews of the Web professional experts, the participants and the selected non-profit charity selected so others can use these resources in a classroom setting as a teaching tool.

ExtremeMarkover — Web Edition is designed to test the artistic, creative, technical and business knowledge and skills of aspiring and practicing Web professionals while utilizing some of the best tools available, all in a peer environment and for a great educational cause.

For additional detail and to sign up visit www.extrememarkover.org

General Session: Accessibility: It's for Everyone and Everything

Shawn Henry, Web Accessibility Initiative, W3C

Accessibility is a key aspect of high-quality web sites, yet the benefits of accessibility for web designers and for web users are not widely understood. Yes, accessibility is critically important for users with vision and motor impairments. But the fundamental design practices behind accessibility also streamline the site-development process and open the doors to key markets, such as mobile phones and other alternative browsing devices.

Accessibility is also on the forefront of cutting-edge technical development—with the W3C's standards draft for Accessible Rich Internet Applications, for example. The bottom line: following today's best practices for accessibility is a great way to make your web site shine for users on the front end, and for developers on the back end. Learn how the latest XHTML specifications and development practices can expand your audience, streamline your development, and make your sites available to everyone and everything.

Your Users Trust Each Other, Not You: Why and How to Implement Ratings and Reviews

Steve Mulder, Director of Emerging Interactions, Molecular

Ratings and reviews have been a staple of good online experiences for years, yet many organizations still resist the onslaught of user opinions on their own sites. Are ratings and reviews right for my business? How much do my users want them? What's the ROI? How do I deal with negative reviews? And if I go ahead with ratings and reviews, what are best practices for designing and implementing them? How do I make them useful and usable? Learn the answers in a session jam-packed with strategies and data for the business folk and practical tips and examples for the design folk.

Embracing Social Publishing

DL Byron, Principal, Textura Design

It isn't enough to blog. Or Twitter. Or Flickr. Or Facebook. If you want to reach a large audience with your organization's message, it's time to embrace multiple social networks and blogs, a concept called social publishing.

In this session, you'll get practical advice, business examples, and best practices for social publishing. See sites that effectively convey their message by mixing links, feeds, and content from other sites. You'll also see how to create a "mellow clutter" that comprises posts, photos, videos, audio, bookmarks, comments, activity streams, and more.

Try Making Yourself More Interesting

DL Byron, Principal, Textura Design

There are no cheat codes for community—no Charles Atlas shortcuts to make your weak pet project grow bulging blog muscles. Want people to think you have an awesome blog? Become awesome and work hard. This session offers a look at how to make your online presence a bit more epic each day. We'll dissect Bike Hugger, Photojojo, Meta filter, and other examples of web interestingness and teach you what to do to make yourself and your organization more interesting.

Web Standards: Fueling Innovation

Aaron Gustafson, Founder and Principal Consultant, Easy! Designs, LLC

Web standards are all about rules and structure, formalities that many people find restrictive and stifling. From another perspective, however, the rigid structure of web standards can be seen as a boon to creativity on the web. In this session, Aaron Gustafson will teach you how to use smart JavaScript to leverage the extensibility of XHTML and CSS and push the boundaries of web design and development, all while still adhering to the best practices of web standards.

Implementing Design: Bulletproof A-Z

Dan Cederholm, Founder, SimpleBits, LLC

As the browser landscape changes, so does our approach to implementing flexible design. Throughout this session, Dan will follow a case study, illustrating ways our interfaces can become more adaptable and worry-free. He'll revisit past methods and techniques, "progressively enrich" our designs with forward-thinking CSS, and bulletproof our markup and style to get more done with less. See which CSS3 properties work today, learn how to utilize jQuery and grid-based CSS, and get insights into how the concepts of craftsmanship can apply to implementing web design.

Reaching Stylesheet Nirvana

Dan Rubin, Founder and Principal, Webgraph

Being a CSS expert is about more than just memorizing selectors. It's also about working to improve the maintainability and efficiency of your style sheets, planning for the future, and mastering your workflow. This session looks at pushing the limits of CSS to create stunning interfaces using clean, meaningful markup. We'll also look at CSS3 and at what the future of web design could look like when CSS3 finally becomes mainstream.

KEYNOTE: Web Design in the Cloud

Ivaylo Lenkov, Founder and CEO, SiteKreator

Salesforce.com pioneered the delivery of business applications in the cloud at the beginning of the decade. Google, Zoho and others migrated the office productivity tools to the cloud just a couple of years ago.

Recently Adobe, Picnik and others enabled image editing in the cloud. But what about Web Design? There has been web-based CMS for years but the web design creation process has been left behind. Learn about the extensive advantages from cloud-based web design, its limitations and how they can be overcome.

General Session: Compatibility in the Brave New World

Joe Marini, Director, Development Tools Ecosystem team, Microsoft

How do I make my pages and scripts compatible across browsers? Is it ever okay to detect a particular version of a browser and then use that information in my pages?

What about all the new portable devices that are now widely available that have Internet access? In this session, Joe Marini addresses these and many other issues related to making your pages work across devices, platforms, and browser versions, and investigates how and when it makes sense to target pages to particular browsers.

Lunch Session: A Website Named Desire

Nishant Kothary, Web Designer, MIX Online

The web design workflow as we know it today is hardly an exact science. Getting a web site off the ground – from concept to execution – often requires the maneuvering skills of a Spanish matador because of all the moving pieces and types of personalities involved. A Website Named Desire is an honest exploration of the web design process through the lens of a recently launched site for web designers and developers: MIX Online. The session will walk through notable experiences during the design and development of the site from sketch to full-featured CMS.

General Session: Designing User Interfaces: Details Make the Difference

Dan Rubin, Founder and Principal, Webgraph

So you already know everything there is to know about CSS, JavaScript, information architecture, usability, and accessibility. But you feel like you're missing something: that "flair." You know, that great look and style that will turn heads. Learn to use grids, typography, abstraction, ornamentation, and photography to create aesthetically pleasing, sexy interfaces.

General Session: Web Pro Education Summit

The Web Professional Education Summit is the first of its kind organized to stimulate discussion and present solutions for innovation in education for the technical and creative professional. "A genuine disconnect exists between education, the employment needs of business as well as industry, and those that hire technical and creative professionals. Educators contend that enrollment rates are at an all time low for technical and creative jobs, yet, business and industry professionals cite that they can't find the talent and the skills to land the job and we aim to improve upon that" said Bill Cullifer, WOW executive Director and event organizer.

This ninety-minute event promises a highly interactive approach to the present state of Web professional and IT education. WOW's Web Professional Education Summit will review current trends and required skills that employer's need that will serve students, educators, parents, industry, and employers operating throughout the region.

Click here for more information on the Web Pro Education Summit

Effective JavaScript Programming

Joe Marini, Director, Development Tools Ecosystem team, Microsoft

Still not sure how to use Object-Oriented JavaScript? Confused by the modern event model available in the latest browsers? Confounded by modern programming techniques, such as exception handling? Looking for ways to make your JavaScript code efficient, readable, and extensible? This session unravels these and other mysteries of the JavaScript language. Come join Joe Marini and learn how to make the most effective use of your coding skills—and pick up a few new ones along the way.

Real-World XML Design and Development

Joe Marini, Director, Development Tools Ecosystem team, Microsoft

Now that XML has become a mainstream, widely-used technology, web designers and developers find themselves confronted with an ever-increasing number of techniques and technologies for working with it. This session covers an end-to-end example of designing an XML vocabulary, working with various ways of validating and displaying the information in a page, and storing the information on the back end.

Fundamental Progressive Enhancement

Aaron Gustafson, Founder and Principal Consultant, Easy! Designs, LLC

"Progressive enhancement" involves designing sites in a way that allows everyone to access the basic content of a web page while also providing enhanced versions to visitors with faster bandwidth or more advanced browsers. In this session, Aaron Gustafson covers the current best practice in this critical aspect of web standards development. Staring with an introduction to the topic, Aaron will walk you through the best ways to apply style and behavior to your pages, providing concrete examples and implementations that you can start using right away.

Web Design for ROI: How Design Impacts Effectiveness

Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing

It's a sad fact: most web sites don't achieve their potential. What's even more disturbing, is that most site owners seem to be okay with that. Why? Why is it okay, for example, that shopping carts are abandoned 60 percent of the time? The answer: Because in order to make your sites effective, you need to treat them as seriously as a business, and understand how design can help them achieve your objectives.

In this eye-opening tactical session, Lance Loveday explores the dysfunction behind most web site projects, and highlights the astonishing impact that design can have when it supports business goals and is held accountable with metrics.

You'll see the most common errors organizations—and designers—make when thinking about their web sites. You'll get specific design guidelines that increase web site effectiveness, illustrated with case studies from various types of organizations, including e-commerce, lead generation, non-profit, government, and education sites. See how to prioritize your design efforts on the areas and elements that really matter, and learn about tools and resources you can use to test and measure your site's effectiveness. Whether you're running an e-commerce storefront or a university site, you'll come away with new perspectives on how your design decisions impact a site's effectiveness.

Galleries: The Hardest-Working Pages on Your Site

Jared Spool, Founder, User Interface Engineering

Gallery pages are lists of links to more detailed pages—for example, a list of cell phone models that links to detailed descriptions of each model. An effective gallery page will drive users to success. A vague, information-poor gallery leads to "pogosticking"—when users jump up and down in the hierarchy of the site, hoping they'll eventually hit the content they desire. It leads to frustration more often than success.

In this session, you'll see examples of poorly designed gallery pages and of ones that work. See how adding critical pieces of information to your gallery pages can make them far more effective, and learn the best ways to create gallery pages that work for you rather than against you.

Accessibility in a Web 2.0 World

Shawn Henry, Web Accessibility Initiative, W3C

Web 2.0, Ajax, rich web applications, blogs, wikis—the web continues to develop. What are the accessibility issues in this next-generation web? Scripting, once a no-no for accessibility, is a key aspect. Join us to get the latest on how the W3C's new web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG), and Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite (WAI-ARIA) address these web developments. Learn how to take advantage of current and developing strategies to make dynamic web content and applications accessible.

General Session: Deconstructing...You!

Jim Heid, WDW Conference Chair;
Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing;
Steve Mulder, Director of Emerging Interactions, Molecular;
Jeffrey Zeldman, Founder, Happy Cog Studios

It's a Web Design World tradition, and always one of our most popular sessions. Top designers join Conference Chair Jim Heid in critically evaluating several of our attendees' sites. Bring your pencil! Your site may be among the ones we examine in this wrap-up session.

Workshops