thirtyonethree

I realized after I posted my entry last night that I did not discuss what I took away from Andy Budd’s seminar on CSS Mastery.

He encouraged us to be proud of our work and the choices that we make and not to worry about what others have to say. He made this comment in the context of talking about real world markup. The reality is that there are a lot of different techniques and strategies as we do a CSS design. I came away feeling a bit more confidence as a CSS designer.

He mentioned Microformats. I do not know anything about them and I am looking forward to hearing Jeremy Keith discuss them on Friday. Andy was excited about them and suggested them as a tool.

I benefitted from hearing Andy’s best practices. It made me aware that I had taken that advice away from his book when I read it last May. I have implemented some of his advice, particularly his advice about organizing and commenting on our style sheets. It has been helpful on a couple of designs I have done recently.

I enjoyed hearing about positioning and floats. It was a good refresher from what I read in his book and I learned some more to add to my knowledge.

I want to explore more in the area of the image techniques he discussed. I have not had a chance to work through that section of the book or try some of the techniques he writes about. I was unaware that CSS Opacity is pretty well supported so I might play around with that in the future.

I also enjoyed his discussion on bugs and bug fixing. He pointed out that most of the problems are not with the browser but with the techniques we use or an incomplete understanding of the specifications. I have found this to be true. I appreciated his advice to keep things simple and that can avoid a lot of the problems. He also suggested to try other methods instead of spending a lot of time trying to fix something that is not working. I know I ended up doing that with a CSS Reboot design this summer. One way was not working so I came at it a different way and came up with a solution.

I am looking forward to today’s sessions:

• Pragmatic Web Design
• How to Be a Web Design Superhero
• It’s More Than Markup
• Creating Accessible DHTML
• Improving Front End Architecture

[tags]refresh06, refresh orlando, Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith[/tags]

Today, I attended the first day of the Refresh06 Web conference here in Orlando. I attended 2 crash courses. One of them was taught by Andy Budd, pictures on the right. I had read his CSS book last spring. I enjoyed meeting him and getting to chat with him a couple of times during the day. I also had him sign my copy of his book.

I enjoyed his seminar. It was a good review of the material I had read in the book. I am looking forward to rereading his book and applying more of it to my CSS skills.

The second seminar was Understanding AJAX by Jeremy Keith. I knew a little bit about AJAX and this seminar was a great introduction to the concepts of AJAX. The most helpful thing I got out of the seminar was a strategy to use AJAX to enhance a site but not to use it as an “all or nothing” approach as many sites do today.

Jeremy is applying the principle of graceful degradation from CSS and applying them to AJAX. I am really intrigued by this strategy and want to consider applying it to an AJAX solution I have considered for GodSquad. You can view his presentation online.

I also enjoyed getting to know some of the other conference attendees. One guy works for the Orange County Library system, one with the Census Bureau in D.C., and one of the attendees works for Central Wyoming College (I don’t believe he is responsible for their site current design). Most of the people I met are more on the programming side of Web development. I am looking forward to the start of the conference tomorrow.

[tags]refresh06, refresh orlando, andy budd, jeremy keith, css mastery[/tags]

I am really excited about attending three day Web conference here in Orlando. It is going to be great to pull back and focus on developing my Web design and development skills.

Tomorrow I am taking 2 crash courses, CSS Mastery with Andy Budd and Understanding AJAX with Jeremy Keith. Andy’s book on CSS Mastery is one of the best books I have read on CSS. I am looking forward to hearing from him and practicing more of what I read in the book but have not had time to go back and do.

I am hoping to blog about my experiences at the conference this week. A friend recently cited an article on How to blog a Conference. It is written more for someone who organizes the conference but there are some good tips that even an attendee can use.