Refresh06 – Crash Course Day

November 15, 2006

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.