@media2005

[francis]

Just spent an amazing two days at @media2005 (http://www.atmedia2005.co.uk/) in London. Met and spoke to Zeldman (http://www.zeldman.com) (got book signed), the amazing Joe Clark (http://www.joeclark.org/) (got book signed), Douglas Bowman (http://www.stopdesign.com/), Molly E. Holzschlag (http://www.molly.com/) (got book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321303474/qid=1118477015/sr=8-2/ref=pd_ka_2/026-3390498-6179652) signed), Peter Paul Koch (http://www.quirksmode.org/), Roger Johansson (http://www.456bereastreet.com/). Really wanted to talk to Andy Budd (http://www.andybudd.com/) and (especially) Jon Hicks (http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/) but they were constantly busy.

Bowman's stuff was amazing, especially the walk through of putting the Blogger templates together - it was very cool to just be in the same room as people like him and Zeldman. Jeremy Keith's (http://adactio.com/journal/) presentation on using JavaScript for good not evil was actually very good and left me enthused about using more JS to leave source XHTML as minimal as possible. If his forthcoming book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590595335/qid=1118477595/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_0_1/026-3390498-6179652) is as good, it will be essential reading.

There were loads of other people of note in the room as well but the names escape me. An excellent couple of days rounded off by seeing Star Wars in Leicester Square projected onto Odeon's massive screen via a digital projector for an amazing audio/visual experience. The best of the prequels without a shadow of a doubt.

Oh, and Molly announced a WaSP (http://www.webstandards.org/) project that is very interesting/exciting/hopeful. It'll be formally announced in the next week/fortnight, but until then we're not supposed to say anything.

[David]

Francis, sounds great. I tried to get tickets a couple of months ago but it had completely sold out and there was a long waiting list. How did you manage to get tickets?

Interesting to hear that JS may be making a come-back. It's been out of favour for some time now and since most people only used it for image roll-overs (now possible with CSS) and the various security issues, it has rather taken a back seat.

I've ordered a copy of the Zen CSS book for the library. I haven't seen it yet but it sounds good. I just hope that it's better than Molly's previous book Color for Websites (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/2880467411/qid=1118480267/sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_11_10/026-3082635-9959611), which is not good and contains a number of inaccuracies.

Well done, maybe some of the magic will rub off.

[francis]

We got tickets as soon as it was announced (muchos gracias to my manager and my department's conference budget). Zeldman made a point (as did others) that the much vaunted AJAX is basically DHTML under a different name with a few modern touches; at the end of the day it's XHTML, CSS and JS.

The JS that interests me is adding in code (eg XHTML attributes) via the DOM that will really clear up the original document. For example, just by adding a class to a link (just as you might with CSS) you can, via a window.onload function, change all links with that class to work as a popup or to open in a new window, or whatever - no need for any onclick events at all. You can also do things via the DOM that will be available in CSS 3, for example selecting the first, last, nth child of an element and then doing something to it. In CSS you'd be styling it, via the DOM you can add style or maybe add in XHTML attributes for the CSS to hook into. And because the DOM is practically universal, this is available now. It's important to ensure that any functionality that's added in doesn't break the site in JS is unaviable doesn't screw up SEO etc. Used well, subtle JS could be a real boon. I went with a colleague who has always been massively against JS, but he came away wanting to know more.

I don't really know any of Molly's other work, but she's really vivacious and an excellent speaker. I'd read that you really have to meet Joe Clark to understand why he sometimes comes across as opinionated in his writing, and it's true - he is a real character. And a helpful one who's hopefully going to be mailing me with some research on screen readers and layouts for a work project.

I almost forgot Robin Christopherson (http://www.atmedia2005.co.uk/speakers.php#christopherson), who was superb - a really nice guy and a very good presenter - even more impressive as he's blind and ran everything via a laptop with JAWS running on it. He worked his way around that machine better than some of the sighted presenters.

Keep an eye out for @media2006 as it looks a definite. They wanted to know who to ask new year so I said Meyer, Shear, Cederholm and Celik - a heavy CSS bias, but a whole load of amazing talent.

[francis]

If you're interested, Joe Clark live blogged the event (http://blog.fawny.org/category/events/media2005/) - read from the bottom up for the correct running order over the two days.

[francis]

This is the announcement that Molly told the @media delegates about. (http://webstandards.org/press/releases/archive/2005/07/05/index.html) Can't believe that it actually managed to stay under wraps. Hopefully this is very good news for all the developers out there, although the press release is heavily slanted towards .Net2 beta. .Net, apparently, produces atrocious XHTML. I guess the majority of us want IE to be more of a focus.

[Tom]

The @media2005 website has the fastest response time I ever remember.

Does anyone know of a good digital imaging show? I'd like to talk to scanner manufacturers and have a look at digital cameras - without the crowds who go to camera shows.