The presentation and example files from TODCON MX in Las Vegas last week are now available via the Talks page. Thanks and apologies to those who waited; it took me a lot longer than it should have to get these online.
There’s a great theme at the Zen Garden: What Lies Beneath. It’s very non-traditional (hint: you don’t scroll like normal) but very well done, nice and earthy. There have been several other contributions since I last mentioned the site, all of them quite interesting. The design process behind one of them has been explained in some detail by its author, Doug Bowman, who knows quite a few things about the power of CSS-based design.
Meanwhile, the Literary Moose has taken advantage of the CSS3 definition of content to show how text can be replaced with an image in a gracefully flexible manner. If you just see plain text for the headline, follow the link to the screenshot, which was taken in Opera. If more browsers supported this behavior, we could stop using <span>-based image replacement hacks such as those employed at the Zen Garden and other sites. I’m not slamming said sites: such hacks are necessary if certain effects are to be achieved in today’s browsers. It’s still good to have someone pointing out where we might be able to go tomorrow.
As you might have guessed, I’m back from TODCON MX Vegas, which was a real kick on many levels (but not the literal one). That is one seriously unhinged and fun group of folks, and I’d like to thank Ray West for finally getting me there. It seems my presentations were all very well received, which is always preferable to the alternatives, especially the ones involving torches and pitchforks. I hope to get my files online in the next few days, particularly the ones from the “Redesigning” talk. Pictures from the conference are already appearing over at DWmommy.com, and I’d bet there will be plenty more to come.
I think that of all gifts one person can give another, trust is the rarest and most precious. In a way that few other gifts do, trust creates a bond that is at once strong and fragile, and that very paradox is part of what gives it so much beauty. The next time I’m feeling downcast about myself, I need only think of all the people who have trusted me with their thoughts, their feelings, with pieces of their lives.
Greetings from fabulously hot Las Vegas, where TODCON MX is about halfway to done. Another few degrees and it’ll be burnt. Kat and I walked off the plane and the jetway was quite toasty, and then as we left it for the cool airport terminal, we were greeted by several rows of slot machines blinking and booping and warbling. Right there in the terminal. Within five steps I turned to Kat and said, “Okay, I officially hate this place.”
I feel the same way every time I’m on a casino floor. Fortunately I’ve been able to largely avoid them, and concentrate on things like conference activities and wireless access.
So far I’ve given one talk and have two to go, the next one coming just after lunch today. The brilliant and beautiful Angela Buraglia seems to have liked my keynote, which was nice to see—especially since her son also appears to appreciate my work.
This has been a particularly interesting conference because, with the exception of Molly, every one of the attendees is someone I’d never before met in person. Many of them I know from online work and correspondence, of course, but it’s always good to associate a physical presence with a name. Or, in this case, a whole bunch of names.
As for dinner last night… well. This is definitely a fun group of folks, that’s for sure, and surprisingly difficult to offend. The advertisements all claim that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I may soon have some photographic evidence to the contrary. (Insert evil chuckle here.)
I’m off to Las Vegas to speak at TODCON MX, so come say “hi” if you’re there! I did a quick check of the weather forecast for Vegas and the high temperatures are projected to be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day I’m down there. Holy mother of pearl, that’s hot… especially for a pale Northern boy like me.
So apparently Internet Explorer for Windows won’t be developed as a standalone product any more, but (if I read the article correctly) will instead be bolted even more deeply to the operating system than it is already. Yeah, that sounds like a great plan. Because, you know, the security of their existing products has always been so exemplary.
Regional linguistic variations are funny. The BBC News UK Web site has an article with this lead paragraph:
US President George W Bush has launched his bid for re-election, filing papers declaring his intention to contest next year’s vote.
Here in America, the usual meaning assigned to “contest,” at least in this context, would be “challenge” instead of “strive to win”—so to us Yanks, the implication is that Bush is already preparing to challenge the results of the next election. Sounds like an Onion story, doesn’t it?
Speaking of linguistic variations, I now have in my possession copies of Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide in Polish, Bulgarian, and Korean. Two of each, in fact. The surreal part is that all the examples and screenshots are still in English, while the main text is in something not English. I have to wonder how that affects the book’s utility for local readers.
So not only will I be speaking at The Other Dreamweaver Conference (TODCON) next month in Las Vegas, I’ll be giving two technical sessions and delivering the conference keynote. Some other speakers you might know will also be there, including Molly Holzschlag, Murray Summers, Massimo Foti, and Angela Buraglia, among others. It should be an interesting time, what with me giving talks to all those Dreamweaver power users when I, you know, don’t actually use Dreamweaver. Haven’t touched it in years, in fact.
We’re headed off to see The Matrix Reloaded tonight, and as expected it’s already causing hugely polarized reactions among those who’ve seen it. I have pretty low expectations, so I ought to be all right. As with the first one, I expect a lot of goofy exposition and nonsensical backstory mixed in with some eye-popping special effects sequences. Hey, it worked well enough the first time, so why not draw from the same well?
After a great breakfast at El Sol y La Luna and a quick chat with Tantek on der cellphonen, I spent most of the day on planes and arrived back in Cleveland this evening sans Kat; we parted ways in Houston as I flew back home and she flew to San Francisco for a conference of her own. I miss her already.
A quick SxSW Interactive braindump:
Possibly I’ll have more to say, upon reflection. For the moment, I’m going to go get some beauty sleep so I’ll be at my best for tomorrow’s Web Design Meetup.
Jeffrey, Tantek, and I finished up our panel about an hour ago. Apparently the audience enjoyed it, as only one or two people left during the talk and there seems to be some good buzz among attendees. Maybe we’ll expand it and take it on the road. (“Hey, gang, let’s put on a Web talk in my Dad’s old barn!”)
Austin is nice, and SxSW Interactive is quite interesting. Caught some of Fray Café last night but the cigarette smoke drove me elsewhere, unfortunately. I’ve been meeting a lot of people whose names I know well, but whose faces were new to me. That’s the great thing about conferences: they help humanize everything we do, and strengthen intellectual respect into personal appreciation.
Wow. The attendance at last night’s talk was overwhelming, probably a hundred or so people; we ended up having to break down an airwall and spill into an adjoining room to provide space (not to mention seats) for everyone. My deepest thanks go out to everyone who was there to hear me run over my allotted time. The talk file will soon be available on the Talks page. Thanks also to Al Wasco for making the event possible.
Just before the talk, an audience member told me he’d read my journal entry where I talked about the Xupiter toolbar and what it can do to IE/Win, and that he’s basically moving to the Macintosh platform as a result of all the security problems in Microsoft. I’d worry about my apparent power to mold people’s thinking, except I have to remember that’s what it is: an illusion. There’s not only the Xupiter thing, but SQL Slammer hit the news (and Microsoft’s internal network) in the last week, and shortly thereafter a security consultant mentioned he’s thinking of migrating to the Macintosh because it has far fewer security problems. So it’s not just me saying this. If anything, it’s probably just me sailing with the prevailing winds.
None of this really seems terribly important, though, what with tragedies national and personal among those I know. I even find it hard to get worked up over the whole Opera/MSN thing, which feels to me more like a broken browser detect than a deliberate act on Microsoft’s part. As a friend likes to say, “Never ascribe to malice that which can be more easily explained by stupidity.” Sniffing user agent strings to send them different style sheets is, as I may have opined once or twice before, pretty stupid.
I finally managed to pick out frames for my glasses and started wearing them today. All I can say is that I don’t understand how anyone thought this was a good idea. My vision is much sharper in the center, and then gets rapidly distorted towards the frame… and then, beyond the frame, the world looks like it always has. The whole package is messing with my depth perception, balance, and ability to see at all. No wonder prescriptions have to get strong over time; the glasses are wrecking your vision! It’s all an optometristic conspiracy, I tell ya! Aliens would doubtlessly be involved except life isn’t The X-Files.
I wonder how much it actually costs to rent a country. I suppose that’s one of those “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” deals.