Industry Events Blog Archive
Posted December 11, 2009 at 8:41 AM in Industry Events, Web Standards | Comments Off
If you’re planning which conferences you’ll attend next year, be sure to look in to In Control Orlando, a Web Design Workshop Conference, being held February 22-23 in Orlando, Florida!
I presented at In Control Cincinnati this year and thought it was great. As a presenter, having only 60 minutes to relay your information and message can cause you to rush — but the workshop format lengthens each talk to an hour and 45 minutes so there’s plenty of time for taking it easy, giving demos, and answering questions. I think that makes for a much better experience for attendees, too — no more furious note-taking without ideas sinking in!
As for the presenters, you’ll be learning from some industry leaders: Jared Spool, Ethan Marcotte, Kelly Goto, Stephanie Sullivan, and Christopher Schmitt. (Nope, sorry, I won’t be there… and I’m kinda jealous, because I’d really like to see these folks speak!)
Interested? Want to get $50 off the registration price? Use this discount code: INCKIMB
Posted July 21, 2009 at 8:46 AM in Industry Events, Presentations, Web Standards | Comments (2)
This past Saturday I gave my CSS Summit presentation on CSS & Troubleshooting IE6. Feel free to download the presentation slides to check out what I covered!
In the chat room, a number of questions and comments came up regarding the use of CSS hacks to address IE. I don’t know how many people were in the camp of “all hacks are bad, all CSS must validate!” versus “who cares, use all the hacks you want”, but I was put on the spot and asked for my two cents. I said something to the effect of, “Aiming to write CSS which validates is a great goal and perfectly achievable on your personal site, but when putting together a site for work or for a client, especially a large site, you may find that using hacks is easier to write and read, and will scale better over time — so long as you plan a way out.”
I think that resonated with some of the folks in attendance, who have always felt that to honor the Web Standards cause, a developer always had to follow the best practices and have valid code at all times.
So, just to reiterate, no, you don’t have to have valid markup and style sheets all of the time. In fact, there are times where you’ll intentionally code something not valid — whether it’s the use of the target attribute for an anchor to make sure a link opens in a new tab/window, or whether it’s the application of a hack in your CSS, so a future developer doesn’t have to look through multiple CSS files to figure out what you did. I think this is perfectly acceptable, provided you execute the hack consciously. At almost all of the large companies where I’ve worked*, we’ve had to use hacks or deliver non-valid code. It’s just a fact of life. It’s what you know about your non-validating code, what you plan for**, that matters.
*At PayPal, we attempted to maintain separate IE6 and IE7 style sheets, called with conditional comments; this caused developers to have to write additional CSS in many cases, as the CSS architecture included a global CSS file, one or more product/flow/page-specific CSS files, and then these IE-specific CSS files. Due to the cascade, overwriting one style in the IE-specific CSS file sometimes meant writing additional lines of CSS to restore a style — unless you could ensure that tweaking selectors in the other CSS files to make them more specific would be a better fix, without breaking any other pages… perhaps you see where I’m going with this? With over 100 developers potentially working on a bit of code, decoupling IE-specific styles created a nightmare situation, which inline hacks would have solved in a way that would have been easier to read and easier to maintain.
**On the other hand, at CIM, we have no coding standards (yet), so each developer appears to be addressing browser-specific issues in whatever way they want. I’ve seen multiple hacks used in our code and backing them out later is going to be a major challenge. When you do use hacks, make sure everyone on the project/working on the site uses the same ones!
So, with that, you have my permission to use hacks and write non-validating code — just make sure you have a good reason for doing so, in case someone comes asking why you did it. ‘Cause I won’t back you up if you don’t have solid justification!
Posted June 3, 2009 at 9:31 AM in CSS, Industry Events, Web Standards | Comments (5)
In case you hadn’t already heard, The CSS Summit is coming to a desktop near you on Saturday, July 18! This online conference is offering a slate of presenters who will talk about typography, CSS3, flexible layouts, HTML5, jQuery, troubleshooting IE6, and more.
Since it’s an online conference, there are no travel expenses, and registration is only $139 for individuals! (If you want to round up a group of folks in your living room or office, you can register as a meeting room for just $439!) However, if you register via this link, you’ll get $25 off the price!
As you may have guessed from the title of this post, I’m presenting on the topic of troubleshooting IE6. Unlike most Web developers, I don’t hate IE6. In fact, it has a special place in my heart, as it enabled my team at AOL to build some of the most awesomely advanced CSS-based grids and templates ever. (No joke, I see folks still trying to do what we did back in the day!) Yes, I still get frustrated by having to deal with some of the odd bugs it presents with, from time to time, but generally I’ve learned how to plan for and work around those bugs. So that’s what I’ll be speaking to.
Of course, if you have particular pain points or concerns that you think I should address, please let me know by adding your two cents here. Thanks!
Posted February 5, 2009 at 10:28 PM in Industry Events, Web Standards | Comments Off
The good folks at AIGA Cincinnati have announced a new Web design conference — the In Control Web Design Workshop Conference — which will be held June 11-12 in Cincinnati.
Organized largely by Christopher Schmitt, it’s a single-track conference of longer workshops. Unlike other conferences where sessions last an hour, speakers at this conference will be in control (ha!) of the mic for nearly two hours. This will give attendees the opportunity to really dive into the topics being presented!
I’m leading a workshop on my favorite topic — style guides and standards. After many years of creating and maintaining style guides, and many requests from readers like you, I’m finally working on some templates which will be part of the materials given away at this session.
If you want to be among the first to get these resources, register now! Through May 10, use discount code INCBLES to get $50 off the early bird rate. Managers, discounts available for groups of three or more.
Posted March 30, 2008 at 2:23 AM in Industry Events, Meeeeeeee, Web Standards | Comments Off
I have a few speaking gigs coming up in May and June, and currently those conferences are offering some discounts. Register soon for early bird savings, and let me know if you’ll be at any of my talks!
WebVisions – May 22-23 in Portland, Oregon: I’ll be giving a talk called Web Site Optimization in Seven Easy Steps on Friday the 23rd at 2:45 PM. Register by March 31st (meep! very soon!) and the cost is only $180 for a conference pass, or sign up for a workshop for $375 and get the conference pass for only $130!
Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference – June 10-13 in Nashville, Tennesee: On Friday, June 13 at 10:15 AM I’ll teach attendees about creating design and development standards in the workplace. Use discount code WDDSPKR to get $200 off any conference package. Early bird pricing is in effect until May 2nd.
An Event Apart – June 23-24 in Boston, Massachusetts: Standing between you and lunch is where I’ll be on Tuesday the 24th at 12:15 PM; hear me talk about standards in the enterprise and then they’ll let you eat. And you can get $50 off with code AEABLESS; with early bird pricing (through May 26) get an additional $100 off.
Hi, my name is Kimberly Blessing. I'm a computer scientist, Web developer, standards evangelist, feminist, and geek. This is where I write about life, the Web, technology, women's issues, and whatever else comes to mind.
