Schedule for Breaking Development Orlando 2013

Mobile first and responsive web design aren’t simply two great tastes that go great together.

No they represent much more than that. Mobile first responsive web design is the responsible way to build responsive design. It is the best way to build something that is both responsive from a layout AND a performance perspective.

But if mobile first is the right way to do responsive design, then why are so few people doing it? In this session, we’ll dig into why mobile first responsive design matters and the five techniques necessary to make it work.

Broadcast TV is dead. Long live TV! Despite declining numbers in broadcast TV viewership, consumption of TV Shows and online video is growing faster than ever before. With every Network and their dog madly rushing to provide a second screen experience via native applications, few compelling cross-platform TV experiences exist on the web. Beyond technical considerations, supporting continuous experiences across channels and devices is a complex and fascinating (mobile) user experience problem.

In this presentation, Rod will explore:

• the current landscape on multi-device TV viewing and future behaviors.
• challenges and fallacies around browser driven multi-device interactions
• how mobility and personal interfaces will bridge linear and non-linear TV experiences

Are you trying to make responsive design scale for a complex site? Building an app, but your organization doesn't have an API yet? If so, you've probably got legacy content—content that already exists, and that doesn't fit neatly into your new project.

What do you do? You could ignore it and end up with one of those responsive homepages that devolve into big content blobs after just one tap, or a one-off mobile site that no one can remember to maintain. You could put it off until it becomes the bane of your existence: the thing that "breaks" your design, because it's way messier than you’ve planned for.

Or, you could deal with it. If you take the time to make existing content work for you—by understanding what you've got, identifying patterns and relationships in its structure, and cutting the cruft along the way—you'll end up with a system that will not just support your content, but _enhance_ its meaning, message, and power.

In this talk, you'll learn how to start analyzing content and understanding its structure—and see how content knowledge can help you build better, longer-lasting digital products of all sorts.

Oh, the elusiveness of "One Web". And yet, increasingly users treat the web as one experience — add a product to your cart from your phone during the morning commute, and finish the transaction in the afternoon at work from your desktop computer.

This presentation will examine what's required to present a consistent, delightful experience to users regardless of where the experience begins, continues, and ends. You'll learn to avoid development mistakes committed by even the most seasoned among us, and you'll see plenty of examples from teams big and small doing it right.

Mobile browsers promise a broad range of features applicable for rich multi-media applications, such as games. Without the limitation of desktop legacy systems, developers are encouraged to make heavy use of new web technologies from the CSS3 and HTML5 spec. However, implementation quality differs greatly between systems. This talk will show how the cornerstones of multi-media apps, such as animation and sound, differ from their well-known counterparts in the desktop world once they reach mobile devices, and what you can do to implement robust solutions.

Apple's iPhone SDK has proven the largest disruption to software development since the Web, sparking the creation in a few short years of the largest medium for consumer engagement in the world, eclipsing even movies and television. The Web, once destined to be the industry's dominant app platform, now has an uncertain future in mobile at a time when mobile is disrupting the entire PC industry. Is the Web destined to reclaim its former glory, or will app popularity continue its explosive growth? Join Ben and Dion as they discuss the web vs. app conflict in the context of the present and the post-PC era beyond.

The Web community has come a long way in pushing for solid cross-browser standards support and it's incredibly important that as developers we focus on leveraging these standards in a responsible and practical way. In this talk, we'll discuss and learn about the standards process, the best practices for identifying and embracing stable standards, and how to leverage standards responsibly to build websites that are cross-browser and available to broad audiences.

In the last couple of years a deluge of new web technologies have appeared, allowing for the creation of ever richer and more immersive web applications. The FT is one of the pioneers in the use of newly minted HTML5 technologies to build web apps that are virtually indistinguishable from native apps. But using these technologies is far from easy. I'll cover some of the compelling reasons for choosing HTML5 and investing in the web platform, with a focus on offline technologies that enable web apps to run without a network connection. The examples will feature real-life code from our FT and the Economist applications, so you know that the techniques here are applicable to large, complex problems.

We’re not gonna let that happen, though.

Responsive web design has been catching a lot of flak lately. RWD is taking the blame for huge, asset-heavy websites—but that’s on us, not responsive design. We can do better than blaming our tools.

In this presentation we'll discuss strategies for smarter asset delivery, techniques that avoid introducing potential points of failure, and ways of dealing with a vast landscape of unknowns without introducing unnecessary overhead.

From smartphones to tablets to everything in between, a wider variety of computing devices than ever before are being used to get online. These devices have different screen sizes and resolutions, input methods, and even different modes of use. Most organizations have responded to this new reality by creating separate experiences for new devices types: a separate mobile site, a separate tablet site, and so on. But today’s devices are blurring even these lines.

The good news is you don't need lots of different Web sites to provide a great experience across all these devices. In fact, you only need one Web site with a multi-device design. The bad news is it requires a different way of designing and developing for the Web. Find out why and how in this talk from author of Mobile First, Luke Wroblewski.

Every decision we make affects the way real people experience our products. We’ve all heard the rallying cry for user-centered design, but even those of us who ascribe to that ideal often fall back on our own biases and instincts when it comes to making decisions about how people experience our content and our services. Sadly, this often means we make decisions we think will be good for our "users"—that anonymous, faceless crowd—rather than actually trying to understand the perspectives, surroundings, capabilities, and disadvantages of the actual people who we are here to serve.

In this session, Aaron Gustafson will explore why empathy is a good thing, how empathy empowers creativity, and how we, as a community, can inject more empathy into our work.

Developing for the mobile web is a wild west of exploring technique, quickly adopting browser standards, dealing with a legacy browser and tackling brand new browsers constantly. It's already a huge challenge to do it right, but still we're not taking it seriously enough. We're losing the battle and slowly losing the war. In this talk Paul will outline the current state of the mobile web as an application platform and what needs to happen to recover the platform we've invested our time and passion into.