Sessions

After HTML5: Mobile Device APIs and PhoneGap by Brian Leroux

The world is enthralled with this next ambitious iteration of the web labeled HTML5. An amazing array of new features including: offline access, client storage, media, webfonts, new form elements, canvas, svg, css and more. While the spec is still being worked on most of these things are here today in most modern browsers. So what will be next? There are more web enabled handsets than television sets. But this isn't the whole story. Mobiles bring a whole new level of intelligence to computing by way of enhanced sensors and contextual data. This next revolution, Device APIs, is being prototyped in the PhoneGap project. Join Brian for a rowdy look at the not so distant future of the web.

Beyond the Mobile Web by Stephanie Rieger

Context is often cited as the single most important factor in design for the mobile medium. Mobile devices are of course 'mobile', but they are also small, always on, always with us, and can instantly connect us to the people we love. Mobile services must therefore be simple, social, and well-focussed--enabling us to quickly get things done on even the smallest screens.

This is all well and good, but mobile devices have changed. They may be mobile, but many have already stopped being 'phones'—nor do they resemble what we traditionally think of as computers. This presentation will explore how our use, and perception of mobile devices is changing, and how these changes may impact how we should design for them going forward.

Devices, designs and enabling behaviours by Antony Ribot

We're reaching a point in time where the device is now enabling interactions and behaviours in the physical world. We live in a task-oriented world and with technology becoming less visible (due to good design), we are well on our way to creating experiences that the mass audience can consume. How do we make technology less visible? What kind of design results in new physical behaviours? Why is this important for the future? These are some of the questions I'm going to have a go at tackling.

High Performance Mobile by Steve Souders

Case studies from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Netflix, and others testify that making websites faster drives more traffic to your site, improves the user experience, increases revenue, and reduces operating costs. Best practices, tools, and web services abound for improving website performance on the desktop. But where are we when it comes to mobile performance? Join Steve Souders as he presents the latest developments for analyzing mobile performance and creating a faster mobile experience.

How to put the Mobile in the Mobile Web by Jen Hanen

Media queries, server-side or client-side sniffers, how do we determine if the user is a mobile or desktop device? This tech talk will discuss which is the right solution(s) and how to implement it taking into consideration the various mobile user's browser capacity, bandwidth restrictions, as well as user choice.

jQuery Mobile: Building tools for a changing web by Scott Jehl

Scott Jehl of the jQuery Mobile team will present the challenges and philosophy of the jQuery Mobile Framework: a mobile-first JavaScript toolkit that uses progressive enhancement to embrace features of the latest browsers while maintaining universal accessibility for the many ways in which people use the web today. The session will cover the basic use cases and features of the framework, with a candid discussion of the challenges, decisions, influences, and even missteps encountered in the process of building a mobile web framework as our definition of "mobile" continues to evolve.

Meta layout: a closer look at media queries by Stephen Hay

It's the layout behind the layout: in this session Stephen will dissect the media query. After a brief review of query syntax, we'll touch on logical expressions, and you'll learn which media features are relevant to mobile design and how and when these can best be used. Stephen will explore the visual and layout viewports and the viewport meta element, and how these relate to media queries. We'll discuss the pros and cons of using media queries in CSS versus within media attributes in HTML, and handle examples of each. Stephen will share his thoughts on how to use this information to develop a meta-layout strategy depending on your site's needs.

Mobile first! by Luke Wroblewski

For years, most Web teams have designed for the desktop. Mobile, if it even happened, was a port off the desktop version, designed and built before anyone even considered the mobile experience. This made perfect sense for a while. Browsing the Web on mobile phones was painful; carriers controlled access to the Web on their devices; and mobile network speeds made everything often grind to a halt.

But things have changed so dramatically over the past few years that starting with the desktop may be an increasingly backwards way of thinking about a Web product. Designing for mobile first can not only open up new opportunities for growth, it can lead to a better overall user experience for a Web site or application.

In this session, Luke Wroblewski will dig into the three key reasons to consider mobile first: mobile is seeing explosive growth; mobile forces you to focus; and mobile extends your capabilities.

Mobile & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm by Jared Spool

The world of web application design is expanding at a rapid rate. We’re now expected to design great experiences across a huge variety of platforms, from small screens to large displays. The flood of iPad applications and successful online businesses are showing our executives that design matters.

Why is all this happening now? Where is it all going? UIE’s own Jared Spool will show you how four driving forces—market maturity, the emergence of experience, Kano’s model, and Sturgeon’s Law—are increasing the visibility and value of design in organizations everywhere. He’ll show you what the next generation of design teams will look like and how you’ll get there.

Muddling Through the Mobile Web, Designing for rapid change and increasing diversity by Bryan Rieger

In merely ten years we've gone from delivering basic WAP experiences on tiny monochrome screens, to crafting simply stunning content and applications for devices many of us imagined we'd only dream of. The fact that time-to-market for many of these devices is now measured in weeks instead of years, is simply mind-blowing. Add to that the renewed and rapid evolution of web standards, and it's become increasingly difficult to find solid ground from which to move forward.

This talk will pick up where "Rethinking the Mobile Web" left off, looking at the evolving device ecosystem, the inherent constraints of the current web, and the need for us to continue adapting our thinking when confronted with massive change.

The Future of the Mobile Web by Peter-Paul Koch

Currently there's a discussion raging about the advantages of the mobile web over native apps, and vice versa. Although native apps will not disappear, they'll gradually grow less important relative to the web.

In this session we'll take a look at the future of the mobile web, which will involve new ways to pay for content, new ways to distribute web apps, and further integration of web technologies with mobile technologies such as SMS.

The hitchhiker's guide to mobile development by Nikolai Onken

Mobile development is still pretty new to us web geeks and there are a whole lot of new challenges we face when developing our first mobile application. In this very hands on session I will give you a kick start into mobile development. I will introduce you to the available mobile runtimes, editors, build services, debugging tools, testing environments, reporting tools and finally relevant app stores. After this talk you should have a good overview of what is relevant today, what tools will do the best job for you and how you can keep building future proof mobile cross-platform applications.