How can we, as Web developers and designers, ensure that our sites and applications can be used by the largest possible audience? Whether required to by law, encouraged by the prospect of attracting customers, or just because you want to, there are numerous reason to make your Web properties accessible. There are standards for accessibility, but what do those mean, and how can we include them in our work? In this talk, Marcy Sutton introduces the idea of the accessible Web, pointing to the many places in which small changes on our part can make a big difference for many of our potential visitors and customers.
Category Archives: Web development
James Mickens: Web security
What does “Web security” mean? This lecture, part of a course at MIT, provides an overview of the challenges facing Web applications nowadays. The instructor, James Mickens, talks about a variety of problems, many of which revolve around the complexity of modern browsers. If you didn’t think that the Web was scary before this talk, you will be worried after watching it!
Tim Bray: Does the browser have a future?
The Web was originally aimed at people using browsers on computers. But the Web isn’t only for people any more, and they’re not only running browsers, and they’re not only using what we think of as computers. Does this mean that browsers are dead? Tim Bray describes the current state of affairs, and considers future trends in the computer industry.
Josh Owens: What I’ve learned during my year with Meteor.js
Meteor is a new type of Web framework — one that bridges the gap between client and server, uses a single language on both, and allows for real-time communication between them. In this talk, Meteor developer Josh Owens introduces Meteor, and describes what he has learned (sometimes the hard way) from using this framework.
Igor Minar and Tobias Bosch: Angular 2.0 Core
Angular.js is a popular open-source client-side framework, whose development is sponsored by Google. The current version of Angular.js, as of this writing, is 1.3 — but the big news is that Angular.js 2.0 will change everything, including much of the syntax. In this talk, two members of Google’s Angular.js team (Igor Minar and Tobias Bosch) discuss the differences between the versions, and what developers can expect.
It should be noted that this talk was given before the final state of Angular.js was decided. Moreover, many Angular.js developers have expressed upset with the sharp changes planned in Angular. Whether you love Angular, hate it, or are curious to see its future unfold, this talk will help you to understand where things are headed.
Mark Nottingham: HTTP/2
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is one of the fundamental technologies behind the World Wide Web. However, HTTP was invented more than 20 years ago — and even the latest version, HTTP/1.1, is showing its age. Fortunately, developers have been working on HTTP/2, a next-generation version of HTTP that takes modern needs into account. HTTP/2 has taken a long time, but is nearly with us, and it is time to learn more about it. In this talk, HTTP/2 expert Mark Notthingham introduces the protocol, describes its benefits, and tells us what we can expect when we adopt HTTP/2.
Luigi Montanez and Ryan Resella: You’ll never believe what powers Upworthy
Upworthy (“Things that matter”) is an extremely popular Web site, containing video that they the site hopes will go viral, typically on socially conscious topics. (You have probably seen links to Upworthy videos on social networks such as Facebook.) Upworthy is written in Ruby on Rails, and runs on Heroku — but this wasn’t always the case, and the story of how they started, and then grew and scaled, is an interesting one. In this talk, Luigi Montanez and Ryan Resella, two engineers at Upworthy, describe the ways in which Upworthy started, grew, and was scaled, and the problems that they had to solve at each turn.
Tom Occhino and Jordan Walke: Introduction to React.js
Client-side (i.e., JavaScript) frameworks and libraries are all the rage — which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the ubiquity of the browser and of Web-based applications. Facebook has developed, and is promoting, React.js, a JavaScript framework that they are using for many applications, and which has become popular since its release. In this talk, two of the React.js developers, Tom Occhino and Jordan Walke, introduce and describe the framework — starting with its motivations, and continuing to its use in real-life applications.
Steve Klabnik: Designing Hypermedia APIs
How should we design APIs that allow us to handle many types of media? In this talk, Steve Klabnik discusses “real REST” vs. “Rails REST,” and shows you how to design a useful and clean API that will allow people to consume various types of media.
Mark Bates: CoffeeScript for Rubyists
CoffeeScript is a language that compiles into JavaScript, and which is easier to work with in many ways. It is also part of modern versions of Ruby on Rails. In this talk, Mark Bates introduces CoffeeScript.