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Creativity. Usability. Accessibility. Technology. The Web Design Conference is all about design: from accessibility to CSS to exploring new approaches in Web interfaces and doing it all with the best technology available. Join top designers and usability experts in Seattle and learn the secrets of information architecture and interface design, the latest on Web standards, and design inspiration.
Web Design and Strategy
Delivering Beautiful Interfaces with CSS
Douglas Bowman
July 21, 10:15 a.m.
Drop-down menus and sophisticated interface elements have traditionally been implemented using JavaScript and kludgy coding workarounds that often don't work. It's increasingly practical to deliver rich, beautiful, functional interfaces using semantic markup and CSS. Learn how modern markup can deliver great Web interfaces that are fast and reliable.
How Users Surf: What Usability Tests Reveal
Steve Mulder
July 21, 11:30 a.m.
How do real people use Web sites? Are there patterns in user behavior that we can learn from and design for? Yes and yes. We’ll cover how users move around a site, how they scan pages, what they see and don’t see, and much more. You’ll get the findings of hundreds of usability tests—without having to sit through them.
No More Tables: CSS Layout Techniques
Douglas Bowman
July 21, 1:15 p.m.
Creating complex multi-column layouts used to mean having to nest multiple
HTML tables — a technique that's cumbersome and introduces accessibility
and compatibility problems. You've heard it's possible to eliminate those
layout tables by using Cascading Style Sheets, but you haven't made the jump
yet. In this session, CSS guru Doug Bowman will walk you through the steps
of a real-world conversion. Learn the advantages of doing away with tables,
and see how to avoid common pitfalls.
A Designer's Introduction to XML
Joe Marini
July 21, 2:30 p.m.
XML is becoming more common in mainstream Web development every day. In this session, you'll learn how XML works, what it's good for (and not good for), and what you need to know about it as a designer to put it to good use. You'll see how XML can be used to separate content from layout, drive dynamic interfaces, and be transformed for display in different ways.
The How and Why of Blogging
Steve Broback and DL Byron
July 21, 3:45 p.m.
Blogs are not just for personal journals anymore. Designers, developers,
businesses, and just about everyone else are using blogs and RSS to
communicate with their peers, markets, and customers. Learn why blogs work
so well and how to build one.
Defensive Design for the Web
Jason Fried
July 21, 5 p.m.
Let's admit it: things go wrong online. No matter how carefully you design a site, people will still encounter errors or make mistakes. How you handle these breakdowns is critical to the overall user experience. Learn how to use defensive design to prevent errors and help get your visitors back on track if problems do occur.
Macromedia MX Focus Day
Studio MX's Greatest Hits
Joe Marini and Sandee Cohen
July 22, 10:15 a.m.
It's a new year and a new MX revision. Learn the best production practices with Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, and Flash MX. Learn why they share the MX moniker and what that means to you. You’ll also learn how to fully exploit the features of each product for the best end results.
Customizing, Automating and Expanding Dreamweaver MX
Joe Marini
July 22, 11:30 a.m.
Dreamweaver has always been a malleable program that you can mold to fit your needs. But extensibility takes a big leap forward in the latest releases of Dreamweaver MX. Learn about Dreamweaver’s customizing features and how to write your own Dreamweaver extensions. Even if you’ve never written an extension before, you'll learn how to customize Dreamweaver and turbocharge your productivity.
Adding Interactivity with Dreamweaver MX
Joe Marini
July 22, 1:15 p.m.
Learn how to make your Web pages come alive with Dreamweaver MX! Make image rollover buttons, use Dreamweaver’s built-in support for Fireworks and Flash content, use pre-built JavaScript behaviors to validate form input, and build interactive drop-down menus.
Make it Work Everywhere: Validation and Browser Compatibility
Tom Green
July 22, 2:30 p.m.
People aren't talking about the browser wars like they used to, but creating sites that work across browsers and platforms remains a challenge. Dreamweaver can help. See how to use its dynamic cross-browser validation feature to checks tags and CSS rules for compatibility, and learn how to build sites that will work correctly today and tomorrow.
Fireworks, FreeHand, and Flash
Sandee Cohen
July 22, 3:45 p.m.
What if all your graphic tools had no boundaries between them? Discover how this trio of MX applications all work together to become one uber-application. See how to use the vector graphics from FreeHand in Flash and Fireworks, how to add Fireworks images into Flash files, and how to add Flash ActionScripts and movie clips into FreeHand pages.
eCommerce on a Budget in 60 Minutes
Eric Ott
July 22, 5 p.m.
Your site needs e-commerce, but you can't spend a fortune—or a lifetime—implementing it. No problem. With the PayPal eCommerce Toolkit, you can add e-commerce functionality to your site in a flash. It's simple, fast, and free, and it works with the Internet's most popular payment-processing service. See how to create payment buttons and basic shopping cart functionality in an hour.
Flash & Graphics
Flash MX and ActionScript Secrets
Phillip Kerman
July 23, 10:15 a.m.
Take your Flash expertise to the next level in just 60 minutes. Learn the experts' tricks for faster loading, faster development, and more efficient scripting. Along the way, you'll learn important Flash usability concepts and see what the latest versions of Flash bring to the Web.
The Central Opportunity
Phillip Kerman
July 23, 11:30 a.m.
Macromedia Central may one day reach the status of the browser. Until then, there's opportunity for developers who can create applications that provide real value. This session looks the business opportunities that Central creates—as well as some that it removes. Learn how Central can display data from any source, run even when offline, and coexist and cooperate with other Central apps. This session will change your expectations of what a "Flash application" can do.
Flash Accessibility Strategies
DL Byron & Scott Benish
July 23, 1:15 p.m.
Flash accessibility is a current and controversial topic among designers and developers. Learn how to combine CSS, XHTML, and Flash MX into an accessible, usable, and engaging user experience. See what Flash MX 2004 brings to the accessibility table, and get practical design, code, and deployment advice.
Size Matters: Power Optimization Techniques
Michael Ninness
July 23, 2:30 p.m.
Learn the essential parameters of designing Web graphics that look great, load fast, and encourage return visitors. See how Photoshop and ImageReady combine to combat the evils of bloated graphics. This session will reveal the hidden optimization tools and techniques to squeeze out every extra byte while retaining image quality.
Photoshop & Flash
Michael Ninness
July 23, 3:45 p.m.
Getting a layered Photoshop document into Flash used to be a time consuming and labor intensive process of saving out each layer in the Photoshop document as a separate .PNG file, importing each .PNG into Flash independently, converting it into a Symbol, creating a layer, placing each Symbol on its own layer, and then repositioning all the elements to match the original layered layout as it was in Photoshop. With the Export to Flash (.SWF) feature in the new ImageReady CS, this headache finally goes away. This session will also cover how Flash handles embedded bitmap files and how you can control the optimization of each bitmap independently.
Delivering Video with Flash
Tom Green
July 23, 5 p.m.
A growing number of sites are using Flash to deliver streaming video. The ubiquity of the Flash player and the new video-related features in Flash MX 2004 make Flash-based video more viable than ever. Learn how to prepare and deliver video using Flash, and the advantages—and disadvantages—of doing so.
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