Design Track

Yahoo! vs. Yahoo! Case Studies of Three Mainstream, Large-Scale Ajax/DHTML Implementations

Nate Koechley, Senior Engineer and Designer, Yahoo, Inc.

How are DHTML and Ajax used under the pressures of massive scale and global distribution? Get an inside look. This presentation offers case studies of three state-of-the-art Yahoo! products that compare and contrast JavaScript, CSS, DHTML and Ajax implementation and approach details. These products share base infrastructure and goals, but unique requirements and influences lead to different decisions and compromises, and vastly different outcomes. Even with the differences, there are several patterns that are repeated depending on a product's location of the Documents-Applications Spectrum.

Practical Design for Ajax Development

Sarah Nelson, Design Strategist, Adaptive Path

David Verba, Director of Technology, Adaptive Path

Ajax, new application frameworks and more iterative development processes mean that many developers find themselves working more closely with designers or even being charged with design themselves. You know that a great user experience is key - but how can you make sure your project is a success? In this session, we will start with principals of visual design, interaction design, information architecture and user research. Using these concepts as a foundation, we will discuss design issues that Ajax introduces, how to address them, and the impacts they have throughout your development process. Whether you need to work with a designer or do the work yourself, you will leave this session with resources, ideas and examples you can apply immediately.

Making Web 2.0 Usable: An Ajax Case Study

Steve Mulder, Senior Consultant, Molecular

Rich Internet technologies such as Ajax change the way the Web works, bringing exciting new possibilities to Web interfaces. But how do we give users a richer, more powerful interface without sacrificing ease of use? A common example of this challenge is product selection. Web sites that help users select products, services or content often use a variety of tools so that users find exactly the right item for their needs. Come see how we applied Ajax to this common challenge in order to create a rich interface that makes product selection easier (and more fun). We'll discuss how users expect these new interfaces to work and what usability issues occur when testing these types of Web 2.0 sites.

Experiences with Accessibility in DHTML, Ajax, and Rich Internet Applications

Nate Koechley, Senior Engineer and Designer, Yahoo, Inc.

The Internet's dramatic shift from static to dynamic sites presents a series of new challenges to those committed to and dependent upon accessibility. The new dynamic sites are beginning to offer rich functionality previously found only in desktop-based software applications. On the desktop, accessibility is maintained through interchangeable input (keyboard and mouse), and through OS-level APIs that facilitate detailed and continuous communication with Assistive Technology (AT). In the browser, this interchangeability is often missing, and what primitive AT communication there is bypasses the OS's API and is shared too infrequently. Learn about challenges of DHTML/Ajax accessibility, review the current state of the art, and see a series of four approaches that, in total, can make today's modern interfaces more accessible.

The User Is Always Right: Making Personas Work for Your Site

Steve Mulder, Senior Consultant, Molecular

How do we ensure that our Web sites actually give users what they need and deliver results? Personas bring user research to life and make it actionable, ensuring we're making the right decisions based on the right information. Discover the latest techniques for creating personas, including advice on conducting user interviews, new methods for applying quantitative research such as surveys and log file analysis, approaches for generating persona segmentation, and fun ideas for making your personas real. It's time to take personas to the next level.

XML: What Web 2.0 Designers Need to Know

Joe Marini, Group Product Manager for VSIP, Microsoft

XML has become a common technology in everyday Web development. 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, and how it enables modern Web services to function.

Better Interfaces with CSS, JavaScript and the DOM

Joe Marini, Group Product Manager for VSIP, Microsoft

Today's modern, standards-compliant browsers provide designers with vastly improved capabilities for creating rich user interfaces. In this session, we'll examine ways of using CSS and JavaScript together to create pages that are responsive, intuitive and more usable. See how these technologies can allow users to control display properties like fonts and colors, create forms with better navigation and validation, and build pages with features like in-place editing, table formatting, and data sorting and filtering — and that don't need to round-trip back to the server. We will also examine ways to make use of these technologies so that even if the user disables them, the page content remains accessible.

Inside the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library

Nate Koechley, Senior Engineer and Designer, Yahoo, Inc.

The YUI Library (http://yuiblog.com) is an open-source, a la carte JavaScript library for building richly interactive Web apps using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. This library — free for the world to use — contains the exact same code that is used globally and at massive scale on scores of Yahoo! sites.

In this session, Yahoo!'s Nate Koechley will talk the design and technical philosophies behind the YUI. Learn what the library offers today — and where it's heading. See examples of its use in the wild, and get insights into why and how Yahoo! decided to open-source it. There's no shortage of better things to do with your time than reinvent the wheel — learn what the YUI offers and get ideas for what you might build using it.

Ajax Frameworks and Design Patterns Survey

Dion Hinchcliffe, President and CTO, Hinchcliffe & Company

Ajax and other Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies are fast becoming one of the most in-demand skill sets for Web developers, Web designers and other Web professionals. This session will be an in-depth, practical tour of the latest Ajax frameworks - their features, strengths and weaknesses to help today's Web professionals understand better how to begin to choose and then use one of the Ajax frameworks. The session also provides a tour of Ajax design patterns' emerging story, as well as the most popular design elements in Ajax applications today. Using the "design patterns" metaphor of Christopher Alexander - i.e., "common, recurring problems" - we will examine Display Manipulation, Web Remoting, Dynamic Behavior, Web Services and Performance Optimization, among other popular Ajax design patterns.

Principles of Social Design

Joshua Porter, Director of Web Development, User Interface Engineering

Most designers are comfortable with the principles of visual design: contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity and so on. Many are also getting comfortable with interaction design principles: consistency, feedback, good defaults, metaphor and the like. These principles provide an excellent foundation for people making Web sites and applications that will be used by individuals working alone. But more and more Web sites are intended for people in social situations. For these cases, we need a new set of principles: principles of social design. These principles, including control, motivation, incentive and governance, will define whether or not people choose to continue using your Web application or service. We've moved beyond the one-way and even the two-way Web. We are now in the many-way, social Web, and it's time for principles that will help us navigate these ever-murky waters.