The Real Responsive Process?

The web is not a fixed width. So if the medium is fluid, should the process be fixed? Fireworks and Photoshop are not flexible enough to demonstrate media queries, button and menu states, HTML5 and JavaScript behaviors, dynamic resizing of elements and navigation flow.

Diving into responsive design projects can be daunting. Old design practices are cumbersome when thinking in terms of web systems that will span a wide variety of devices and dimensions. Four industry leaders will delve into how they handle the responsive process or how they don’t. A fluid process to match the fluidity of responsive design. Bam! We’ll also explore some of recent successes and failures while establishing why a responsive process is a responsible process.

One web to rule them all?

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Maintaining Responsive Integrity in WordPress

Mastering RWD is difficult enough, doing it with a WordPress theme and no knowledge its intended use or future content is even harder. In this talk you’ll learn how to create WordPress themes that will maintain their responsive integrity over time.

You’ll also learn how to build tools and strategies that you can implement in WordPress to give your customers and clients greater control of content. User Admins can either glorify your site or compromise it to the point it becomes unusable. Help them become masters of their own “domain”.

Jesse Friedman will utilize specific coded examples to help you understand the tools and advantages of building Responsive sites with WordPress. On top of all that Jesse will show you how he used these techniques to create dynamic web environments, while taking advantage of the user’s device and landscape.

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Beyond Squishy: The Principles of Adaptive Design

Responsive web design has hit the scene like a bomb, and now designers everywhere are showing off to their bosses and peers by resizing their browser windows. “Look! The site is squishy!”

While creating flexible layouts is important, there’s a whole lot more that goes into truly exceptional adaptive web experiences. This session will introduce the Principles of Adaptive Design: ubiquity, flexibility, performance, enhancement and future-friendliness. We need go beyond media queries in order to preserve the web’s ubiquity and move it in a future-friendly direction.

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The Learn to Code Movement

As the number of companies utilizing the cloud, smartphones and API’s grow, the demand for skilled programmers is increasing but there is a problem. There aren’t enough developers to go around. By 2018, there will be more than 1.4 million job openings in the IT sector. Companies are desperate to build their products yet the numbers of CS graduates, self-taught developers and number of H-1b visas to bring in overseas talent don’t add up. In fact, It’s not only Silicon Valley; the shortage of programmers is being felt worldwide. With 50% of higher education institutions planning to take their coursework online in the next ten years, how people learn new skills is rapidly changing. This panel of experts will explore the opportunities of learning to program, career options and the outcome of the growing online market for education.

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Lean Forward, Lean Back: Tablet News Experiences

Insights from the Poynter Institute’s major study of news and storytelling on tablets. The study explores the way that elements of touch, gesture, interactivity and position come together to create engaging, satisfying journalism. The research combines usability testing in the U.S. and Europe with worldwide industry expertise on what it takes to create and sustain excellence in publication.

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wordpress inside out

Shan Pesaru (wcfay, session, @sharphue, slides, all presentations)

When clients want a more robust website, rather than just a blog, the sidebar has got to go, and navigation must go where people expect. Page Templates let you take your base layout options and play.

Taking a design into WordPress can be sped up by using frameworks like SASS/LESS/COMPASS. This lets you hierarchically describe the design, and then have that description interpreted into CSS. Continue reading “wordpress inside out”