Web Professional Minute

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage from Adobe MAX that took place this week in San Francisco, CA.

Today?’s video reflects a minute of high impact visual graphics of the events keynote and a few minutes with Kevin Lynch, CTO at Adobe Systems Inc. The theme of the presentation is the changing world of the software industry. Kevin refers to the main trends as “tectonic shifts” in three key areas:

* Client and Cloud Computing
* Social Computing
* Devices and Desktop Computing

Check out the four minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by Web Directions North taking place in Denver Colorado February 2-5, 2009 Web Directions North is one of the world’s leading conferences for web professionals, bringing together the leading experts from around the nation and around the world to educate, entertain and inspire our attendees.

WOW will be participating in a session entitled Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals For more information about the conference visit the Web Directions North website.

Transcript of Adobe MAX keynote Kevin Lynch

KEVIN LYNCH: It?’s great to be here with all of you again. It?’s terrific.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you!

KEVIN: The magic is all of you, it?’s not just me.

[Audience laughter]

KEVIN: We?’re going to be talking about a lot today. There?’s obviously a lot of change happening in the world. There?’s also a lot of change happening in the software industry. We?’re going to cover a lot this morning. At the end we?’ll have a link that you can go to and see a summary of everything we?’ve talked about here so if you want to learn more or go to sessions, it?’ll be a great index for you.

So this morning I?’m going to be talking about the main trends that are really transforming software, probably relate to all of us, relate to Adobe software and the community all around us. Those three trends are really techtonic shifts. The first is client and cloud computing, where we really have a shift of how people are developing software from being purely on the client, or even just purely on the cloud, to really a blend of both client and cloud computing working together.

The second trend that?’s happening right now is one that?’s more of a social trend, social computing. It?’s about how we?’re all more profoundly connected to each other via the Internet and how that really changes how we experience software. Software is no longer a solo experience, it?’s really one where your friends are involved. There?’s definitely humanity around you that?’s using the software. So how does that change what you do?

Then the third trend that we?’re going to talk about this morning is devices and desktop computing and how there?’s a real major shift to a multi-screen world where we?’re using not just one big screen to access content, there?’s a variety of different screens that need to work together to help people succeed at accessing content over the Internet.

So these are all major trends. Each one of them is really significant, but they?’re all happening at the same time. So it?’s a very interesting time for us all to be in this industry, building these applications, designing this content and really rolling with all of these changes that are happening around us here.

So let?’s start with client and cloud. With the cloud we really see an amazing opportunity to combine client computing and cloud computing and really balance the two together. So to do it we were taking very much a balanced approach with each. Our belief is the future of computing is really combining processing on a local clietn and taking advantage of a bunch of different services across the cloud. To give a little overview of what we?’re doing in this space, first I?’m going to give an overview of the client side, then we?’ll talk aobut the cloud side.

So on the client, of course we?’ve been doing some really great innovation with Flash Player 10. It?’s already been released. It?’s being adopted broadly and it?’s reaching, already with Flash Player, pretty much all the computers on the Web today. The situation we?’re in is pretty amazing because we can actually update that software now in less than a year, in about nine months, we can actually upgrade the capabilites on the Web and induce new capabilities for everyone who are using these applications interacting with content. What this means for you is that we can innovate at a much faster rate. We can deploy new technologies, like Pixel Bender or new 3D effects or a faster scripting engine. We can get that out to everyone on the Web in a consistent way. And you can start taking advantage of it very quickly.

So with Flash Player 10 we introduced a few different areas. These are driven, acutally, by communication between the Flash Player team and all of you, really driving forward where Flash should go. We saw some people doing 3D graphics libraries, we thought, how can we make those go faster? We saw people using text more inside their applications. How do we make that be higher quality? So we?’ve really driven the functionality of Flash Player 10 based on working with all of you and the edges you?’re pushing on and what you?’re actually creating with Flash.

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

I?’m podcasting live today from Adobe MAX 2008 San Francisco. The Max event description states that the “event is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, partners, executives, and Adobe staff for education, inspiration, and community.” From a Web professional and a WOW exec director perspective, I couldn’t agree more!

Mark DuBois, Professor at ICC and WOW Education Director is here as well and we’ve been roaming the halls to absorb the great content and to cover the goings on for this podcast. Along the way, we’ve met with many of WOW members, advisors, supporters and Adobe executives within the product categories, education team and evangelist at all levels attending the event. Stay tuned for more summaries of this great event in future podcast.

For today?’s podcast, I had the pleasure to interview Ben Forta, Director of Platform Evangelism at Adobe. Ben’s an incredibly bright, talented and an easy going guy. I asked Ben to summarize his keynote address with a focus on the walk aways for Web professionals. Today’s podcast also includes a short clip the morning session as well The theme for the keynote focused on how companies are breaking through the status quo for designing, developing and deploying engaging web experiences through seamless workflow and its definitely worth checking out.

Check it out on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProtraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training website.

Transcript of Adobe MAX 2008 Keynote with Ben Forta, Director of Platform Evangelism at Adobe

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute, with a gentleman that needs no introduction, but for those that are not familiar, this is Ben Forta from Adobe Systems. He?’s presenting today as the keynote speaker. I?’d like to ask you Ben, could you summarize that session for us today?

BEN FORTA: Summarize a 19-minute keynote?

BILL: Yeah, in a couple–

BEN: How much time do I have?

BILL: Take as long as you want.

BEN: This morning?’s keynote focused on products and technologies, both ones that we just announced, like the CS4 products, as well as some that we haven?’t announced yet which will be coming out next year or so. We covered a lot of areas. We started out talking about some of the productivity gains in Flash CS4, making animation and interaction a whole lot easier both for professional designers as well as those that aren?’t professional that want professional results. We showed some pretty phenomenal functionality of Photoshop, allowing designers to do some very impressive things that would have taken many hours before, cleaning up images and working with comps, making them a whole lot… getting them to do what you want them to do in minutes as opposed to hours.

Then we showed one of the highly anticipated products, Flash Catalyst [indecipherable], which lets you to pull in a comp from Photoshop or Illustrator and actually start building a real live application and put it into actions that generates underlying Flex code. So that?’s exciting. We demonstrated, back into that, how to take that comp and put it into Flex Builder, and actually build it back into Flex Builder 4 [indecipherable]. We showed them sneaks of ColdFusion ID, coming out next year. We showed how you can take CS+ Builder and run it from–

BILL: Yeah, that was exciting.

BEN: Very cool stuff. Got a kick out of that. We showed very important work that we?’re doing to make Flash content searchable, so that Google and others can find it.

BILL: Totally awesome.

BEN: Very important stuff there. We showed the new Flash media server, so lots of very exciting technologies we showed. And the response has been phenomenal.

BILL: Yeah, it has been. Excellent stuff. And tonight?’s the sneak peek.

BEN: Tonight?’s the sneak peek. This is an annual event and we?’ll have a dozen or so presentations of stuff. It?’s a little less baked, some futuristic, some might see the light of day, others not. But it?’s a chance to show the crowds what it?’s working on, some of the innovative ideas.

BILL: Excellent. Thank you so much.

BEN: Good. Pleasure.

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

I’m podcasting live from San Francisco, CA today at Adobe MAX 2008. WOW’s participating at MAX 2008 as a Media Sponsor and Community Lounge partner. WOW’s here to announce the second annual Web Pro Community Challenge. The Web Pro Challenge is a Web design competition designed to provide the Web community with an opportunity to showcase their skills and talents, win prizes and benefit the community by designing and developing a site for a notable non-profit organization. This year?’s non-profit organization links medical students with medical clinics in developing countries worldwide. The contest is open to practicing professionals and students at all levels FREE of charge.

We would like to invite you to participate as a competing team, judge or team leader. For additional detail visit the site located on the Web Pro Challenge website.

For your viewing and listening pleasure, I?’ve also included an inspirational introduction to today?’s Adobe Max San Francisco with Shantanu Narayen President and Chief Executive Officer at Adobe on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Transcript of Keynote

Shantanu Narayen: The reality is that handheld devices can offer location-based services in ways in which the PC never was able to. And the bar, within the enterprise, is going to change because consumers are demanding the comsumerization of the enterprise based on experiences that they have with commercial sites. We?’re moving therefore from a single screen world to a multi-screen experience that is going to live both inside and outside the traditional browser. Our capacity to deliver these great engaging experiences hinges on using these multi-screens in meaningful and a lasting way to create an engaging experience with the person at the other side of the screen. Are they transacting business? Are they purchasing? Are they joining a community or are they just watching content? The more you know about your customers the better an experience you can deliver.

Adobe?’s vision has been the same. Our vision is to enable you to deliver the most targeted, engaging applications – content and video – across operating systems, multiple screens, desktop and the Web. And hopefully all of you here today are utilizing the Flash platform to develop these innovative solutions that we believe will have a tremendous impact on this changing landscape. The Flash platform is really a complete system to create and deliver these expressive applications – content and video – that can run across all these different operating systems and devices. Our developer tools, including the Creative Suite 4, including Flex Builder, and the intraction design tool that we introduced last year to you as Project Thermal, offer the foundation for agile design and development workflows, making it faster and easier for you to get your work done.

Project Turbo is now a reality and it?’s called Flash Catalyst. [applause] Thank you. A preview build is going to be available today to every one of you MAX attendees. [applause] Catalyst really is all about providing better tooling, better workflow and a faster time to market and truly addressing the designer/developer gap. You can learn a lot more about Flash Catalyst in sessions at MAX. You will also be receiving a preview version of Gumbo, the next version of the Flex Builder application. That integrates with Flash Catalyst to make sure that we can provide a streamline, two-way workflow. [applause]

To improve the development and deployment of these applications we are continuing to drive innovation and consistency in the Flash Player. Flash Player 10 was issued just over a month ago and there are already a number of major corporations who are taking advantage of the expressive new capabilities of Flash Player 10 and upgrading their content. South Park has already done this and Yahoo, Nickelodeon, Disney Online and AOL will also be upgrading their content to Flash Player 10. It is truly the strength of the ecosystem that?’s incredible and we are continuing to not only extend the capabilities of Flash Player 10, but to work with partners, as well as to engage with every one of you, to make sure through your feedback we can continue to drive standards in the Flash Pl

Web Pro Community Challenge Press Release

WOW Announces Web Pro Community Challenge at Adobe MAX 2008
San Francisco — November 17, 2008 —: The World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) announced today at Adobe MAX 2008 that it is heading up a Web Pro Community Challenge to benefit:
Child Family Health International (CFHI) is a leading non-governmental organization (NGO) placing health science students on global health education programs in Latin America, Africa, and India in ways that are socially responsible and financially just.

“The Web Pro Community Challenge is designed to test the artistic, creative, technical and business knowledge and skills of aspiring and practicing Web professionals while utilizing some of the best tools available, all in a peer environment and for a great charitable cause,” said Bill Cullifer, WOW?’s Executive Director and Challenge organizer. “Adobe MAX is the annual event for Web professionals, and WOW?’s thrilled to be a contributor,” said Cullifer.

“Adobe is excited to work with WOW to provide a way for the passionate community of web professionals to showcase their skills while helping non-profit organizations,” said Ted Patrick, group manager for developer relations at Adobe. “It?’s a wonderful combination of technology hand-in-hand with philanthropy.”

The Web Pro Community Challenge is an opportunity for the international Web professional community to showcase their skills while giving something back to the global community by designing and developing a website for designated non-profit organizations. Participants will use a wide range of technologies, including Adobe Flash Platform software, such as Adobe® Flex™, Adobe Flash® and Adobe® AIR™ to build enhanced Web capabilities for both of these deserving organizations. The Web Pro Community Challenge is launching at the Adobe MAX conference but anyone around the world is eligible to participate.

“We?’re ecstatic to be recipients of this year?’s Web Pro Community Challenge. We hope that with an improved website, we will be able to place more students in underserved communities around the world,” said Steve Schmidbauer, Executive Director of CFHI. “On behalf of the health science students and the communities we work with in developing countries, I?’d like to thank the WOW organization and Adobe for making this site redesign possible.”

The Web Pro Community Challenge launches at Adobe MAX 2008 in San Francisco and then calls on practicing Web professionals from around the globe who have interest in contributing their services for charity to participate. The WOW organization will podcast the process with interviews of the Web professional experts, the participants, and the selected non-profit charity selected so others can use these resources in a classroom setting as a teaching tool.

For more information about or to participate in the Web Pro Community Challenge visit: webprochallenge.org

About CFHI

CFHI?’s vision is to advance quality healthcare for all by setting the standard in global health education for health science students through programs that are socially responsible and financially just. These programs not only emphasize professionalism through social justice but also benefit the grassroots communities—where our students live and learn—by supporting these developing communities equitably and sustainably in recognition of the expertise and hospitality they provide. For more info visit: www.cfhi.org

 

 Interview with Jeffrey Zeldman: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is an interview of Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher of A List Apart Magazine, founder of Happy Cog Studios and co-founder of The Web Standards project. Mark DuBois, WOW Director of Education and Professor at the Illinois Central College, (ICC) caught up with Jeffrey Zeldman at the list Apart Conference that took place last month in Chicago, IL. Zeldman shares his perspective on Web Professional Core Competencies that serious about their profession should consider.

Check out the three minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by Web Directions North taking place in Denver Colorado February 2-5, 2009 Web Directions North is one of the world’s leading conferences for web professionals, bringing together the leading experts from around the nation and around the world to educate, entertain and inspire our attendees.

WOW will be participating in a session entitled Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals For more information about the conference visit the Web Directions North website.

Transcript of Jeffrey Zeldman Interview

MARK DUBOIS: This is Mark Dubois with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the Wow Tech Minute. I?’m here today with Jeffrey Zeldman at the list Apart conference in Chicago. I have the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jeffrey. I?’ll say that this has been a fantastic conference so far. I truly enjoyed the presentations up to this point.

With respect to your opening comments, you mentioned one of the core competencies that a Web Designer should have is empathy. I?’m wondering if you could elaborate on that a bit for our listeners please.

JEFFREY ZELDMAN: Sure, I?’ll be happy to. I think there are two ways to create great Web experiences. One way is following your own passion, your own interests, no matter what. The other way is creating something for other people, finding out as much as you can about those people. So one way of doing it is, something doesn?’t exist in the world but you?’d like it to exist in the world, you wish someone would get around to doing it. Nobody gets around to doing it, nobody gets around to making it and you realize it?’s your job if you want to see this thing. So whether it?’s your blog, whether it?’s a website for a church or organization, whatever it is. Whether it?’s World Organization of Webmasters, as WOW used to be called, no one had put that group together, someone?’s got to do it so you get motivated to do something because no one?’s doing it.

For me, one of those was the Web Standards project. Some friends and I got together and formed this group, not because we really wanted to spend a whole lot of hours doing something that didn?’t make us any money but because we thought there was a need for it and nobody was doing it and so it had to be done. It?’s been my experience that if you create something because you really believe in it, want to see it exist, you can be successful on it. You don?’t really have to be a genius you just have to really care about it and keep working on it.

The other way, more in the client services way or in-house design where a lot of us work, the trick there, I think, is for us to identify who?’s going to use the site and what needs they have. What needs aren?’t being met by the existing site? Always put that first. Always put those kinds of questions first.

In the conference people were talking at different ways of getting at that. Our last speaker was talking about a disciplined approach toward creating achievable goals that are based on what people need to do and then using those as a basis of what you design. There are different ways of doing it. But empathy and design is thinking about someone else, not assuming that because you like it it?’s good or not assuming that because it works for you it works for everyone.

We are experts. All of us are experts, to some degree in Internet technology, so there are things that we create that aren?’t confusing to us but could be very confusing to other people. I?’m constantly exposed to start-up companies, projects and products people come up with, and a lot of times they?’re very creative projects but it?’ll take me a while to figure out what it is because they haven?’t started from the premise of figuring out how to communicate, what needs they?’re fulfilling and how to communicate what is there to be done.

There are lots of Web applications that my friends like or invite me to so I?’ll try it. It might take me 30 minutes. It?’s only because I like my friends that I keep trying to figure out what the site?’s about. A site shouldn?’t do that. A site should be comprehensible. It should be ever more deeply comprehensible. I don?’t mean that if you have a site about Lupus that someone is supposed to be able to go to that webpage and understand everything about that disease. Quite the contrary. But I think someone should go to that website and go, “Oh, this is a site for people who have Lupus or think they have Lupus or have family members who have Lupus to get information about that disease.” It should be that simple. How to find the information should be that simple.

MARK: Fantastic. Thank you very much. Jeffrey, it?’s been a distinct pleasure to interview you, a true privilege and honor to meet you. This is Mark Dubois with the World Organization of Webmasters and the

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of Web Builder Conference, Las Vegas. If you?’ve been following along with the series, then you know I sat in on a variety of great sessions covering the world of Web Development. I also had the pleasure of interviewing a number of speakers including Richard Campbell Product Evangelist Strangeloop Network based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Richard presented on the topic of “Performance Isn’t Optional Making Web Services Work”.

Often the motivation for bringing web services into the enterprise is not performance – its about interoperability. But performance is not optional, without performance, interoperability becomes an exercise in frustration. Richard’s session dug into the strategies that an architect can employ in the design web services so that performance is a feature of web services, rather than an obstacle.

Check out the three minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProtraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training website.

Transcript of Making Web Services Work-Performance Isn’t Optional–Interview with Richard Campbell

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute at Web Builder 2.0 Las Vegas. I have the pleasure of interviewing Richard Campbell, Product Evangelist at Strangeloop Networks out of Vancouver, BC. Good morning, Richard. Excellent presentation today on “Performance Isn?’t Optional, Making Web Services Work.” Can you summarize that session for us?

RICHARD CAMPBELL: Sure. Web Services are usually built mostly for interoperability. Folks are really focused on what does it take to get all of my different disparate systems working together and the Web services are the lowest common denominator. It?’s not a really performant protocol. Often it tests well, because we don?’t have a lot of requests running at once and we?’re inside that nice, fast LAN connection and Web Services often end up being bigger than they thought, the packages come back much larger than they thought and requested a lot more. Often these interoperability exercises are really successful and they have apps that are in high demand because they work across all those different systems.

This talk really came from my experiences as a consultant dealing with these companies that get caught by surprise. Really it came from their own success. I cited a particular case where a client went from maybe 10,000 requests a day off of mainframe when they wrapped it in Web Services it jumped up to 750,000 requests a day and it was just burying the machine. It turned out that those requests were almost all identical, so by adding a caching layer in we were able to take a lot of stress off that server in a big hurry. The net effect ultimately is that they didn?’t have to upgrade their mainframes or rewrite any systems. Understanding where they performance problem is, is the biggest challenge.

A great deal of the talk that I just did here was really about, what do we instrument, where do we instrument, because most people don?’t understand where their Web Service pain is coming from. They?’re looking at the far end, at that consumer end, and saying, “This site?’s too slow.” As the owners of that product we have to dig in deeper and say, “Well where are we too slow?” One of the big whammies I see with Web Services over and over again is that requests end up coming back as much too large; they?’re marshalling megabytes of data and they didn?’t really need it. It?’s just that it hasn?’t been thought through enough to be efficient.

BILL: Yeah. Well said. You had a couple of specific walk-aways too. For example, for the listeners of this podcast or developers out in the world, what would you like us to walk away with?

RICHARD: Really there?’s a couple of elements we talked to. I talked to the performance equation, which really decomposed our overall request time. It looked at the payload and the bandwidth but we also broke out, what?’s our latency like? Are we dealing with a long-range communication here? Do we have problems with connection speeds? And also separating out the time it takes for the server to compute it and the time it takes for the client to compute it.

One of the pains we get in with Web Services is really we?’re translating binary data into text, then we?’re translating it back again. That marshalling overhead is expensive. It takes a long time. And it?’s one of those hidden penalties to Web Services. So one of the suggestions I made, and there was a variety of them, not only tricks around cache and doing work once and taking only the data we really need, but do we really need a Web Service here? If we have a really popular app, could we go to a more performant protocol? Does it make sense for this scenario? I know that Web Services are a good choice overall, and I?’ll leave that layer in place so that it?’s very compatible and works with everything, but for a particular app we might find that it?’s worth making the S and A call, just skip over all that translation. Or maybe we?’re calling out to java and we?’ll use a java interoperability layer for it. That?’s the choice we can make. It makes sense once we?’ve properly instrumented the column and once we?’ve properly diagnosed it, this is the issue, that it?’s the marshalling or it?’s the time it takes to translate that data back and forth, that we can eliminate those pieces.

BILL: Yeah. Great summary and excellent walk-aways. We appreciate that.

RICHARD: My pleasure. Anytime.

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of Web Builder Conference that took place in Las Vegas earlier this month. I had the pleasure to sit down with Aaron Gustafson, Founder and Principal Easy! Designs LLC, based in Tennessee.

I asked Aaron to summarize his two sessions: Web Standards: Fueling Innovation and. Fundamental Progressive Enhancement.

Web standards are all about rules and structure, formalities that many people find restrictive and stifling. From another perspective, however, the rigid structure of Web standards can be seen as a boon to creativity on the Web. In this session, Aaron talks about how to use smart JavaScript to leverage the extensibility of XHTML and CSS and push the boundaries of Web design and development, all while still adhering to the best practices of Web standards.

Aaron also covered the current best practice in Web standards development: progressive enhancement and the best ways to apply style and behavior to your pages, providing concrete examples and implementations that you can start using right away.

Check out the three minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links on the Webmaster Survival Guide

Transcript of Fundamental Progressive Enhancement-Interview with Aaron Gustafson

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute with Aaron Gustafson, a supporter of WOW for a number of years. Aaron, we?’re here at Web Builder 2.0 Las Vegas. You presented a couple of sessions. I?’m curious if you could summarize those sessions for the subscribers of this podcast and provide us a couple of walk-aways that we can use as well.

AARON GUSTAFSON: OK. The second session I did was Fundamentals of Progressive Enhancement, which talks about the content-added approach of progressive enhancement verses graceful degradation which used to focus on making sure that sites degraded gracefully. Older browsers, they provided a worse experience that was expected, essentially, as you got older and older browsers. Progressive enhancement looks at it from a content-out standpoint and aims to improve the experience of users based on the capabilities of their browsers as opposed to looking at it the other way around.

They’re really two sides of the same coin, the same general purpose of making sure that people get the best experience they can possibly have and that nobody?’s left behind. But progressive enhancement I think of as more of a positive spin on it as opposed to progressive degradation which assumes the worst for some people. And progressive enhancement really focuses on content, which is obviously the most important thing when you?’re dealing with semantic HTML. So that was the second session that I did.

The first session that I did actually was about innovation on the Web and how the W3C really hasn?’t been a great source of innovation for us over the last eight years. They really haven?’t innovated on XHTML very much at all since HTML, for one which really wasn?’t all that much of a departure from 3.2. We saw a much steeper increase of innovation in HTML back in 1 to 2 shift and 2 to the draft of 3. Three itself actually looked like it was going to be a great spec if it had ever really been released but then they dropped it backward, HTML 3.2 they actually cut out a ton of stuff. And HTML 5 is still on the horizon and we don?’t have that yet.

So it was essentially a session to look at the problems we have, that baseline problem. How can we address that problem and really be the change that we want on the Web, be the innovation that we need in order to accomplish what we were trying to do on the Web and taking the fundamental stuff that?’s available to us in these standards like XHTML and CSS and being able to extend upon those, either via extensions to XHTML with new elements or new attributes to accomplish certain functions using modular XHTML possibly or just rewriting or adding on to an existing DTD or using CSS using vendor-specific extensions? Instead of just leaving the vendors to do vendor-specific extensions actually creating our own vendor-specific extensions and then utilizing java script in a progressively enhanced way to make whatever it is that we need to have happen out of that particular code. So that was a little bit more of a heady talk about interesting things that we could do, hopefully it inspired a few people.

BILL: Yeah, good stuff. I appreciate that. I’m curious to know, you have a couple of resources, can we throw some links up for subscribers?

AARON: Yeah. People can take a look at all of the slides from the two sessions this week on Slide Share, that?’s Aaron’s Slides. All the slides are available there. They can download them, they can view them in their browser, wherever they want. All of that will be freely available.

BILL: Excellent. Thank you so much Aaron.

AARON: No problem.

BILL: And thank you for all that you do for the profession.

AARON: Thank you very much.
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