As many of you might know, I am now on the other side of the pond, so I’ve paid extra attention to the DrupalCon Amsterdam schedule as it has come together. I want to highlight a few frontend goodies that I’m particularly excited to see.
Sessions
GSS: the CSS layout system that’s two generations ahead
Alan Burke will be giving an intro to Grid Style Sheets, which uses the Cassowary Constraint Solver to provide intelligent layouts on the web. The most notable implementation of this algorithm is Apple’s iOS, so having some of this goodness available in the browser is exciting. I first saw a presentation about this from Alex Russell at TXJS 2012, and it’s certainly an exciting prospect for web layouts.
Getting content to a phone in less than 1000ms
Web Chef Ian Carrico will demonstrate how to deliver and render content to phones at blazing-fast speeds. It is a practical walkthrough of Ilya Grigorik’s famous presentation showing you how to alter an existing site to meet this ambitious frontend performance goal.
Automated frontend testing
I will be delivering this talk, and it’s divided into two pieces: functional testing and performance testing. Functional testing helps you avoid the tedium of verifying your work by clicking, resizing browser windows, etc. Performance testing helps you stick to a performance budget. It can also help you begin debugging a slow site. If you’d like to see examples of functional testing, take a peek at our ongoing CasperJS blog series.
Managing complex projects with design components
John Albin will dive into the world of Design Components, demonstrating how this workflow can help you build reusable pieces that fit together seamlessly on a website. While I can’t say I’m a huge fan of OOCSS and BEM, overall I am very excited by this topic because I recently started experimenting with Polymer, a library that brings Web Components to the browser today. The future is awesome!
Frontend workshops
Design, prototype, and style in browser
If you’re interested in a full-day workshop, fellow Web Chef Ian Carrico and myself will be conducting a deep dive into the process of content strategy and prototyping in-browser. This is a practical demonstration of many of the concepts covered in John’s session, so if you want to get your hands dirty, now is the opportunity!
This workshop comes from years of experience building responsive sites for our clients, and represents the techniques that we use day-to-day at Four Kitchens. If you’re interested in ditching Photoshop and embracing live, interactive, component-based design, then this is the workshop for you!
Read about the training or Register for training
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