Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

In 2012, after many years of an annual single conference in Australia, Web Directions, we launched Code, a specifically developer focused, single track conference, in Melbourne, one of our very favourite cities anywhere.

Right from the beginning it was a success, and over the years we’ve had some incredible speakers, focussing on core web platform technologies, in particular JavaScript and browser APIs, as well best practice in performance, security, and all things front-end engineering.

We’ve just launched the 2016 program for Code, but before we get into the specifics, we’re excited to announce that it will, like our recent Respond conference, take place in both Sydney and Melbourne this year.

And as for content, well, I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite as exctied about a program we’ve put together (and we’ve put together a few, that I’m usually very excited about!) Here’s some of what’s in store.

Performance, since well, your web site or app can never be (or at least feel) too fast, and small efforts can often yield big results in this area. So we’ve got

• Tim Kadlec on improving the perception of front end performance
• Yoav Weiss on taking control of all that third party code we use these days with all kinds of impact on site performance, and
• Josh Duck on improving load times and initialization for web apps (that’s what he does at Facebook).

Page Layout, as numerous long-awaited CSS layout features, including flexbox and Grid layouts are now ready for primetime. We’ve got

• Rachel Andrew going deep into the CSS Grid Layout, and
• Stephanie Rewis covering off Flexbox.

These technologies are without question the future of Web site and App layout, and any developer worth their salt will really need to be well versed in these technologies. We’ve also got a whole day workshop by Rachel on all this and more–everything there is to know about modern web layout, in Melbourne August 3rd, the day after the conference.

But we’ve barely begun the scratch the surface of the program. We’re excited to have Alicia Sedlock covering all things front end testing (like washing our hands, it’s what everyone says they do, and wants to do, but doesn’t always do, now there’ll be no excuses!), Greg Rewis on the incredibly important, but almost entirely overlooked opportunity of Internationalisation, and the legendary Dmitry Baranovskyi on the state of modern JavaScript.

And there’s so much more still! From properly using unicode, to CSS engineering (yes, it’s a thing), functional JavaScript, to JavaScript garbage collection, from Web App Manifests, to semantic versioning, Code will make you and the things you build just plain better.

If you build things for the Web, we promise you’ll do it better if you come to Code. We’re really excited for this year’s conference, and hope you are too.