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

Recently we had the great privilege of having Ethan Marcotte speak at Respond, our Web design focussed conference.

While Ethan (and other speakers) were in town, we tried a bit of an experiment. Why not record conversations with the speakers about their work, their ideas and their interests?

We think it turned out pretty well, and over the coming weeks we’ll be releasing not only my conversation with Ethan (videos this week, and a slightly longer podcast version next week), but conversations with Sara Soueidan, Jen Simmons, Karen McGrane, Rachel Simpson and Russ Weakley as well.

All fully captioned too.

Enjoy my conversation with Ethan, on the past, present and future of the Web–I certainly did.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Like to watch and read more like this? Be the first to score invitations to our events? Then jump on our once a week mailing list where we round up the week’s best reading and watching on all things Web. And you’ll get a complimentary digital copy of our brand new magazine, Scroll.

Notes, links and ideas

Responsive Web Design.

The A List Apart article by Ethan that gave the name to the phenomenon, and which outlined the key patterns and practices, with examples from Ethan’s redesign of the Boston Globe.

Image Replacement Techniques

“IR” techniques were developed to allow images to be used in place of text, in ways that were still accessible. [editorial, I always thought they were a terrible idea]

Sydney Morning Herald (December 29, 2004 Edition)

The Sydney Morning Herald, a Fairfax Media newspaper is considered one of Australia’s key newspapers. Their 2004 redesign was a very early, CSS and standards based design for such a significant, large scale publication.

Emulating Network conditions

Using tools to emulate network conditions, in this case Chrome’s developer tools. Other browsers developer tools similarly allow you to test your site as viewers of networs of various speeds might.

Trent Walton Device agnostic

Trent Walton’s article that refers among other things to “hostile browsers”.

Dao of Web Design

My article in A List Apart that Ethan (very kindly) remembers, and from which this podcast takes its name.

Stewart Brand

From the Whole Earth Catalogue to the Long Now foundation, and much in between, Brand’s influence on the internet, the Web, and the wider world is impossible to overstate.

How Building Learn

Brand’s 1997 work on architecture thatEthan refers to.

Shearing layers

and their applicability to web site design

Brian Rieger’s article on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

What are these things, and how do they relate to the Web?

VR nausea research

it even has a name, “Virtual Reality Sickness”

Jetpack Futurism

My article on “jetpack futurism”, and the common tropes of visions of the future that I argue in many ways constrain our ability to predict, and invent the future.