John PolacekChicago Web Developer

Here are some random notes from the various sessions and discussions I’ve had during my time in Austin:

• Whenever you are looking at a device, you are a cyborg. (via Amber Case)

• Ray Kurzweil has a lot of really fascinating things to say. Such as..

• Bloodstream technology will be mainstream in 20 years. If you can make it that long, your lifespan will be significantly lengthened.

• The new iPad retina display is 2048×1536. So when building websites, it is important to be as resolution independent as possible. Time to start using SVG whenever possible.

• When designing responsive sites, be task oriented. Think about what the user is most likely to be doing on the page.

• This is the year WebGL is coming to all mobile devices (via What WebGL Will Mean for the Web)

• Do media queries for high resolution screens like this:

  only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio : 2),
  only screen and (min-device-pixel-ratio : 2) { }

• Studies show a rectangle with rounded corners brings your focus inside the box, and with hard corners, your focus is outside (via Paul Trani).

• You know you’re doing CSS right when

  your content changes you don’t need to touch the stylesheets (via Lea Verou).

• Watching the Adobe guys do demos using Dreamweaver, it was interesting to see that it has been improved quite a lot. For example, it has an instance of webkit running inside.

• Facebook’s likely biggest competitor is not Google+, but rather a Federated Social Network (i.e. a network of networks)

• The Webfinger Protocol is coming back (via Evan Prodromou)