On June 26 I spoke at ConvergeSE in Columbia, SC. It was a small conference, but had some really wonderful speakers. Unfortunately, I was sick with a bad cold, so I missed a few talks and didn’t get to hang out with everyone afterward. But the talks I did hear were quite inspiring. I just love going to presentations that get you all excited about the work that you do. Go to the ConvergeSE site to view speakers’ slides and, eventually, video of the actual presentations.
My presentation was titled “Improving Efficiency and Usability with CSS3.” I talked about how CSS3 is about more than making things look pretty (though it’s really good at that too). Many CSS3 techniques can reduce your development times, decrease page loading times, improve usability, and increase the adaptability of your pages to different devices (including iPads and iPhones). I talked about which pieces of CSS3 you can add to your web sites right now and how they might benefit your projects in tangible ways.
If you’d like to check out the slides, here they are:
Improving Efficiency and Usability with CSS3 (PDF, 1.4 mb)
Here are just a few links to related resources that I couldn’t put in the slides but which you might find useful:
- Start Using CSS3 Today: Techniques and Tutorials
- Modern CSS Layouts: The Essential Characteristics
- Modern CSS Layouts, Part 2: The Essential Techniques
- CSS3 and Veer navigation
- How to: Get CSS3 box-shadow and border-radius accepted as a viable option at your workplace
- Prefix or Posthack
- Taking Advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 with Modernizr
- Targeting the iPhone 4 Retina Display with CSS3 Media Queries
- The orientation media query
- Detecting device size & orientation in CSS
I’ll be giving an expanded version of this presentation at both the 2nd Annual CSS Summit online conference on July 28 and at Web Directions USA in Atlanta on September 24.
Registration for the CSS Summit is only $149, but you can get 10% off by using the discount code CSSGILLENWATER when you sign up.
Did you mention the use of opacity on processors? I’m not sure if it’s the same in all browsers, but sites that use a lot of opacity tricks (the dark-and-purple simplebits.com from earlier in the year, as well as 24ways.org) have a terrible frame-rate while scrolling.
I don’t know much about that. I’d love to learn more — do you have references I could read? Do you mean opacity in the broad sense (meaning, using the opacity property or RGBA or HSLA) or do you mean strictly the opacity property?
Zoe it was a pleasure having you speak at ConvergeSE this year, I was bummed too to miss hanging out more but there’s always next year and you can bet you’ll be invited back! You rocked that CSS3 talk!
Thanks Gene!