Hmm. A lot of really smart people were up there talking, but I’m not sure I really got into the swing of the point they were making. Well, really that they were all making different ones maybe. I didn’t really take that much out of it I guess. I got really activisted out last year, so I may just still be recovering.

On the bright side, Zach had swung down and I got to say hi, see what they were up to w/ CivicSpace. I love picking his brain because this Drupal-based thing I’m getting down and dirty with is similar on so many levels (unfortunately, the community-scaling, which is what I really want to do, probably won’t be til post-1.0 and will undoubtedly require re-arch…)

• SxSwDelib – official wiki notes
• Full Circle Online Interaction Blog – liveblogging from the panel
• Lawver Wiki: Deliberative Democracy and Interactive Technology

The Tuesday morning SXSW panel was entitled: Web Design 2010: What Will the Web Look Like When It Turns 20?. After SubEthaEdit mishappery, the panel started off talking about “web apps” and gave some real WTF answers (ah, designers pontificating on development trends) so… I had to step out. Maybe I overreacted, but Molly had the same reaction in the hallway when she stepped in for a different 5 minutes, so I’m assuming that it wasn’t just me (todo: find transcript)

On the bright side, Dave had started a blog to do panel prep, and has opened it up for discussion. This is great. I wish more panels would have done that (or that all panels had this automatically, and that these sites were open for discussion beforehand and could also be used to help schedule rooms based on participation… oh wait, there I go again. Anyway, since I got kinda carried away in my posts (ahh, the inner pundit), here’s how I would have answered if I were on the panel (reproduced from comments for easy reading):

1. Are Web Apps going to happen?
What are they going to look like? Desktop apps? Something else?
How are we going to be doing them

We’ve very obviously been seeing the expansion of traditional web apps w/ the recent round of AJAX-based apps. Will web apps be able to expand beyond their core markets in the communications and shared media space? I think so, especially as the idea of the personal infocloud encompasses more and more facets. The need for data sharing and sync will outweigh the cost barriers of rewriting more and more applications. The subsequent improvements in ease of update and stable revenue stream will end up being better for almost everyone (B&M software shops excepted).

The biggest question IMO is whether the push for subscription-based net-delivered thick client apps (think .NET) wins over more webby variations. This may largely depend on the type of application (ie, Photoshop would fit easily in the former but not the latter), but also largely on strategic and technical decisions that won’t be easy to predict…

2. What will web designers be doing in 2010?
What sort of devices will be most commonly used to access the web?
What technologies will enable this?

“International Data Corp predicts that by the year
2004, there will be close to 1.3 billion web-enabled cellular phones
globally. And Motorola predicts that by that same year, more consumers
will be accessing the Internet from a wireless device, than a wired
one.”

src: http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=10825

3. Will IE6 still be significant to the work you will be doing?

[Jeremy,] I agree that CSS implementations will continue to be a problem regardless of which version of IE (see the latest IE7/CSS support hubbub), but I think that one of two things will happen: 1) people will stop testing/caring as IE6 support drops below a certain level, or more likely (I’ve begun doing this for various personal sites, it’s just a matter of time it becomes production ready), something like Dean Edwards’ IE7 library will be used to ‘fix’ the IE issues.

As far as scripting goes, I don’t think IE6 will play a major factor again, if it breaks things and goes under a certain percentage. This will be doubly so as XAML, FLEX, and other RIA front-ends fight it out.

4. In 2010, these technologies will be important for web developers:

(vote for, vote against, abstain)

CSS3
SVG
Flash
XML/XSLT (more generally than XHTML)
XHTML
XHTML2
XForms
XAML/XUL

[Mark, presuming that Macromedia is still around…] Anyway, one issues w/ the current incarnation of Flash Lite is that it’s the functional equivalent of Flash 4 (+ some XML), which means that it’s not a 1:1 transfer. I don’t see Flash going away on the desktop regardless, but their footing in the mobile (and to a much greater degree) in the enterprise space is quite precarious (well, nonexistant in the latter).

CSS3 – yes, although IE won’t support most of it properly so it will be of limited use. Also, there will be 5 bajillion selectors, but still sorely lacking in descriptors, especially for relations and dynamic calculations so JavaScript and large amounts of structural tags will still be required layouts that could be done ‘the bad way’ in 1998.

SVG – yes, especially if Flash flounders, but even if that doesn’t happen, SVG will ride the AJAX wave (especially once SVG rendering makes it into Mozilla core). Having DOM-based structure is a beautiful thing.

Flash – see top

XML/XSLT (more generally than XHTML) – an increasing need for transforms will push XSLT into the web design world so that designers everywhere will be able to enjoy how bass-ackwards and almost entirely retarded XSLT is. On the bright side XSLT 2.0 will have regular expressions (hallef’inlujah) although most web designers’ eyes will glaze over. XML will continue to dominate everywhere as the format for everything. Much fun will be had as people continue using it COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATELY EVERYWHERE.

XHTML – yes, and it’ll need to validate too if you don’t want your XSLT parser to barf.

XHTML2 – haha, no.

XForms – despite Eris’ nice try in the Flash vs HTML panel, I will throw my hat firmly in the “XForms sucks and should burn in RFC hell and die” camp. XForms accomplishes the standards trifecta of reinventing the wheel, solving problems no one asked it to, and simultaneously not solving the the fundamental problems people were having with its predecessor. I’ve sat through lengthy presentations and even lengthier discussions on this and really, I’ll never get that time of my life back again. Luckily for the rest of you, XForms has this much traction -> . and we’ll get a much saner WebForms 2.0 courtesy of WHAT group (fingers crossed). Banks will love XForms though. (never underestimate the power of enterprise software)

XAML/XUL – Yes, although it’s a bit unclear how much these will encroach into web-space. Regardless, these XML-based widget sets w/ custom rendering engines (to differentiate from stuff like Dojo and to include things like Flex and Laszlo) will probably take over intranets, giving all the maintenance and development benefits of the web, and all the richness that comes with being able to draw lines and pulldowns that overlap properly among other things (XAML/Avalon will be downright scary).

5. Will industrialization drive the independent web developer out of existence, with the economies of scale of big development houses and cookie cutter design making this role economically unviable?

No, independents will just have to adapt to provide services (and service) that big development house, cookie cutter design can’t. I think web developers will have an easier time than some, but as Daniel Pink would put it, it’s just a function of the transition to the conceptual age. (That, BTW was a kick-ass presentation, and done in a way that I even remember most of it – guess that levity, brevity, and repetition thing really works).

6. Which philosophy will ultimately win on the web: openness (open source, open formats) or closed proprietary systems?

From an technical perspective, due to the nature of the data interchange, “openness” will increasingly be a simple fact of life in the coming years.

From an economic perspective, due to the nature of market efficiencies, “openness” will increasingly be a simple fact of life in the coming years.

I don’t think there’s much of a choice barring complete and total hegemony (whether this is legislative or otherwise).

There will be closed networks, protocols, stacks, but these will by definition not reside on the “Web” but by and large in the darknets.

I was a bit disappointed here. Everyone mentioned going through hundreds of blogs, but then discussion was either about the “philosophy” of customizing your blog (whuzzuh??) or a tortuous demo of not new stuff (seriously, how to make a blog roll?). My ideal? Lets spend some time talking about the philosophy. Dunstan made some great points about just noticing the annoying things on other people’s sites to improve your own, but then, lets go through like 20 or 30 blogs and point out the neat things or the different ways to go about things.

I guess what I wanted just wasn’t what they were doing. Still, if I were doing a trick-out your blog panel, I’d definitely try to highlight the “this is so fuckin cool” feature list. Here’s a few off-the-top-of-the-head picks:

• Kottke.org – yeah, I’m lame, but like Paul, I’m totally hot on the single timeline… It’s so the future.
• Erik Benson – the moraleometer rocks, as does the whole erikkgregator thing. Again, it’s the future
• Subtraction – beautifully designed, and quite functional. I like the category map, the star rankings, the org, all of it (damn, Khoi was at SXSW?)
• unfoldedorigami – this was the first site I saw doing LiveSearch
• urlgreyhot – Michael Angeles’ site has undergone a redesign from the one I fell in love with, but this and all the Drupal sites represent a different type of blogging. (see also: Jonas’ blog or Zack’s blog (AIM comments, insane, in all senses of the word). There’s lots of potential (especially w/ how nodes can be re-ordered and grouped — more about this soon)
• FTrain – probably not as interesting from a Geegaws point of view, it’s all about the geekage (ontology building baby)
• Fiftyfoureleven.com – this is a new redesign, and I’m loving the layout, very well thought out structure. Similar in the direction that Dave or Scrivs (layout since changed)
• On the plain clever design front, Andy Budd, Shaun Inman, Dave, Ryan, and of course Dunstan have all been doing neat things w/ comment numbering, real-time previews, etc. etc.
• bigempty – and now for something completely different

Despite most of the people I hung out with taking a pass, Matt’s prediction was indeed true. It was even more crowded than the past keynotes. And it really, really sucked. The only good thing is I took a couple winks of naptime, but I probably would have been more comfy in the hallway.

So the idea is to get a bunch of Flash and DHTML experts to (re)implement apps in their respective technologies. In theory, wacky hijinx should ensue.

So, let me start with the good. Seeing the implementations are definitely interesting. Dunstan takes charge on converting a Flash mountain resort map/travel site into DHTML, Kevin does an implementation of GMail in Flash (Flex), each side gives a JetBlue redesign a go, and then each team does an ‘only’ version of Flickr (the joke here being that Flickr tried a Flash only version and switched off for good reason, right?)

Judging was done w/ a not-very accurate flash-based sound-meter. Obviously things were tilted rather unfairly against the Flash guys just because of the room composition. What actually really sucked about the setup was that there was no time to substantively discuss pros/cons, or even to correct gross inaccuracies. A lot of this is based on the fact that most of it isn’t “what can we do that they can’t do”, but what makes it easier. Also, many of the diferences aren’t ‘sexy’ in the traditional sense (searchability, structure, etc.)

Some notes:

• Dunstan had a tough row to hoe with the maps. It’s not totally true that you can’t do zoomable maps (see Google Maps, after all), but it is true that it’s a complete PITA. Also, as far as a more usable/accessible version, you definitely would design it differently, and I’m a bit disappointed that Dunstan left it there w/o even sketching something out (probably a time thing)
• Kevin showed off some nice drag and drop w/ his GMail reimplementation (although DHTML can do that too, there have even been good photo album implementations). The central attachment filing is nice, although AFAIK, Flash can’t do desktop drag and drop to the desktop w/o Central?
• Jaxon does some great stuff witht the JetBlue redesign, having an Expose-style zoom map of where you are in the process. I can think of even wilder ways to go with that, that simply can’t be easily done in HTML.
• Eris (whom everyone I met has said is incredibly talented, and who has a beautiful site) inexplicably did the “HTML” version in XForms. I’ve ranted on XForms before…
• For the Flickr redesign, Vera added speech bubbles into which is also just plain bizarre because Flickr’s notes are already in Flash (and DHTML can do scaling speech bubbles trivially anyway, div w/ contained elements for curves))
• Chris showed off lots of math foo, calculating offsets/bounding to replicate Flickr annotations. Very trick.
• Simon asks a great question in regards to Greasemonkey — Flash just doesn’t allow a user to do any of those sorts of injections. This is a good and bad thing, actually and leads to…

So, I sort of got a bit agitated at various parts throughout this panel because of the general FUD, and I started making a list of Flash/DHTML pros/cons. Now, a lot of things just have to do with ease, but there are some things where they’re just (potentially different), which can be both good or bad. Alex added some things, and then I lost the file, so here’s just what I can pull off the top of my head

+ Significantly better vector, animation
+ Multimedia: native sound! video!
+ Better compositing
+ Richer built-in widgets (Flex)
+ Significatnly easier compatibility
+ Works or doesn't
+ Higher market penetration
~ Harder to externally modify

+ Potentially webbier
+ Browser navigation
+ Source viewable
+ RESTful
+ Bookmarkable
+ Progressive Enhancement
+ Structured (important, esp for search)
+ Standards Interaction (DOM, XML)
+ Easier to modify
~ "access" to variety of plugins
~ Easier to externally modify

That being said, the DHTML webbiness is definitely potential (the Google apps so far for example don’t do that well on those counts) and that tendency may even be a liability (think about the positives and negatives of easy external modification [not that you can trust any client-side data 100%, but still]). Not, by access to plugins, that can be bad because it’s usually limited and buggy, but also good in the sense that these can overcome DHTML’s inherent weaknesses (the best DHTML sound engine I’ve found is Scott Schiller’s SoundManager, which pings to Flash to play sound).

Has someone done a comprehensive pros/cons on the various RIA options? Seems obvious, but I haven’t seen one around (feel free to send URLs now :).

Notes:

• Joe Clark live-blogged this pretty comprehensively

Wow, talk about awards-show on speed. As Nikolai did not sing this year, the highlight was the catty heckling of Ernie on IRC.

This was a pretty good panel, with the most interesting bits being Veen’s visuals, like how they charted success rates through the Blogger registration process. Amazingly simple, but amazingly effective. I like that combination.

• Nick’s deck
• Veen’s deck
• Lawver Wiki notes

(Note: Suprisingly, I made it to every 10AM session this year. I credit the Hampton’s continental breakfast for serving as the subconscious trigger that was able to push me over the edge. Well, actually this night, it was the Sparks that had me getting up grumpy and wired at 7:30AM, but that’s a whole different story…)

Having read the recent Wired article adapted from his new book, I was initially still undecided whether this panel would be worthwhile. Almost immediately however, I was sure that I had made the right decision (and proceeded to text/rndvz friends), and I was enjoyed probably the most coherent and engaging presentation I attended this conference.

He started on the key to good Monday morning talks: brevity, levity, and repition, and then proceeded in that fashion. When answering questions he was both sharp and thoughtful. The article and the notes online should capture all the important points (which are both well made, and insightful), so instead of rehashing that I wanted to take some time to ruminate on panels and presentations, specifically the different between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ones.

Like many others I’m sure, I’ve sat through hundreds of presentations/panels/discussions over the past few years (besides conferences, being at an University really contributes in that area) including more than a couple about how to make better presentations (Conway’s Aikido and MJD’s Judo, Tufte among others).

A while back I realized that the topic of a discussion actually doesn’t really matter so much, or, perhaps to phrase it as Pink might, it is necessary but not sufficient. Put another way (post-structuralist?) it might be said that the content (at the very least, its use value) is a function of its context, a factor of its form. As McL–ok, I’ll stop now.

Actually, probably the easiest way to talk about it is in terms of story (as most human communication/understanding is wont to be). The discussion is a narrative, and bad panels are almost always so based on structural weaknesses. We’re talking about the basics of pacing, rhythm, arc, setup, etc. Anywho… That’s my hare-brained theory and I’m sticking to it. Moving on.

• Liz’s notes
• Pink gave away free copies of the book at the end of the panel (even being gracious enough to take cards if he ran out) [random aside: who’s read Caldini’s excellent book, Influence?]

A couple hours ago (about 3), halfway through my sixth SXSW (that means I’ve been coming down to Austin a quarter of my life), I realized that I don’t think I’ve ever published much of my SXSW notes online. I don’t take the detailed notes I used to anymore (Go Go Gadget Notes Exchange), but since I made a commitment this year to hit as many of the panels I could, I’ll be posting summaries and observations.

These entries will be post-dated against conference times. This may make things confusing in the short-term but probably better in the long-term.

Other SXSW resources:

• Official SXSW 2005 Interactive site
• SXSW Baby Notes Exchange
• Lawver Wiki: SXSW Session Notes
• Technorati SXSW Tag
• holly marie’s collection of SXSW: notes, slideshows, reviews
• Liz’s Many2Many notes, starting here
• SXSW2005i : Video, Audio, Image and Text – multimedia blogging snippets

FYI/caveat: the 2.2 firmware update just broke my iPod. The iTunesDB is still there and I was able to copy off a backup, but it no longer recognizes in iTunes, which tells me to reformat (restore to factory settings) my iPod. Suck.

[Note: This post is more fun when you realize that I had't gone to bed yet. ...And it was posted in central time]