State of the Browser 2011
On Saturday I attended the State of the Browser conference, hosted at Ravensbourne College (next door to the O2) to take part in a day of web standards and browser discussion.
I normally take the weekend “offline” but this opportunity was too exciting to miss. The new tech being developed in areas like multimedia, communication and data storage may sound geeky, but they continue to make web design & development a very progressive space to work in.
What's New
The speakers demonstrated what the latest dev versions of Firefox, Chrome and Opera browsers can do. We saw examples that included:
- Audio, video and 3D graphics, all integrated deeply with the web page.
- File and data access to turn websites into powerful applications.
- Detection for things like speech and device orientation; to make websites responsive to the outside world.
- Better web forms to vastly improve usability and production times.
We've known for a long time that the web is moving towards a more interactive, media-rich environment. It's inspiring to take part in a conference that celebrates this movement. I can, and do, read about this stuff in technical specifications but seeing it used live by the developers is very motivating, as is the sense of a community driven effort that dominates these events.
What's Next?
The browser manufacturers all research and innovate new ideas – and importantly for us – get together to standardise what works best. How do they know what works? They ask us (the website creators) to use, experiment and give feedback. It's a wonderfully open and progressive system but then again what else would you expect from people who spend all day on the Internet?
While many of these new standards may not be 'client-ready' right now they will slowly be implemented and supported for use everywhere. It's a cascading system and at Base Creative we're always looking for opportunities to push up stream.
If you're a new client, ask us about the possibilities!