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Last week Webvisions, a 3 day conference covering everything UX and web lured a few hundred enthusiasts to the sunny Barcelona. Mozilla sent Crystal Beasley and Chris Heilmann to talk about logging into the web with Persona and the future of the web.
Crystal gave a workshop on login systems and how to improve them and a talk on 13 signs your UX needs an exorcism.
Having watched The Lorax on the flight over, and seeing that the audience consisted of a lot of parents we thought it a good idea to write the “Future of HTML5 and the web” talk in the style of Dr. Seuss so people can read to their kids and reflect on what we tried to convey at the same time. Many thanks also to Eric Shepherd for some rhyming help.
Here are just the rhymes with all the links (also available on GitHub):
- There’s a big web out there,
it’s huge – I tell you,
it spans the whole world,
but it was boring and blue… - Then change came about,
in the shape of a fox,
it was cunning and open,
and it broke all the locks. - Others showed up,
and joined the good fight,
a singer, an adventurer,
and a shiny new knight. - These all played together,
and spoke the same tongue,
which brought back old players,
to join them in song. - A standard was set,
and it changed a few things,
a richer web for apps,
was the promise it brings. - Bah, standards! Who needs them?
Some flashy ones said,
till a phone that was smart,
kicked them out of its bed. - We moved past one standard,
as web work is richer,
so “HTML5 and friends“,
paints a much better<picture>. - Things that are fun,
should be shiny and cool,
that’s why the new standards
bring many a new tool. - Watching and hearing,
are what people like to do.
Using<audio>and<video>is simple,
and you can do it, too. - Both of them are web-native,
which is a reason to clap.
They can interact with other content,
and Mozilla Popcorn makes that a snap. - If beats and frequencies are
what you need to play,
check the Web Audio API –
it gives you just that – even today. - To play nice with batteries,
use requestAnimationFrame(),
don’t let it stop you
that it has such a long name. - 3D graphics are thrilling,
as gamers will tell,
we now have that on the web
and it is called WebGL. - Water goes everywhere you pour it,
just ask Chris about his Macbook Air :(
MediaQueries allow you be as fluid
and respond instead of despair. - Natural movements are smooth,
just open your eyes.
With CSS animation, transforms and transition,
you can mimic this – nice! - “The web means you need to be online”,
I hear smartypants gloat,
well, we have offline storage,
so there – take your coat. - Got a cam and some friends,
and do you want to chat?
WebRTC is what you need,
even to show off your cat. - Rhymes sometimes don’t come easy,
as you just became aware.
So let’s just move ahead quickly,
this was just too much to bear. - An artist needs a
<canvas>,
and HTML5 gave us that.
Read, write and convert pixels,
All in the client, it’s mad! - “We don’t have rich elements!”
many people complain,
Use Web Components with X-Tag
and create them – easy to maintain. - Passwords are tough,
it is easy to see,
so allow login with emails,
using BrowserID. - The web is a mess,
with third party buttons abound.
Web Intents make them pointless,
let’s not have them around. - By design HTML5 is forgiving,
its parser is great.
It didn’t want to break the web,
so let’s not break it in its stead. - Course you can write weird things,
and they will work – there’s no doubt.
But will they be readable by others?
This is what it’s about. - You don’t create for yourself,
or your friends who are the same.
You develop for the next guy,
so make sure you’re not to blame. - You don’t jump in a river,
if you don’t know its depth.
On the web using Modernizr,
should be your first step. - Give new stuff to new players,
and use it to enhance.
Don’t support when it’s not needed
IE6 walks – it can’t dance! - With a vendor prefix browsers tell you
“this is not ready”.
So by all means, give them a go,
but don’t expect to go steady. - And those prefixes vanish,
you mustn’t forget!
End with a prefixless version,
It’s your very best bet. - So we ask you to help us,
build a web that will last.
Be future friendly and look forward,
and stop building for the past. The web is on phones,
tablets, computers, TVs.
We have to move it forward.
or else our existence will cease.- Hardware that is locked up,
is not what we are about,
so check out Firefox OS,
if you like the web – you will like it – no doubt. - Last but not least,
if you find something’s wrong
please file a bug and tell us,
this is how things get done. - So there you have a lot to play with,
check out and share.
We really want you to do that,
come on, show us you care. - Unless someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not. - So well done for reading and listening,
and going great lengths,
that’s all we got time for today,
so good-bye and thanks!
Encountering a lot of hardware problems we couldn’t do a recording of the talk so I made a screencast of the presentation available on YouTube.
Alternatively, you can also have a video version with just the rhymes
Other formats for you to download and use:
- Only the rhymes in HTML on GitHub
- PDF version of the slides with notes (PDF, 15.2MB)
- Audio version of full talk (MP3, 6.5MB)
- Audio version of rhymes only (MP3, 2.3MB
- Video version of the full talk (MP4, 60MB)
- Video version of the rhymes (MP4, 30MB)
The audience reaction was very positive and we found out that when you rhyme your talk it flows much faster. The 45 minute slot was 20 minutes of our talk and another 25 minutes explaining in detail what we covered in a Q&A.
All in all Webvisions was a great event and watch out for videos of the other talks being available soon and other slides on the web.
About Chris Heilmann
Evangelist for HTML5 and open web. Let's fix this!
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