Fronteers Videos

WebRTC gives us a way to do real-time, peer-to-peer communication on the web. In this talk, we'll go over the current state of WebRTC (both the awesome parts and the parts which need to be improved) as well as what could come in the future. Mostly though, we'll take a look at how to combine WebRTC with other web technologies to create great experiences on the front-end for real-time, p2p web apps. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/sessions/shwetank-dixit-webrtc-a-front-end-perspective

In this practical session Dominic Szablewski, Luc Bloom and Thomas Palef will each share their experience on building games for the browser. They will give us a hands-on view into the possibilities and challenges we face when building such games. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/sessions/gaming-in-the-browser-dominic-szablewski-luc-bloom-thomas-palef

The post-Flash era is hardly free of animation. CSS animation is quickly becoming a cornerstone of user-friendly UI frameworks, and JavaScript libraries already exist to handle complex, interactive animations. And now there’s a new API coming to town specifically for web animations! In the wake of so much “CSS vs. JavaScript animation” infighting, you'll be introduced to the Web Animations API via the development styles and insights of four distinct groups of people: UI designers, interaction developers, library authors, and the browser teams implementing it. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/sessions/rachel-nabors-state-of-the-animation-2014

WebSockets, Server Sent Events or should I maybe just use Short Polling?

Choosing the right tool for the job is always harder then it looks and often requires deep understanding of the various techniques and hacks. Join this journey and learn about the beauty and horrors of building the real-time web. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/sessions/arnout-kazemier-pushing-the-real-time-web-forward

Hand-crafted code has been the hallmark of quality front-end development since front-end was even a thing. As websites become more functional, though, and loaded through myriad viewports, is typing our intentions the best use of our time? If we make markup easier, what do we have to fear? Easier markup means more people can build richer content on the web. Also, by relying on tools, rather than our fingers, developers can free up time to focus on the features that really need brain power: accessibility, semantics, optimization, saner class structures, and whatever comes next. We just first need to define what is “good enough” output, and rethink how we approach our tools to make them actually useful. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/sessions/nathan-ford-do-we-need-to-write-markup

The scope of Etsy's frontend is massive - our JavaScript codebase has grown by 50% in the last year to more than 3,000 files totaling almost 800,000 lines. Because of Etsy's dedication to continuous deployment, the code running in production changes 25 to 50 times every day. Because of our experimentation-driven development cycle, there may be multiple production versions of our features at any given time. These factors can lead to uncertainty and fear with rolling out upgrades, deleting old code, or confidently making changes. We'll see how the Frontend Infrastructure team works within this ecosystem to mitigate those risks, manage the asset build pipeline, builds tools to understand our frontend, automates migrations & deletes as much code as possible. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/sessions/daniel-espeset-making-maps-the-role-of-frontend-infrastructure-at-etsy

Broadly speaking, common CSS best practices cover readability, efficiency and modularity. Adopting them purports to make long-running projects more manageable. But do any of them really help, and how many of them actually improve the product that falls into people's hands? Is it possible that CSS best practice can perpetuate or even beget bad design practice? More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/sessions/heydon-pickering-getting-nowhere-with-css-best-practices

In my new role as a W3C Web Accessibility Specialist (;-), I will give another update on the state of web accessibility, where we succeeded and where we failed, and where to get all the information you never asked for in terms of web accessibility. I’ll also present the new™ W3C Web Accessibility Tutorials which will be a great resource for Web Designers, Developers and other people involved in making awesome websites. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/jam-session/web-accessibility

It's NOT about a code editor for JavaScript, where you're going to operate with 3D figures of different shape and color. Unfortunately... ;-) I would like to talk about things that we can do with the current state of JavaScript without any fundamental changes of mind. I will show some very uncommon ideas about syntax highlighting. Also I'll demonstrate several examples of automatic code reformatting which can be inspiring. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/jam-session/colors-and-shapes

All websites of Dutch Governments must be accessible by the end of this year. In the recent years there has been much improvement in the quality of most websites. For some web components it is still difficult to get things accessible. Examples are maps, PDF and also graphs and charts. Jules will talk about the solution of accessible bar charts and graphs for the Dutch Court of Audit. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2014/jam-session/accessible-graphs-and-charts