Fronteers Videos

A little over a year ago at JSConf EU, Angelina tried to inspire developers to take an interest in Web Components, which includes Shadow Dom, HTML Templates, HTML Imports, and Custom Elements. In this talk we'll take a look at how far we've come in a year: what has been implemented, what hasn't, the current state of the relevant specifications, and discuss various frameworks and libraries that have emerged either with patterns similar to web components or embracing the technology completely. We will take a look at these changes, and also dive into some code for a comprehensive overview of 'the state of things' - spoiler: it's still always changing. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/web-components

The debate around responsive images has been raging for about two years with seemingly limited traction from browser makers. Like anything Web, turns out that this problem is not as simple to solve as it first appears. To understand the complexities, we need to pop the hood of a browser and see how resources are requested without waiting for layout. Once we understand how a browser's handle image loading, we can then start discussing possible solutions — of which there are many right now on the table. It may turn out that we have most of the bits we need to do responsive images, but a standardised (in-browser) solution may still be needed. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/responsive-images

It’s hard to deny that websites need to be well designed; a pleasing UI, a seamless and pleasant UX, and a great personality really encourage users to interact and enjoy using your site, product or service. However, the design is only one part of a finished product; your product is built on code, and oftentimes it is necessary to sacrifice certain aspects of a design in order to keep the codebase itself leaner, faster, and more enjoyable to work with. In this talk Harry aims to share some of his die-hard pragmatic approaches that he employs in order to push back on designs to produce far better quality code. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/better-quality-code

Sergi Mansilla will talk about why Firefox OS is more necessary than you think, the technology behind it and about how it will give freedom to users and make developers’ lives much easier. He will also walk through the basics of making Firefox OS apps (hint: you’ve already made some!) and he may or may not give some phones to developers who propose cool projects to build on top of Firefox OS. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/the-importance-of-firefox-os

It would be nice if developers could download a JavaScript framework, plug in the custom logic required for their particular problem, and have a functional, scalable, and reliable application. As any who's tried can probably tell you, however, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't matter if your application has 5000 "pages" or less than 50 - it will eventually become a large application in terms of code, because size of code is not just a measure of the complexity of the app itself, but of its maturity. If you've tried taking an app from a minimal set of functionality to something complex enough to cover all the edge cases, you've probably done some rewriting.

If you haven't, it's your lucky day! We'll talk about several of the ways you can almost guarantee a rewrite in your app's future. If, on the other hand, rewrites don't sound like that much fun to you, we'll also talk about how to avoid them or at least minimise the risk they present. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/rewrite-your-js

With the chaos of different screen sizes and a new generation of web browsers, the design paradigms of layout and typography have shifted away from static layouts and system fonts to dynamic layouts and custom web fonts. But screens have not just changed in size but also in pixel density. In other words: maybe we do not just need responsive layouts, we might also need responsive typefaces. iA started experimenting with reponsive typefaces in 2012. A short rundown of what we have learned since then. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/responsive-typography

For this practical session, we have asked three makers of notable web projects to discuss a specific aspect of the project they worked on. Their talks will only be 10 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. We'll be rather strict about this :) More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/practical-session

Designing typefaces isn't easy. They generally consist of thousands of glyphs, all of which need to be designed, given kerning and hinting instructions and of course tested. It can, therefore, take years to complete a typeface. Luc(as) will go over what it takes to produce webfonts as well as discuss licensing issues from a type designer's perspective. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/on-designing-typefaces

When we look back over the history of web performance we see a heavy focus on reducing the number of requests and getting files to the browser quickly. Our platform has changed a lot, and while optimizing for network performance remains a crucial part of our jobs, we now have to broaden our performance horizons. Our users also expect smooth scrolling, animations and interactions, even on mobile devices. In short we need to deal with not just how quickly our sites and apps load, but also how quickly they run. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/rendering-performance

This talk will demystify some of the FUD surrounding speed and single page JavaScript web applications. We'll focus on faster load times, removing bottlenecks around the server, network and rendering on the client. More info at: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2013/sessions/faster-javascript