The Web Ahead

What are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to making a website fully accessible? Keyboard access and form design can make some of the biggest differences, and present some of the biggest challenges. Derek Featherstone joins Jen Simmons to explain.

Ten years ago, a small group started an email list to figure out how to put video on the web. They ended up starting a movement, posting videos, breaking through technical barriers, and inventing a new medium. Jay Dedman, Ryanne Hodson and Michael Verdi join host Jen Simmons to tell the story in another edition of The Web Behind.

Has how we approach web design become too formulaic and rote? Are we missing the opportunity to truly communicate a site's purpose and meaning? What about web design have we lost, or maybe haven't yet found? How can we understand our work as designers when even words about our work fail us?

HTML5 brought more semantic elements to HTML. How's that going? Why should developers use semantic HTML? Bruce Lawson joins Jen Simmons to discuss HTML, semantics, accessibility, ARIA roles, microformats, microdata, RDFa, web components and more.

DRM has been long touted as the solution to piracy. Recently, a few browser makers and big media companies have pushed DRM technology into the web browser — while open web advocates have fought to prevent DRM on the web. What is DRM? Why and how are companies putting it into web browsers? And what solutions would be better? Jeremy Keith and Doug Schepers join Jen Simmons to debate DRM on the web.

Style guides, once the exclusive domain of print designers, are finding their way onto the web. Built out of HTML and CSS, such style guides are handy tools for the design process, for maintaining sites over time, and for making collaboration across teams much easier. Anna Debenham joins Jen Simmons to explain.

What is the state of formal education for web design, and what might be coming in the future? Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman joins Jen Simmons to talk about her research, what's she's found, and the school she's starting with Jared Spool.

We are collecting more data now than ever, and freely sharing some datasets on the open web. Web technology provides the power for us to present complex data interactively. How can you go about a data visualization project? What tools are available? Scott Murray joins Jen Simmons to explore the possibilities of data visualization.

Walk through the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 with Luke McGrath and Jen Simmons.

A revamped version of Firefox is coming, with a tour of what's new. Created by Michael Verdi & team, this tour is a case study in customer experience. What is Customer Experience design and how can it help your projects?

SVG is one of several image formats for the web — one that has superpowers that the others don't. When would you want to use SVG & what can you do with it? Doug Schepers joins Jen Simmons to tell all.

Web Components seem to be taking the JavaScript community by storm. The three parts of this technology give developers a chance to define their own HTML elements, adjust the defaults, and share with others. Learn about it all from Peter Gasston as he joins Jen Simmons to explain.

Now that the web has new superpowers in the form of HTML & Javscript APIs, many engineers are rushing to the web, excited to use modern programming tools on the web platform. It seems there might be an emerging trend, however, to not understand or respect the web for its strengthens, and to toss out years of known best practices in the rush. Simon St. Laurent joins Jen Simmons to ask, what is going on?

What's the deal with accessibility and why should we care? How do we make our websites accessible? Dale Cruse joins Jen Simmons to discuss what it takes to make a website for everyone.

What's new in CSS? Chris Coyier joins Jen Simmons to talk about flexbox, grids, regions, shapes, and the future of layout on the web.

Is the web industry moving away from waterfall projects and towards an agile-ish approach? Funny Garbage COO Kristin Ellington joins Jen Simmons to discuss how she structures client projects these days, and why waterfall isn't working anymore.

Architecting how content is structured, collected, and presented are three distinct aspects of designing a web project. Jeff Eaton joins Jen Simmons to talk about how to think through it all.

People have been having conversations on the web since the moment the web was born. Comments, forums, linking, and more have provide ways for people to hold a back-and-forth discussion. But is that enough? There's a movement to create an annotation system for the web, one that might end up as a new web standard & feature in every browser. Learn what annotations on the web would mean with guest Doug Schepers.

Web RTC brings real-time communication to the web — peer-to-peer connections that can transfer data, video and audio between web users almost instantaneously. Henrik Joreteg joins Jen Simmons to explain how it works and what it means.

Lea Verou joins Jen Simmons to talk about CSS, and tell us all about things we can do with CSS today that you might not know about already. Lea also tells us a bit about her adventure recreating the Line-mode browser at CERN.