The Web Ahead

In this second episode of The Web Behind series with Eric Meyer, guest Steven Champeon talks about predecessors to HTML, the webdesign-L online community, the birth of the web standards project, how he coined the term "progressive enhancement" and much more.

CSS preprocessors are becoming very popular very quickly. Many front-end developers are finding them invaluable for coding increasingly-complex sites. Scott Kellum joins Jen Simmons to talk about Sass and Compass, what they offer, how to get started, and why you might want to consider adding such tools to your workflow

John Allsopp joins Eric Meyer and Jen Simmons for this first episode in our “web behind” series — a look back at where the web came from and the people who created it. They talk about early web design tools, community groups that shaped the web, thinkers from the mid-20th century who shaped ideas about hypertext, and much more.

A special announcement from Jen Simmons and Eric Meyer.

The web at its basics is HTML and CSS. If you want to learn these fundamentals, where do you start? Jen Robbins joins Jen Simmons to lay out a road map.

The ability to manipulate audio in complex ways as part of the web page itself is yet another piece of the puzzle for using HTML + JavaScript to create complex experiences. Chris Wilson joins Jen Simmons to explain the Web Audio API and what it can do.

HTML5 Canvas opens up a whole new world of opportunity of what a website can be. Rob Hawkes joins Jen Simmons to explain what's possible using the Canvas element and it's JavaScript API.

Web typography has taken off in the last few years. What is possible now? How do we create beautiful and functional type on the web? Richard Rutter joins Jen Simmons to explain.

Responsive web design creates a new set of development demands. How should we best implement complex sites to load quickly and meet the needs of a wide range of devices? Scott Jehl joins Jen Simmons to talk about the South Street toolset and other Filament Group discoveries of best practices.

Big changes in web technology are forcing us all to look at what many have been saying for a while — the web design workflow that was enshrined over the last decade really doesn't work. The creator of Style Tiles, Samantha Warren, joins Jen Simmons to talk about workflows, design processes, and how new ideas about our tools can help us all better design websites for the modern age.

How do we get good content on the web? Kristina Halvorson joins Jen Simmons to talk about the discipline of content strategy, where it came from and where it's going. We also get into fear and life and how to make change in an environment that needs it.

What is going on with the infrastructure that runs the web? Server stacks have changed a lot in the past 20 years. Josh Keonig joins Jen Simmons to talk about what's happening with cloud infrastructures and hosting options over the years.

What's the best way to handle responsive images? There's been a lot of discussion flying around over the last many months, big debates and fast changes… where have we landed? What's coming in the future? Responsive Images Community Group chair Mat Marquis joins Jen Simmons to sort it all out.

How can we understand the business of the web? Horace Dediu joins Jen to talk about the web through the lens of disruption theory, discussing innovation and jobs to be done. Along the way we get into advertisement on the web, and the old website vs native app debate.

Alex Barth joins Jen Simmons to talk about maps. What is happening with the new Apple Maps? What options for web developers and app developers are there beyond Google Maps? Where can people get map data and what tools are needed to implement maps?

What does the news from this week's Apple keynote mean for the future of the web? There was no TV announcement, but what is the state of internet-enabled TVs? What can web designers and developers be doing today to support the coming TVs.

Front-end developer extraordinaire Paul Irish joins Jen Simmons to discuss work process, tools and best-practices.

Author, speaker and developer Lyza Danger Gardner joins Jen Simmons to talk about how CMSes provide — or fail to provide — a platform for publishing content everywhere. How can we design & build a website that will publish everywhere and last long term?

Luke Wroblewski joins Jen Simmons to talk about mobile, mobile first, mobile web — but what is mobile really anyway? How is it that these devices are changing our lives?

CSS is central to the web. What happening with it these days? Author and expert Eric Meyer joins Jen Simmons to talk about the past, present and future of Cascading Style Sheets.