John Polacek

Chicago Web Developer

Engineering manager and frontend lead at Howl

My product recommendations at shop.howl.me

Shipping open source on Github

Follow me at @johnpolacek

Stuff I Learned At SXSW, Part 3

Originally published on 3/13/2012

Here are some random notes from the various sessions and discussions Ive had during my time in Austin:

  • Whenever you are looking at a device, you are a cyborg. (via Amber Case)

  • Ray Kurzweil has a lot of really fascinating things to say. Such as..
  • Bloodstream technology will be mainstream in 20 years. If you can make it that long, your lifespan will be significantly lengthened.

  • The new iPad retina display is 2048×1536. So when building websites, it is important to be as resolution independent as possible. Time to start using SVG whenever possible.

  • When designing responsive sites, be task oriented. Think about what the user is most likely to be doing on the page.

  • This is the year WebGL is coming to all mobile devices (via What WebGL Will Mean for the Web)

  • Do media queries for high resolution screens like this:

    only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio : 2), only screen and (min-device-pixel-ratio : 2)
  • Studies show a rectangle with rounded corners brings your focus inside the box, and with hard corners, your focus is outside (via Paul Trani).

  • You know youre doing CSS right when

    your content changes you dont need to touch the stylesheets (via Lea Verou).

  • Watching the Adobe guys do demos using Dreamweaver, it was interesting to see that it has been improved quite a lot. For example, it has an instance of webkit running inside.

  • Facebooks likely biggest competitor is not Google+, but rather a Federated Social Network (i.e. a network of networks)

  • The Webfinger Protocol is coming back (via Evan Prodromou)