The CSS Summit was an all-day, one-track, online conference dedicated to everyone’s favorite web design technologywith seveal experts in the field including Stephanie Sullivan, Jason Cranford Teague, Nicole Sullivan, and other great speakers on CSS.

It was a big hit and I think one of the reasons it was more of a focused effort to get past the basics of CSS and dive into more advanced, focused material.

It’s no one’s fault really that CSS isn’t delved deeply at many conferences and there isn’t one reason why it happens. CSS doesn’t work in a vacuum. It is only one part of what makes a great Web site.

Also as a speaker, sometimes you don’t know your audience skillset and tend to cater to the basics so as not to risk losing people.

So, when Hugh from SXSW asked me if I would be interested in chaperoning part of SXSW, namely the CSS workshops, I jumped at the chance.

Looking through the CSS submissions in the panel picker, I picked out what I believe are some real gems.

Workig with the speakers of these panels to make it the best possible workshops, I believe we have a solid line up of CSS goodness:

CSS Frameworks Shootout by Beau Smith.

Joined by Nathan Smith, Joshua Clayton, Chris Eppstein, and Nicole Sullivan, the Smith moderates a discussion covering the different flavors of CSS frameworks as well as address the merits of SASS.

CSS and Fonts: Fluid Web Typography by Jason Cranford Teague.

Doing a solo workshop, Jason covers the latest news about Web typography and how the make the most of the new developmenets. (After having tech edited Jason’s book, Fluid Web Typography, I know he is perfect for this presentation.)

CSS3 Design with HTML5 by Stephanie Sullivan, Zoe Gillenwater and myself.

In this workshop, we intend to cover the latest in cross-browser CSS3 development (typically involving patching up IE until the next promised version) as well as see how web developers can use HTML5 for engaging user experiences.

It’s nice to see the rise in popularity and buzz of CSS3. Thanks in a large part to browser vendors implementing parts of the spec before its even finished, but I digress.

If you intend to come to SXSW Interactive this year and have a hand in CSS coding at your place of work, check out these panels Saturday afternoon.

And if you can’t make it to Austin this year and still want to learn more about CSS, I’ll be giving an online CSS3 workshop next week.

Web Form Elements

I wanted to take a look at how browsers render form elements. I mean really take a look. Over 5,000 screenshots later, the problem of consistent browser rendering of web form elements looks nowhere near happening.

This is in large part due to three areas: the specification not dictating the design, the browser vendors not feeling they need to adopt a standard, and the different operating systems’ UI.

Planning Conferences

I did something I thought I would never thought I could do: I put together a Web design conference. During a conversation with Kimberly Blessing in 2008, we thought we should put together a conference “of our own”.

Thus the idea for the first ever AIGA In Control Web Design Workshop Conference took shape and it took place in Cincinnati this past June.

Assembling the conference was one of my main responsibilities as a board member of AIGA Cincinnati and it came together in such a great way thanks to the speakers, the attendees, volunteers, and fellow board members.

After never thinking I would organize one conference, I ended up helping to run three more this year. Thanks to my partner, we were able to put on three online conferences: The CSS Summit, The DIY Summit and The jQuery Summit. (And right around the corner are the online Workshop Summits in mid-January and the AIGA In Control Web Design Workshop Conference in Orlando this February.)

Thanks to people like you attending these events, we raised close to $20,000 for non-profits while helping spread best practices and saving thousands of lbs in CO₂.

Third in a Series

In the middle of those events, the third edition of the CSS Cookbook was written, edited and (as of yesterday) published.

Almost three times the size of the first edition, the new edition sports new solutions to common CSS problems, updates to the new browsers, and how to work with HTML5 and CSS3.

Technical Editor

I did something else I always wanted to do, but hadn’t had the opportunity: tech edit a book.

After writing ten books and dealing with several tech editors, I was itching at a chance to work on a book. This year I got the honor of editing David McFarland’s CSS: The Missing Manual, Jennifer Niederst Robbins’ HTML and XHTML Pocket Reference, Fifth Edition and Jason Cranford Teague’s Fluid Web Typography.

While the subject matter was different, the attention to detail from all three authors were the same. (I also felt a little sorry for Jason as he had to rewrite a chapter due to the breakneck speed in which the possibilities of Web typography exploded in the last half of the year.)

Also, the authors had something else in common: they both have done great work in moving the Web forward. They’ve been doing this Web design thing since it was possible to do Web design. It was an honor to play a small role in their books.

Releasing Web Education

In March, I did a small part in helping out the Web education curriculum. Announced during SXSW Interactive festival, the InterAct curriculum is a series of 10 courses under creative commons for Web educators to incorporate however they wish: they can take the whole thing or use only parts of it.

Why give it away for free? The goal is to get fresh, Web educational materials into the hands of educators. And being a teacher is hard work. By helping out with some free resources, we help raise everyone’s awareness of quality Web education.

Speaking

I even managed to keep up a brisk speaking schedule:

• University of Cincinnati
• The CSS Summit
• SXSW Interactive Festival
• In Control Cincinnati
• eduWeb Conference
• July 4th presentation of the CSS Flag
• Miami University
• Georgia University
• Spring BR/ Conference
• Web Visions

I’m always looking for venues to speak. So, if you are looking for a speaker in 2010, please let me know.

Happy New Year!

Even though no one appears to have added any new days, 2009 was definitely long year.

As we transition to the next one, I wish you all the best for 2010.

May it be a happy and joyful one for you and your family and friends.

For a couple days in late February, Web design and development talks from HTML5 to usability and everything in between will be covered by some of the the best speakers and trainers in the world:

• Kelly Goto
• Stephanie Sullivan
• Ethan Marcotte
• Ted Murphy
• Derek Featherstone
• Greg Rewis
• Shari Thurow
• Jared Spool

Register now using my discount code INCCHRISS for $50 off.

While you are busying crossing off your holiday shopping list via Amazon.com, you might want to check out the following deals on Web design and development education that are only good for today:

50% off Individual Tickets for The Workshop Summits. For two days starting on January 14th, Molly E. Holzschlag, Emily Lewis, Aarron Walter and myself lead three-hour, virtual workshops each on HTML, Microformats, Findability and CSS3 respectively. Yes, it’s virtual so you can build your skill set without having to leave your computer. (Use the discount code CYBERMONDAY when registering.)

$200 off In Control Orlando Registration Fee. In Control Orlando Web Design Workshop Conference is a two-day event in late February that highlights some of the best training available in Web design and development while enjoying Winter in a warmer climate. Learn from a great line-up of 10 internationally recognized educators and industry leaders such as Kelly Goto, Derek Featherstone, Stephanie Sullivan, Ethan Marcotte, Jared Spool, and more. (Use the discount code CYBERMONDAY when registering.)

I hope to see you at one of these events in the new year!

P.S. If you are still on Amazon.com and in need of buying a small gift for the Web designer or two in your life, might I recommend a pre-order of CSS Cookbook, 3rd Edition?

The conference will be on November 19th and will feature a number of prominent members of the jQuery community, including members of the jQuery team.

The following talks are slated for the jQuery Summit:

• The State of jQuery - John Resig
• Web Interface Essentials - Marc Grabanski
• RIAs: Building for the Desktop with the Web - Jonathan Snook
• Rich Interactivity, Simplified, with jQuery UI - Richard Worth
• Refactoring jQuery - Mike Hostetler
• JavaScript for Designers - David McFarland
• Building Robust jQuery Plugins - Jörn Zaefferer
• jQuery Anti-Patterns for Performance & Compression - Paul Irish

All attendees will be receiving a free copy of the upcoming jQuery Cookbook, from O’Reilly. Additionally a number of prizes will be given away to attendees (books, DVDs, etc.) during the event.

If you would like to attend this virtual conference, use my discount code, JQRYCHRISS, to get 10% off the overall price when ordering. A portion of the proceeds will be going directly to help fund the jQuery Foundation.

For 2010, we dcided to take the show on the road to Florida. In conjunction with AIGA Orlando, we’re having In Control take place on Feb. 22-23rd in, well, Orlando.

I’m humbled to have such a great number of talented speakers for In Control Orlando:

• Kelly Goto
• Ted Murphy
• Jared Spool
• Derek Featherstone
• Ethan Marcotte
• David McFarland
• Greg Rewis
• Stephanie Sullivan
• Shari Thurow

While the surroundings may change, the formula for In Control hasn’t:

• Longer sessions by speakers to dive deeper into the material
• Wrap-up sessions each day with that day’s slate of speakers
• One-track conference so everyone shares the same experience
• Capping registrations to 100 people so not to have your voice drowned out
• Comparitively priced to other conferences plus lunch and snacks throughout the day

And the last item to the formula is that In Control needs to be a conference I would not only would want to attend, but I would put down my hard-earned money to pay to see myself.

The early bird discount makes it affordable–and if you are an AIGA member, you get an even better break on the price. If you want the discount code and are an AIGA member contact your local chapter’s board.

If you aren’t an AIGA member, feel free to use my discount code, INCSCHM, and save an additional $50.

(If you are a member of AIGA, you can get a separate, better additional discount, too. Be sure to contact your local AIGA board for the discount code!)

Just like we did in June, we are going to have a great time this February in Orlando and I invite you to join us.

It wasn’t just the attendees that were scattered around the globe, our speakers came from different locations.

Matt Harris beamed in from San Francisco to talk about WordPress, while Kevin Lawver in Georgia taught about Ruby on Rails.

All of our wonderful speakers including Brian Fling, Kelly Goto, Dan Rubin, Ryan Irelan, Mark Trammell, and Juliette Melton talked about aspects of one-person Web design team: whether it be usability, branding yourself, raising your design skills, improving your workflow, introduction into a new programming framework, or finally using Subversion.

Even with interruptions by Kanye, over 7 hours in total of Web design and development education were had by people who wouldn’t or couldn’t travel to a Web conference with leaders in the field in an era of budget cuts and busy work schedules.

And we hosted the event in Austin at the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business (who were also in the middle of launching their new site design!). Since it was UT, throwing horns became both a way to symbolizing rocking out and support for the Longhorns. I love efficiencies!

Special thanks to MailChimp for sponsoring the event and PeachPit for the books as door prizes!

If you missed out on the DIY Summit, don’t worry!

We have another Web design virtual conference coming up in November: jQuery Summit featuring Jonathan Snook, John Resig and more!

My presentation (slides) covers using Web Standards and jQuery to make life easier for Web designers.

In addition to my SXSW Interactive panel, I have a SXSW Music panel up for your consideration.

Mark Trammell, Taylor McKnight and myself are presenting a panel called “Designing Our Way Through Bad Band Web Sites” that looks into how bands can make a better online presence with as least amount of work possible:

Having a presence online doesn’t mean just having a small Web site. It’s being 360 degrees from mobile to microblogging. But can we create a compelling, online Web presence with less than half a shoestring for a budget? Also, we will only mention Twitter by name during the presentation if someone in the audience brings it up first. Promise.

If would like to learn more about making a better band web site, then vote for Designing Our Way Through Bad Band Web Sites!

Next year’s SXSW Interactive is still far away, however voting for panels that will comprise this 4-day festival is very much underway.

Molly Holzshlag, Stephanie Sullivan, Zoe Gillenwater, and myself (which compose half of The CSS Summit) are presenting a panel simply called “HTML5 and CSS3 Design” that dives in making these upcoming technologies approachable and usable:

As HTML5 and CSS3 gets written, browser vendors are already incorporating their new features allowing for greater design and functionality. However, some major browsers haven’t. How should developers build for a constantly moving target? This panel discusses dealing with those older browsers and embracing new Web design technologies with practical HTML5 and CSS3 demonstrations.

If would like to have these speakers at SXSW, then vote HTML5 and CSS3!

It’s called The DIY Summit and we’ve lined up a number of great speakers and content for the freelancer or the in-house design team of one:

• Lea Alcantara — The Art of Self-Branding
• Brian Fling — Design and Development for the iPhone
• Kelly Goto — Workflow and Process
• Matt Harris — Using WordPress for Content Management
• Ryan Irelan — Incorporating Subversion into Your Workflow
• Kevin Lawver — Introduction to Ruby on Rails
• Dan Rubin — Great CSS Design
• Mark Trammell and Juliette Melton — Conducting Effective User Research

The DIY Summit takes Septemeber 17th. Where? Online.

That’s right. Online!

All you need is a modern browser, a broadband connection, and some undivided attention. No need to book expensive hotel rooms or air travel.

Also, you will be doing Mother Earth some good. We estimated we saved 40,000lbs of CO₂ by having The CSS Summit online through the Interwebs.

Tickets for The DIY Summit are also relatively cheap compared to other conferences: $139.00 for a single ticket.

If you are an organization or company wanting to project the conference in a meeting room, the ticket price is $439.00.

You can save $25 no matter which ticket you use by using my discount code, DIYCHRISS.

The DIY Summit should prove to be a shot of adrenalin-inspiration for those who build the Web single-handedly. I hope to see you there!

In a celebration of USA’s Independence Day and Web design nerdery, I’ll be walking online participants through various strategies for working with CSS to create a rich visual presentation—the US Flag—out of everyday markup.

It’s one of my most popular presentations and it’s free for the first thirteen people that sign up.

The 37 next people who sign up afterwards, it’s $17.76 a ticket. (Get it?)

I hope you attend as I always have a blast with this presentation and I tend to give away some books, too.

Technical Specifications

• To attend A More Perfect Union with CSS, you will need a modern web browser (Firefox 1.5, IE 6 & Safari 2 or newer, for example.)
• Adobe Flash Player Version 10 is also required. (Most browsers already have Flash installed.) Click on this link to install Flash if you need it.

More CSS Goodness

If you would like to know more about CSS and attend a full day conference without leaving your computer, check out the CSS Summit.

CSS Summit topics and speakers include:

• Future CSS & Markup by Molly E. Holzschlag
• Tomorrow’s CSS3 Today by Dave McFarland
• CSS & Coding Layouts by Stephanie Sullivan
• CSS & Flexible Layouts by Zoe Gillenwater
• CSS & Web Form Elements by Christopher Schmitt
• CSS & Troubleshooting IE6 by Kimberly Blessing
• Object Oriented CSS by Nicole Sullivan
• CSS & Fluid Typography by Jason Cranford-Teague

For the price of US$.75 a minute, you can get your podcast transcribed.

Feeling like balking at the price tag?

Well, if you are serious about podcasting and even own an expensive microphone to get a rich sound, then is no excuse.

With a transcription, you gain so much:

• improve search results
• accessible content
• browser-agnostic content

For the price of some decent hardware, you get to move your content to more eyes–not just ears.

If you aren’t willing to put down the money do that, then why are you publishing in the first place?

Below are my slides from the “amazingr” presentation.

Not only does Nicole have a great deal of experience using this technique at Yahoo!, she has been presenting on this topic for the past several months, piquing the curiosity of designers and developers alike.

She joins an already impressive line-up of speakers including Molly E. Holzschlag, Stephanie Sullivan, Jason Cranford Teague, Dave McFarland, and Zoe Mickley Gillenwater.

The current price of the CSS Summit ticket is $139.

However, that ticket price goes up on July 3rd to $179.00

So, grab your ticket now and save $25 off that price by using my discount code, CSSCHRISS.

I presented about CSS and how to tackle the solution of designing a semantic version of the US Flag, including a fluid layout version.

If you can’t make it to Cincinnati for In Control, I’m pleased to announce the CSS Summit.

CSS Summit’s goal is to examine a component of Web design and explore it’s many facets that makes it such a compelling and, yes, frustrating technology to use.

Quite frankly, if you interact with CSS for your job, this is the conference for you.

In the CSS Summit we have some amazing speakers like Molly E. Holzschlag, Stephanie Sullivan, Kimberly Blessing, Jason Cranford Teague, Dave McFarland, Zoe Gillenwater and even this guy named Christopher Schmitt.

We have a wide-range of topics:

• Future CSS and Markup
• Troubleshooting IE6
• CSS3
• Coding Layouts
• Web Typography
• Web Form Elements
• Flexible Layouts

The CSS Summit will take place online Saturday, July 18 from 9 a.m. to 5p.m ET.

Oh, and the whole thing is being done online. That’s right! No need to book plane tickets or expensive hotels. We’re coming to a computer near you.

So, that’s eight hours of CSS to help you become a CSS ninja all for the very affordable price of $139. (You can even get a $25 off that price by using my discount code, CSSCHRISS.)

Hope to see you there!

It was a bit more advanced talk in some ways than the one we gave at SXSW.

For this session, I dove into my research of the Web Form Elements to analyze which CSS properties and form elements are poorly supported in browsers.

I looked at each of the Web form elements to see if CSS property was supported on the form element–assigning it a value of Y for yes, N for no, S for somewhat and N/A for the CSS properties that didn’t apply.

You can look at the start of this reseach in the lookup tables for Appendix D of the CSS Cookbook. It’s available as a free download from the O’Reilly Web site.

To see which form elements and CSS properties did well, you can look into the presentation itself from my SlideShare account (see pages 33 and 37) or you skip down this blog post to read the lists.

Support for CSS Properties (Best to Worst)

1. margin
2. background-color
3. width
4. font-size
5. border-style
6. letter-spacing
7. padding
8. height
9. color
10. background-image
11. border
12. font-family
13. border-width
14. border-color
15. font-weight
16. word-spacing
17. text-indent
18. text-decoration
19. text-align
20. line-height

Support for Form Elements (Best to Worst)

1. textarea
2. input text
3. submit buttons
4. select (one item)
5. select (multiple items)
6. file uploads
7. checkboxes
8. radio buttons

How do you think browsers should render radio buttons when a value for background-color is applied?

Pick your answer from the sample answers (which are taken from actual browser renderings) or suggest your own solution!

A. Background color is applied around the radio button control.

B. Background color is applied inside the radio button control.

C. Nothing happens.

Along with Opera and Firefox, there have been two versions of IE within the three years along with Google’s new browser, Chrome.

These new developments in browsers are leading to some long desired features in browsers like opacity, auto-generated content and (maybe) embedding typefaces.

However there is still an unresolved issue with browsers: Web form elements are inconsistently rendered.

While anyone can see that there are problems with how forms are rendered, the question is, “what is the best way to render for elements for a given form element and CSS property?”

Along the lines of Dan’s SimpleQuiz series, I figured it’s best to ask the Web design and development community for their opinions.

Hopefully this discussion will lead to the appropriate solution that browser vendors could use when programming how browsers should handle the CSS-enabled design of Web form elements.

The first question I would ask is one that I think shows readily the problem with Web form design:

How should browsers render radio buttons when a value for width of a certain length is applied?

Pick your answer from the sample answers (which are taken from actual browser renderings) or suggest your own solution!

A. Radio buttons stretch to the size of the width property value.

B. Radio buttons do not resize, yet the space set by width property is applied and the radio buttons are aligned to the left.

C. Radio buttons do not resize, yet the space set by width property is applied and the radio buttons are aligned to the center.

D. Nothing happens.