Workshops 👩‍💻

On Monday, we will be running four hands-on workshops:

• The Front-End Accessibility Workshop with Sara Soueidan.
• Building Modern HTML Emails Without Going Mad with Rémi Parmentier.
• Resilient Web Systems with CSS & Sass with Miriam Suzanne.
• Smart Responsive UX Design Patterns with Vitaly Friedman.

Jam Session

The night before the conference kicks off, we’re hosting a warm-up event with drinks and talks from your fellow attendees. We hope you’ll join us to connect ahead of the main event!

Design Systems

Coming soon!

Applied Accessibility: Practical Tips For Building More Accessible Front-Ends

Coming soon!

Front-end

Coming soon!

Think Like An Email Geek

Coding HTML emails is a beast of its own, often perceived as relying solely on outdated practices. And for a good reason, email client quirks can make even the most clever front-end developer crazy. Emails are still part of your user's journey, from commercial newsletters to transactional emails.

The first step to thinking like an email geek is to understand how email clients change our code and why this happens. From technical and security constraints to user experience enhancements, every quirk is there for a reason.

Those constraints then allow email geeks to invent new ways to use HTML and CSS. From building responsive layouts without media queries to creating interactive emails without any JavaScript—"Life finds a way" to quote my favorite mathematician.

International Is The New Mobile First

Since last year, Shopify launched in 18 new languages. In this talk, you’ll gain insight about how international is forcing us to fundamentally shift our way of thinking. In the same way mobile disrupted a once desktop-only internet, international is disrupting the way we think about commerce.

Learn about the UX principles and tooling we’re using to take on meaty challenges to drive forward a large scale product that was previously only supported in English.

Web Fonts And Font Performance

Coming soon!

CSS Is Rad

Resilient design on an unknown canvas

Depending who you ask, CSS is either awesome or broken. CSS is not a programming language, unless it is. CSS is too simple and entirely too difficult. CSS is weird — not like other languages — and not like print design either, but trapped in a strange middle ground with unique rules and constraints.

The web is designed to work across platforms, devices, languages, and interfaces, but how can we possibly design for that unknown and always-changing canvas? CSS is designed to be resilient, declarative, accessible, and contextual — with built-in progressive enhancement and graceful degradation. We’ll look at practical ways to leverage those aspects of the language in our everyday work.

We don’t have to wait years for support in every browser before we use the new features, and we don’t have to duplicate our work for every browser we support. From layouts to variables, support queries, and duplicated properties: we can write resilient and modern CSS that works across the entire web — now and into the future.

After Party 🎱

Time to party it up! Make some new friends and have a wonderful night of networking and fun.

It’s a great opportunity for you to make new connections and ask speakers all those questions that they always wanted to ask! But, if just walking up to someone isn’t your thing - then why not challenge them in a game of pool at this classic Austin pool bar! There are pool tables, darts, and oh so many pinball machines!

We hope to see you from 8 PM onwards at Buffalo Billiards. Don't forget to bring your badge and Photo ID.

Do you already know who our Mystery Speaker is?

We know it's early, but please make sure you're there for our Mystery Speaker. You won't reget it ;-)

From Milliseconds To Millions

A Look at the Numbers Driving Web Performance We all know performance is big business, but how big? Let’s take a look at some of the numbers powering the web performance industry from both sides of the table. What do performance improvements mean for my clients, and how do we translate that into a working relationship?

Illustration

Coming Soon

Building Websites

Websites range in complexity from a handful of quite simple static files, to massively complex feats of engineering so complex that no one person has any idea how it all works! Most websites are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

One way to think about it is that we choose complexities based on needs that our websites have. For example, a website that needs a publishing workflow needs certain things that ultimately make the website more complex. So does a site that shows real-time flight data. Or a site with social interactions. The trouble is that sometimes we miss the mark. We add complexities where they aren't needed, or in reverse, don't give ourselves the best tools we could.

In this talk, let's try to map websites' needs to the complexities that solve them so that we can make better web technology choices.

Coming soon!

Some late afternoon fun!

If you don’t want your SmashingConf to end yet, why not join us for a relaxing afternoon activity? More info to be announced!

Workshops 👨‍💻

On Thursday, we will be running another four hands-on workshops:

• The CSS Layout Masterclass with Rachel Andrew.
• Making and Maintaining Successful Design Systems with Brad Frost.
• Front-End Performance: Building Faster Websites with Harry Roberts.
• New Front-End Adventures, 2020 Edition with Vitaly Friedman.