State of the Browser is a small, single-track conference in London. I’d been before, and while it always has a great list of speakers, what I’d forgotten was the extremely welcoming and inclusive atmosphere. For example, it’s the first conference I’ve been to with live captioning, and almost every talk had an accessibility section or angle.
Additionally, their business model is built on sponsorship, so they’re able to give away a large number of tickets and offer discounted diversity tickets to encourage new people in the industry to attend. Even the full-price tickets are very reasonable. It does require you to give up some of your “real life”, being held on a Saturday. However, for that; you get breakie and a chance to wander around the Barbican (a beautiful post-war brutalist interpretation of a residential utopia, with a strong 70s Doctor Who vibe).
If you’re looking for a conference to attend next year, it’s a strong recommendation from me, if for no other reason than a chance to pack your longest scarf and run around the Barbican eating jelly babies during the breaks.
A summary of talks:
Andreas Kling – Ladybird: Building a new browser from scratch
While we live in a period of unprecedented browser conformance, which is great for us as developers, part of this boon has been driven by the consolidation of browser engines into the hands of two mega-corporations.
Andreas is endeavouring to build a new web standards-compliant browser; while improving web standards documentation, building a community, and using an ethical funding model.
It’s a tall order.
His talk was also extremely candid about his troubles with substance abuse.
Niya Dobazova – To light-dark() or Not To light-dark()
At State of the Browser, they actively recruit new speakers and pair them with a speaking mentor.
This was Niya’s first talk. She’s a student and has only been studying the web for about 6 months. She did a great talk on the light-dark CSS function, which I hadn’t been aware of, and how easy it is to implement light and dark themes and theme switchers (without JavaScript!).
This was a really comprehensive talk covering:
- Accessibility: Allowing people to change themes is good. For example, dyslexia and astigmatism can be helped with lighter themes, while migraines and photophobia can be helped with dark themes.
- Sustainability: Dark themes save quite a lot of energy on OLED screens, so it’s a really good move for sustainability in products.
The implementation of light-dark looked so simple that I thought it might make quite a good hack day project.
She also showed off the Stark plugin’s visual simulator, which I didn’t know it had.
Watch Niya’s talk on light-dark()
Josh Tumath – How do we keep going wrong? Roundabouts and APIs.
Josh Tumath (BBC Design System and CSS Working Group) was the talk of the day for me, about APIs in design systems. He also talked about principles that can help with guiding your API development, with this quote they have up on the wall at the BBC, but applicable to all aspects of coding:
“User needs come before the needs of component consumers, which come before the needs of component developers, which come before the needs of the design system team, which come before theoretical purity.”
Sadly, there is no video, but Luke Murphy (from Zero Height) has posted his excellent notes, which are much better than mine.
And there is the CSS working group “hall of shame”, where you can see how APIs can go wrong. It was a genuine joy to hear a whole auditorium laughing at CSS in-jokes:
“The top and bottom margins of a single box should never have been allowed to collapse together automatically, as this is the root of all margin-collapsing evil.”
And
“Table layout should be sane.”
But the key takeaways were:
- Keep your APIs surface small.
- Spend time thinking about your naming.
- Think about evolution, and that enums are more extensible than booleans.
- Make the simple things simple and complex things possible.
Manuel Matuzović – Color in CSS: How I learned to disrespect Tennis.
Manuel’s a great speaker, and if you enjoy nerdy deep dives into a single thing, then his talk on CSS color functions is great fun and includes references to curling.
Manuel’s talk as done previously at beyond tellerrand
Scott Riley – Mindful Design for Developers
Scott’s talk is more a manifesto, and while I had seen his talk previously at Converge, he presented it here with more emphasis on development.
If you’re a designer, you should watch it; if you’re a developer, you should watch it; if you are a PM you should watch it; It’s a rallying cry against behaviorism and reward-based UX, and given psychology’s replication crisis, it’s probably high time there is a reassessment of UX built on some of this.
He focuses on placemaking and autonomy for users. You can read some sample chapters from his book.
Also, if you disagree with his call to arms, you can at least use his lovely Figma UX toolkit.
Scott’s talk as presented at a previous conference, Converge (trigger warning: some swearing and some strong design opinions).
Sara Joy – Whimsica11y: bringing the joy and whimsy to everyone
Sara is all about the fun you can have on the web. Her talk is a bit of a nostalgia fest, but with a serious point of how we can extend playfulness to users of accessible technology.
There are no easy answers here, and some pretty hard truths about how low the bar is to “delight” users of accessible technology. Spoiler: if your product actually works.
There were some fun ideas, and an exciting proposal for CSS speech, which is some way off, but to be honest, the takeaway was that as an industry, we just need to get the basics right.
Oliver Schöndorfer – Typographer vs. Accessibility
Oliver is a really fun speaker with lots of interaction and gimmicks. However, he dismantles some important accessibility myths around typography, particularly around spacing and font choices.
He has some great, simple takeaways for accessibility that can be used at all levels when dealing with text, while still making it look good.