Journal tags: proposals

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Speaking at CSS Day 2022

I’m very excited about speaking at CSS Day this year. My talk is called In And Out Of Style:

It’s an exciting time for CSS! It feels like new features are being added every day. And yet, through it all, CSS has managed to remain an accessible language for anyone making websites. Is this an inevitable part of the design of CSS? Or has CSS been formed by chance? Let’s take a look at the history—and some alternative histories—of the World Wide Web to better understand where we are today. And then, let’s cast our gaze to the future!

Technically, CSS Day won’t be the first outing for this talk but it will be the in-person debut. I had the chance to give the talk online last week at An Event Apart. Giving a talk online isn’t quite the same as speaking on stage, but I got enough feedback from the attendees that I’m feeling confident about giving the talk in Amsterdam. It went down well with the audience at An Event Apart.

If the description has you intrigued, come along to CSS Day to hear the talk in person. And if you like the subject matter, I’ve put together these links to go with the talk…

Blog posts

Presentations

Proposals (email)

Papers (PDF)

People (Wikipedia)

Standards processing

I’ve been like a dog with a bone the way I’ve been pushing for a declarative option for the Web Share API in the shape of button type=“share”. It’s been an interesting window into the world of web standards.

The story so far…

That’s the situation currently. The general consensus seems to be that it’s probably too soon to be talking about implementation at this stage—the Web Share API itself is still pretty new—but gathering data to inform future work is good.

In planning for the next TPAC meeting (the big web standards gathering), Marcos summarised the situation like this:

Not blocking: but a proposal was made by @adactio to come up with a declarative solution, but at least two implementers have said that now is not the appropriate time to add such a thing to the spec (we need more implementation experience + and also to see how devs use the API) - but it would be great to see a proposal incubated at the WICG.

Now this where things can get a little confusing because it used to be that if you wanted to incubate a proposal, you’d have to do on Discourse, which is a steaming pile of crap that requires JavaScript in order to put text on a screen. But Šime pointed out that proposals can now be submitted on Github.

So that’s where I’ve submitted my proposal, linking through to the explainer document.

Like I said, I’m not expecting anything to happen anytime soon, but it would be really good to gather as much data as possible around existing usage of the Web Share API. If you’re using it, or you know anyone who’s using it, please, please, please take a moment to provide a quick description. And if you could help spread the word to get that issue in front of as many devs as possible, I’d be very grateful.

(Many thanks to everyone who’s already contributed to that issue—much appreciated!)

Global Diversity CFP Day—Brighton edition

There are enough middle-aged straight white men like me speaking at conferences. That’s why the Global Diversity Call-For-Proposals Day is happening this Saturday, February 3rd.

The purpose is two-fold. One is to encourage a diverse range of people to submit talk proposals to conferences. The other is to help with the specifics—coming with ideas, writing a good title and abstract, preparing the presentation, and all that.

Julie is organising the Brighton edition. Clearleft are providing the venue—68 Middle Street. I’ll be on hand to facilitate. Rosa and Dot will be doing the real work, mentoring the attendees.

If you’ve ever thought about submitting a talk proposal to a conference but just don’t know where to start, or if you’re just interested in the idea, please do come along on Saturday. It’s starts at 11am and will be all wrapped up by 3pm.

See you there!