@media, Hot Topics Panel

Closing panel for the conference. Just a mixture of random thoughts and questions.

• CSS is still an undiscovered country - progressive CSS should come. IE7 is playing catchup with a lot of the other browsers.
• Evangelising on the use of CSS is done - it should be a given (ha ha ha in some places)
• We're now waiting for the next leap forward in what we can depend on as far as browser support for the standards.
• Tantek demonstrated cutting edge css in Safari - a honeycomb pattern (yes, hexagons!) with rollover change of state - done entirely with CSS and not a graphic in sight. Blimey! That man has an enormous brain...
• Wireframing applications with XHTML/CSS is the only way to test fluid and changable size of text etc.
• What's missing from WebUI - Tantek would like an "undo" analagous function - plus CTL-S to save text in a form as you're going along (how many times have forms bombed on send, much to our cussing?) Or even better, persist it in the browser so its still there when you come back next time.
• Yahoo Libraries - no idea why I wrote this down, will have to Google for enlightenment ;-)
• Can Ajax be made accessible? Questioner wondered whether inaccessibility was a fundamental problem of Ajax, or just how it is implemented on any given site. User Agents are not really fully Ajax capable. Refs, Derek Featherstone/Joe Clarke basecamphq.com
• According to technorati.com 's user stats, 15% of users have Javascript turned OFF!
• It's best to specialise, but be aware of the designer/developer "trench" :-)

What's Coming Up?

• We need real, practical solutions for web designers
• Best practices
• Microformats, iCal
• OpenData - µ-formats, mashing, GoogleMaps release API, giving us frappr.com
  
• hCards hCalendars and RSS
  

There should be podcasts of the seminars out in due course, available from the @media website.