WWW2006 and me!

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W3C and Me

It is Thursday today and I am suffering from the fallout of too much webby goodness. Yesterday was my chance to see the conference first hand. There are a host of seminars, movers and shakers, fellow geeks, and even some normal people who have gathered from all parts of the globe to discuss the future of the web. I managed to catch Steven Pemberton’s speech on the power of declarative thinking which certainly got my mental faculties exercising!

Keeping the code simple is key to success was one of the main points I picked up, if you have less code it is easier to debug, cheaper and faster to create. Simple you might think yet it is surprising how many people write really bloated code. Coding web apps should be device independent, seeing as there are more browsers on mobile devices like phones and PDA’s than on desktops it seems like common sense to ensure that you don’t exclude all those people who could potentially be viewing your site. Yet another point that stuck in my mind was to do with accessibility, primarily the argument as to why you should write accessible code – “Google see’s your site as a blind person” if your site isn’t accessible then it isn’t search engine friendly… and no-one wants that.

I spent a fair bit of time grazing at the other booths too, seeing what there was on offer (no, not just freebies, ideas) and boy was there a plethora of amazing things to fill your brain with. I could spend ages listing all the wonderful bits n’ bobs but I wont, however there are a couple that are worthy of singling out for special attention.

Trexy is an innovative approach to searching that really caught my eye, they have some really clever ideas. They are a meta-search engine that trawls over three thousand other search engines, allowing you to easily search the deep web without all the pain of finding the correct gateways to the content you want. That in itself is pretty funky and cool but it gets better.

They also keep a record of your search so that if you want to go back and find a site you searched for last Tuesday you can go and see what your search history. Also, it allows you to see other peoples’ searches and follow them.

Think of it as a Del.icio.us for searching and you have the idea, it is a social search tool! Now that is cool. Their stall was buzzing during the breaks and I certainly think that it will be one to watch in the coming months.
They also do a networking event in London for techy types every month called the Flag and Bell where they go on a pub crawl to drink and network. If only it was in Edinburgh… Still, at least they brought the idea up for WWW2006, where we sampled this excellent event.
There is more to tell about Trexy and the fun adventures on Wednesday night but that is for another post. :)

Yet another stand worthy of mention was the Nokia crowd who have just released an amazing fully featured browser based on Safari that is XHTML/CSS/JavaScript compliant and allows you to view sites as you would on your desktop. Obviously the screen size is much smaller but the browser has some innovative touches like scrolling around the page and a visual history where you see thumbnails of the sites rather than just names and URLs. What was particularly impressive is that they have released it to the open source community!

Phew, ok now that’s enough for one post. The exploits of the NR crew at the castle and beyond are going to have to wait for another post. And yes, there are photos!