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Christopher Schmitt, co-founder of the In Control conference, sits down with Treehouse to discuss web design and development conferences and techniques for working with images on the web.
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0:00
Welcome to another episode of Treehouse Friends.
0:15
My name's Randy Hoyt, and today I'm here at the In Control Conference in Orlando
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joined by one of the co-organizers, Christopher Schmidt.
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How are you Christopher? >>Doing great man. How are you doing?
0:23
Doing well. Thanks for joining us today. >>Of course.
0:25
Can you tell us a little about the In Control Conference?
0:27
It's a conference we started about 4 or 5 years ago.
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We started out in Cincinnati, and one of the things we do is we work with local AIGA
0:34
chapters, and AIGA is a national organization of design professionals.
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So it's design professionals of any various design field,
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but their primary background is print design.
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With In Control, we really wanted to bring web designers who are really just experts
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in their field and bring them to local chapters as well as inviting people outside the AIGA
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to attend a conference and really just deep dive into different technologies
0:58
and aspects of web design.
1:02
It's a 2-day conference, so each day kicks off with a keynote,
1:05
and then on the first day we start with HTML as a foundation of HTML5,
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and then we get to a CSS, and the next session is JavaScript,
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and then the last session of the first day is kind of like
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a session that kind of ties everything together.
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Right now while we're talking Chris Coyier is doing his modern work flow.
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So he's really going to be touching on HTML, CSS, JavaScript,
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and all the other stuff that a really great website in today's age.
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Day 2 is what we call the propri track.
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We kick off another keynote, but then that day is more like soft sciences,
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usability, content strategy, accessibility,
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stuff that technically you don't need to make a website,
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but it's the materials and the education and the substance that you need
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to make a really great user experience for that.
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So our hope is that by the end of the day and the conference that
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people have a really good idea of what it takes to build even a better,
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more impressive website than when they started out
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and by having the new tools and the ideas that they leave inspired to do great work.
2:06
Excellent. Now there's a lot of content available for free or pretty inexpensive
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on the internet--blogs, books, and even the Treehouse videos
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can provide people a lot of those same technical skills.
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What would you say is the benefit to getting out
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from behind the laptop and going to a conference?
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Well, I think you just said it. You get out of the laptop. Right?
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So you're always like in front of the laptop, and so your mind is always trying to
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find the latest blog tutorial or what not.
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Sometimes those get out of date and don't get updated.
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Sometimes information changes so fast, as you know.
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We just talked about responsive images and how much has changed within the last year.
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So that content needs to be updated, and sometimes what's really popular
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in Google searches isn't what you really need to know. Right?
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So you really need someone that can--speaker at a conference who can hopefully,
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if they're expert enough, put it into context for you
3:00
and then also ask questions.
3:03
The speaker probably wasn't expecting to answer that question,
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but it's a question that you came up with and they'll help you put the ideas
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into a better context for that.
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Also it's a great way to network and to meet like-minded folks
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who you normally wouldn't meet otherwise.
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It's really a great way of doing that.
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You know just the way the whole industry changes so fast.
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It's a really great way just to get up to date pretty fast.
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Not only just the speakers, but there is saying that sometimes the speaker
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isn't the smartest person in the room, it's the audience is the smartest person in the room.
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That's one of the things that when I speak is that if there's a question that I don't know
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I make sure I tell people, "I don't know the answer to that one,
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but maybe someone here knows."
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Most of the time they probably know the answer to it.
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That's a great way to just learn, get your answers, and move on and make--
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really not make it but just be inspired to great things,
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and I feel like you get inspired by knowing. Right?
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And knowing what you need to do to build great things.
4:04
You mentioned Cincinnati, and you've had In Control here in Orlando a couple of times.
4:07
What other venues do you have coming up for this year?
4:12
Well, we started out with Cincinnati because I used to live there,
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and I was on the board of an AIGA Cincinnati, so we started there.
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I was also on the board of AIGA Orlando, so I knew people here,
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and so we've been actually coming back to Orlando--this is our 4th year.
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It's just a great spot, and it's middle of wintertime
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so it's a really great way to warm up doing that. We come here.
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We also did Hawaii last year as well, and that was really great
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because we got people from all over the world to come to that one.
4:36
Hawaii's awesome.
4:40
Some other conferences we have lined up is Artifact Conference,
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which is more geared toward designing for this new multi-device web that we have now.
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Things have changed so much that some people just--
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you just can't make Photoshop comps because it's not just 160 pixels anymore.
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Right? How do you design for responsive stuff when Photoshop doesn't cut it?
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We're working with people at Converge and also Jennifer Robbins
5:05
who has been around with the web forever.
5:09
This conference is a 2-day conference with workshops.
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We're more geared towards designers.
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So we'll have Trent Walton from Paravel there.
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Jennifer Simmons from the 5by5 podcast is going to be there.
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I'll be there talking about GitHub for designers
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just talking about new ways to design as well as HTML collages--
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Dan Mall is going to be there--to style tiles to a whole bunch of other things.
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So it's going to be kind of a really geared towards front-end designers in terms of
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what does it take to be a designer now?
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Also then in October we're doing CSS Dev Conf.
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I'm a big CSS nerd. I've written the CSS code book for Riley.
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I've written other books about CSS too, and that's one I'm really geared to.
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I love that a lot. So that one's going to be in Colorado in the Stanley Hotel.
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One thing I love about that is that it's a double-blind call for papers,
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so people can submit talks for that conference,
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and instead of just like voting for a published speaker,
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we actually separate the name from the actual content.
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So people will vote on the content that they want to see,
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but they can also vote on the speakers there too.
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So we get a good idea what people want to see but also really what the content is.
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That's going to be our 2nd annual CSS Dev Conf.
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We did the CSS Dev Conf. the first year in Hawaii like back to back with In Control.
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That was just a huge success so we're going to go back and do it again.
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Where did you say Artifact was going to be, and what were the dates of that?
6:45
Artifact is going to be May 13 through the 15.
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It's going to be in Austin, Texas.
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The first 2 days is going to be the normal conference too.
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It's just going to be sessions like half hour to hour sessions,
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and there are some panels--about an hour and 15 minutes or so with that.
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It's going to be a great time just to learn and get up to speed on that.
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The third day is going to be workshops.
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The folks from Build Responsively like Ben Callahan are going to be there
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to teach people all day about how to build responsively.
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Then also we have Brad Frost doing kind of design patterns workshop.
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We'll have a half-day workshop just talking about designing for touch,
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and what does that mean? Stuff like that.
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It's going to be a really great 3 days for that.
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CSS Conf. is also 3 days with just kind of the same format--
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session for the first few days and then workshops the third day.
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Now for people that can't travel maybe to Austin, Colorado, or Hawaii,
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what would you recommend to have some of that similar networking
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and conference experience?
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I would definitely look into Refresh.
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Refresh is this concept where people just meet up kind of like a user's group,
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and it's really big in Austin where I am from.
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Every month there is a designer talk for about 40 minutes
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followed by a developer talk.
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It's just a really great way for the community to get together,
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share ideas, network, and mingle.
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Check to see if there's a Refresh in your area.
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If not, definitely start one. There's no reason why you can't do that.
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Also if your a designer check out and see if there's a local AIGA chapter in your area
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and also just check out Meetup--meetup.com.
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It's a really great way to see if there's any local interest in the area,
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and then also try to see if there are local conferences.
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We do great conferences, I believe, and I really support those a lot,
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but there's conferences that are all over that are great.
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So definitely check out to see if anyone is coming to your area. So definitely do that.
8:36
Excellent. Now how did you get into organizing conferences?
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I think before that you were building websites for clients.
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When did you make the transition, and what brought that about?
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I was a speaker for a while.
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I've been doing web stuff for a long time, and really what happened was that
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during the dot com crash of the fabled 2000-2001 era
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I got laid off, and that weekend I got my first book offer.
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So I was like I was rummaging for the next 3 months or 6 months, so I'll just write a book.
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Once I did that, I just said, "Hey, you know, I would really like to speak at conferences."
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If people who are listening or seeing this feel they have the chops or whatnot,
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just to ask conference organizers, "Hey, I really want to talk about this XYZ topic,
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and this is what I've done."
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Once I had written the book I said I've done this, I know the technology,
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and so I started speaking around different conferences like Web Visions.
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That's in Portland and all over the place.
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So that's how I got involved.
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I had a lot of ideas about how to do a conference based off of what I saw,
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and then also I met my partner, Ari Styles.
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She actually worked for South by Southwest in Austin.
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So we met, and we started talking about conferences
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and really had a kind of boring conversation to other people,
9:58
but to us we were like that would be great.
10:00
It was just like on my bucket list. You know?
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I was just talking to Kimberly Blessing. She does this really great job of web standards.
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We decided to make a list of what we were going to do in the next year.
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I was like I really just know--rain or shine--no matter what happens next year
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I'll be doing a conference.
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Thankfully AIGI Cincinnati was gung ho with it.
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We put it on, and that was the first In Control.
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Not much has changed with In Control since that.
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So that the one that you see today is pretty much the same one that you saw back then
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except a lot more people, and the faces may change a little bit and the speakers.
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So that's kind of how it got started, and so that was really great.
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And then at the same time I spoke at an online conference
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called the Head Conference, and that was put on by Aral Balkan.
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That was just amazing because as I told you I spoke at conferences,
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and so what happens is usually as a speaker you go to conferences,
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you speak, and then you go back to your hotel room,
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pack up, and then head for the airport. Right?
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So I'd speak into my computer at home, and then when I was done
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I felt like I had to go to my bedroom, pack, and then go to the airport
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even though I was still there. I had to go up and leave.
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I felt like wow, this a really powerful impact for something that just--I just happened--
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I had like over 100 people I was talking to. I was like this is a really awesome experience.
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It would be awesome just to have a whole day geared to CSS,
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like a mecca for total CSS nerd.
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So I got a whole bunch of my friends who are CSS nerds together,
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and we decided to see if we could make it work.
11:37
That was the 1st annual CSS Summit.
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That just went off great like gangbusters, and so we've just been doing it ever since.
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We've done a CSS Summit. We've done a jQuery and JavaScript Summit every year.
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Now we've added Responsive Design Summit.
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So basically with all 9 conferences we just do online tracks,
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like all just deep dive in 1 topic and try to make things--
12:01
try to make things awesome.
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The name of our Environments for Humans,
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and the idea behind that is that we really want to teach people to build better tools
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so they make better websites. You know?
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Just make better user experiences for people
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because there's really a lot of bad websites out there.
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Thankfully things like Treehouse--
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people can build better websites out there for people.
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I spoke at one of those online conferences.
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I was really impressed with the setup you guys have there.
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You can follow along. You feel like you're at a conference
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and even network with people in the chat room.
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So props to you for making that happen even remotely.
12:36
Yeah. Definitely. So if there's not a conference coming to you,
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if there's not a Refresh or Meetup that you want to do,
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definitely check out online conferences.
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You can definitely meet and interact with people,
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and definitely the experts will come to your desktop as we say.
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You can definitely ask the questions you wanted to
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and feel like you're part of the community because that's one of the things
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that's great about our industry.
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That's why when I first started speaking was that just by our nature of our industry,
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we're so open that we have to share our information in order to
13:02
get better but also to continue on because it's not going to happen otherwise.
13:06
With web it's always about view source and how can we learn to do better?
13:13
One of the hot topics these days are responsive images,
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and I know you have a book out, Designing Web and Mobile Graphics.
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[Christopher] Yeah, it just came out.
13:24
Yeah, and it's talking a lot about images.
13:26
What are your thoughts on responsive images these days?
13:28
What techniques are people using? What's your favorite technique
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or the one you think works in most of the cases?
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Well, the one that's most well known is the picture element that's trying to be produced
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and go through HTML process--the working group process right now.
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That one kind of borrows a lot from the video tag and the audio tag
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to be easy to apply to media queries and HD, retina--
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to be able to sort and say I want this image to be sorted to this one.
13:58
That's really popular. People can kind of easily grok that.
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It's also kind of easy to work that into a browser rather than working with
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trying to create a whole new image format,
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create whole new modules for your server and stuff like that.
14:11
So that's one way people are trying to do it like that.
14:14
That's not my favorite way because the big issue with that is it's all about raster images.
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You can't really stretch and resize a raster image
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and have the imager quality be the same as it was for a vector graphic
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that you can get from Illustrator or something like that.
14:30
So that's really the pain point of responsive images.
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A picture element allows you to do that.
14:37
I'm not a big fan of that because I don't really feel like messing my CSS with my HTML.
14:39
I like them separate. Right?
14:44
My favorite way is one that requires a large JPEG, a large raster image--like huge,
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almost like desktop pattern, desktop background size pattern--
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and you take it to Photoshop, and you just compress the heck out of it
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to like 0% quality.
15:00
It looks like your dog just walked all over it or someone from the outside.
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Then you just resize it, because with responsive web design
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it's all about scaling images. Right? It looks great.
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Most times the file size will be lower than an image you would use for 72pdi screen.
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And since it's a huge image, and your stretching it,
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it also looks great on retina or HD screens.
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That's my favorite technique right now.
15:31
There are some caveats with that that I mention in the book.
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You have to be mindful what type of your histogram
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which is kind of like the display colors in the image. Right?
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So you want like a nice mountain kind of range in the histogram,
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but if you have peaks and valleys like really sharp high-contrast colors,
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that type of technique doesn't really work very well. You have to be careful of that.
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But overall if you have a nice almost kind of mutated color range if you will,
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that technique is awesome. It's a really great way.
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It's a low file size, but it serves both retina and regular old school displays very well.
16:03
In fact, you may want to be able to do a quick image swap with a mobile-first image
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and then swap it in with a high res after the page gets loaded.
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That's kind of my favorite technique right now.
16:21
You mentioned the picture element.
16:23
That's not supported by all browsers yet, so how do you work around that?
16:25
Yeah. Right. It's going through the process right now.
16:28
Hopefully it will be standardized, but even that is a slow, laborious process. Right?
16:31
One of the things they can do is called a polyfill or really a patch,
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and so you just get that from GitHub--from the fine folks at Filament Group
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and just download it and apply it.
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It's a little bit more complex than what I would like it to be,
16:48
but definitely if you want to use the picture element as a way to go
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and get familiar with what they're trying to do with it,
16:53
that's definitely one solution to go with.
16:55
You talked about raster and vector graphics.
16:58
With raster images there are a number of different formats.
17:00
I image you cover that in the book like when to use which format.
17:02
Oh, yes. Yeah. >>What can you give as a high level just as a guide?
17:05
The best way is if it's a photo go with a JPEG format.
17:08
Flat colors you may want to go with GIF or maybe in PNG.
17:12
So basically flat colors is GIF or PNG-8--PNG 8 bit.
17:15
If you want transparency definitely look into PNG-24
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because that way you're going to have very subtle graphics
17:24
and very nice overlays with your transparencies.
17:27
What's the status of vectors in the browser?
17:30
I know SVG is a popular format. Is that widely supported these days?
17:33
It's widely supported, but there still are some minor bugs.
17:36
But if you just need an image like a logo or a graphic that's not going to do a whole lot,
17:40
SVGs are really well supported in browsers. It kind of blew my mind.
17:46
I was doing research for the book--you can actually just do image source
17:51
file name dot SVG, and it works.
17:55
The only caveat is that if it's a complex SVG image,
17:59
you might be better off going with an actual raster image.
18:03
If it's just a logo with just kind of a flat simple-type face type of illustration or what not,
18:06
SVG is the way to go with that, but if it's more complex almost like kind of an illustration
18:13
more so, it might be better to go with a raster image for that.
18:19
And then use one of the various responsive images techniques
18:23
on top of that raster graphic? >>Right. Yeah.
18:26
In the book we talk about a couple of techniques.
18:28
We do talk about picture element. It goes step by step on how people can do that
18:31
as well as the other technique for using big compressed images.
18:35
What software can you use to make SVGs?
18:38
Can you just export a Photoshop document into an SVG?
18:40
The software you can use actually is Adobe Illustrator.
18:43
In the book we go through the steps that you take to get a really well-compressed SVG
18:49
graphic from Illustrator, and it's pretty awesome.
18:52
Excellent. Well, I think that's all I had for you today Christopher.
18:56
Thank you so much for your time. If people want to follow you, keep up with
18:59
what you're doing, keep up with In Control, where can they find you online?
19:03
What's the best way to follow you?
19:05
Probably the best way is on Twitter. It's twitter.com/teleject.
19:07
My website's christopherschmidt.com.
19:11
My blog for the book is dwmgbook.com.
19:14
I'll be updating graphic techniques as they change because the responsive web design
19:20
chapter for the book I had to rewrite 3 times during the course of writing the book.
19:25
I just knew as the book was coming out that I definitely need to have a place
19:30
where I can just talk about responsive images
19:34
and image techniques as they change and adapt.
19:37
Great. Well, thanks so much.
19:39
This was another episode of Treehouse Friends. We'll see you next time.
19:41
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19:43
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