Well, @media went and came (or the other way round) a few weeks back now. It took place, crikey, nearly a month ago! Ummm … the 15th and 16th of June, down in ‘the-smoke’ known as London.

It was a great event. The free bag and pen were worth the £400.00 fee alone! I still use the bag as my daily ‘carrier of things’, so 2 thumbs up on that score. I still use the pen as well. Anyway …

My only gripe is that I didn’t manage to to chat exclusively with some of the gurus in a one on one stylie – I would have loved to have had some semi-web-related banter with the ‘Hickster’, the ‘Veenster’, the ‘Keithster’ and the like. I did have a brief chat with Andy Budd, who did a great talk on ‘bug-hunting’ – he seemed like a top bloke and talked a lot of sense about the real life web problems faced every day – it was great to hear an industry leader talking about the problems we all face as web professionals.

Another presentation that stood out amongst t’others (they were all good though) was Jeffrey Veen’s, which took place at the end of day one … I got into London quite late the previous night, and – what with the early morning start to ‘log-in’ to the event – I was beginning to flag a tad. But boy did the ‘Veenmeister’ (as he is not known to me) raise the energy levels! I tell you what, our ‘over-the-pond’ cousins (actually, I think he might be from Canada? Still ‘over-the-pond’ though I guess) seem to have energy and enthusiasm to burn! T’was a great presentation about planning each stage of a web design and development project, and he also touched on emerging web technologies (there is a link to the presentation podcasts at the bottom, btw) – it was great stuff – I made many notes using my @media pen on my @media snazzy pad.

Now …
there were evening events with the chance to sup ale and talk web with speakers and other event go-ers alike. But I didn’t go.

“Booo! You unsociable so and so! What you playin’ at?!?!” I don’t hear you shout …

Well, one of the other reasons I went ‘dahn saaahf’ was to see my brother Dave (who is also a ‘web fellow’ – working his nads off for a cool company called Rufus and Leonard (check out the movie on the site – is nice, yeah?). Dave went to @media as well, btw), and I had a ‘World Cup Party’ at his work gaff after the first day of @media. It was a cool party. Loads of ale, real German sausage sarnies, a ‘turfed toilet’ (probably not recommended, but appropriate considering the theme), wide screen tellies showing the game, a whole host of other football related stuff.

Then followed loads more ale, pubs, more pubs, making an arse of myself in front of many of my brother’s friends and colleagues, more ale, pubs, more pubs, ale, shots, arsing about, shorts, pubs, dancing around like an idiot, more ale, more shorts, taxi, coma – in that order, I think.

So, errrr, yeah. That’s why I missed the @media evening ‘do’.

That’s, errr, also why I missed the first talk of @media ‘Day Two’ – Doh! That’s why Podcasts were invented though ay! I’ll cram up on Cederholm’s talk from a forthcoming podcast, me thinks.

Anyway. Side tracked there a bit …

I think the most intriguing, and certainly one of the most important presentations I went to was Chris Wilson’s IE7 and beyond.

The reason for this is because it’s IE, and lets face it, IE is the most widely used browser on the market and is, therefore, our most important consideration as web developers – whether we like it or not.
I was half expecting Chris to emerge from a lightning strike and puff of smoke, perhaps in a dark cape with the explorer ‘e’ on the back. I was then expecting some evil laughter followed by ‘boos’ from the masses in the room – panto style. But that didn’t happen. Chris spoke a lot of sense, had a lot of integrity, presented really well, was witty, and I left the presentation with great respect for the guy. We’ve all been carried along by the ‘we hate IE6’ wave, and in a way, rightly so. But to hear one of the main IE7 developers ‘tell it how it is’ was a positive thing and left me filled with hope for the future. A few facts about IE7:

• will be shipped second half of 2006
• :hover works on every element
• fixed positioning now works
• selectors are a go go
• png support
• 2 further releases planned in the near future

He did mention a ‘side by side IE6 and 7 type thing’ that is in development, which would be ‘cricket’ to say the least.

Right, I’ll think that’ll do for now, @media-wise. Like I said, all the presentations I went to were great and I certainly learnt a great deal – it really got me inspired.

There is some gubbins on .mobi stuff I wanted to air my opinions and thoughts about, from Cameron Moll’s presentation, but I’ll save that for another post, another time.

Keep visiting the @media site for podcasts and more indepth info than this randomness here!

Oh, and microformats and RSS are the ‘big thangs’ for 06/07, and I’m also quite chuffed I didn’t refer to ‘Web2.0’. Bollocks. I just did.