Emerging Standards
Episode 112 Imagining the Web of Things with Stephanie Rieger and Jonas Sicking
February 10, 2016
Talking about the Internet of Things is all the rage these days. What is it about, and why is there so much hype? Will an ecosystem of internet-connected “devices” take over our lives? What role does the web play in all this? Stephanie Rieger joins Jen Simmons to discuss. Then Jonas Sicking joins Jen for a second interview, to talk more about what how the web might be involved.
In This Episode
- What is "The Internet of Things"?
- How will our lives be enhanced by having the internet woven through our physical world? Will that be better?
- What kind of devices can we expect?
- Will we need a separate app for every 'thing'?
- How might the web be used to connect devices?
- What is Google doing with their Physical Web project?
- What is Mozilla doing with their Fly Web project?
- How can anyone create an internet-connected physical object using Bluetooth and a beacon?
Episode 105 Progressive Enhancement with Aaron Gustafson
August 29, 2015
Progressive Enhancement is a core principle of the web. But these days it seems a lot of folks don't quite understand what it's about. Aaron Gustafson joins Jen Simmons to break it down, and explain why and how your website should be built using the principles of Progressive Enhancement.
In This Episode
- What is progressive enhancement?
- How do we do it?
- But what about supporting the old browsers?
- But what about doing the hot new stuff?
- Doesn’t it take longer?
- Why in the world?
- Ok, ok, I know I should, but how? no really, how?
- But what about my cool JavaScript-based Web App for my awesome new startup? That doesn’t need to bother with progressive enhancement, I know it.
Episode 103 Animating the Web with Rachel Nabors
July 8, 2015
How can we use animation on the web to provide information and improve the user experience? What uses should we avoid? How should we go about thinking of animation, including built-in animation experiences that are so common we don't see them anymore? Rachel Nabors joins Jen Simmons to explore the possibilities.
In This Episode
- The future of the web in multiple states and dimensions
- How to decide what to animate
- How the right animations can make an interface instantly understandable
- What's wrong with Parallax scrolling — and what's not wrong with it
- Six kinds of animations
- Performance considerations when animating
- Browser page scrolling as the first animation users experience
- Possibilities for controlling the page load — how we might want to orchestrate loading content, rather than only focusing on speed
Episode 96 Reinventing the Web in Virtual Reality with Josh Carpenter and Vladimir Vukicevic
February 18, 2015
Virtual reality technology is starting to take off. VR hardware has been steadily improving. VR films are getting a lot of attention. VR games are leveling up. But so far, virtual reality systems are closed platforms, each working with the equipment and software of one company. What could a cross-platform web of Virtual Reality look like? What might web designers do with a fully-immersive web experience? There's a team at Mozilla working on WebVR. Jen Simmons talks to Josh Carpenter and Vladimir Vukicevic to find out what they are doing.
In This Episode
- The magic of virtuality
- What might it mean to surf wikipedia.com as a virtual reality space?
- How in the world might a fully immersive web work?
- The differences between virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality
- How the web could be a broadcasting platform for VR films
- The current state of VR hardware
- Experiments at Mozilla
- Progress on a web standard for WebVR
Episode 86 Componentizing the Web with Rob Dodson
October 8, 2014
Web Components are all the rage these days — a way to create the web using chunks of code that are reusable across projects. Polymer is a polyfill for using Web Components today. Rob Dodson joins Jen Simmons to explain the current landscape.
In This Episode
- The Web Component spec
- Making a component to reuse
- Interoperability and encapsulation
- How can we use this now?
- What is Polymer?
- Components vs. today's libraries
- The future of Angular, Bootstrap, Foundation, and the like
- Accessibility and performance concerns
- How to get involved
Episode 82 Paying on the Web with Manu Sporny
September 10, 2014
This week, Apple announced Apple Pay — a new system for making payments using iOS devices. What about the web? What work is being done to make sending payments across the web much easier? Manu Sporny joins Jen Simmons to talk about payments, banking, identity, privacy, business models, web standards and much more.
In This Episode
- Pros and cons of Apple Pay
- The Web Payments Community Group's vision for a payment system on the web
- How web developers could integrate payments differently
- How banks impact people's lives, for better or worse
- How the web could improve and overhaul banking internationally
- The future of Digital Identity on the web
Episode 78 Offline with John Allsopp
July 30, 2014
App Cache, Web Storage, IndexedDB, and others are powerful new technologies that change the nature of the web. These technologies are mature and ready-to-use, but so far, we aren't seeing them be used very much. Why? What is possible? What could change? John Allsopp joins Jen Simmons to discuss.
Episode 73 DRM with Jeremy Keith and Doug Schepers
June 13, 2014
DRM has been long touted as the solution to piracy. Recently, a few browser makers and big media companies have pushed DRM technology into the web browser — while open web advocates have fought to prevent DRM on the web. What is DRM? Why and how are companies putting it into web browsers? And what solutions would be better? Jeremy Keith and Doug Schepers join Jen Simmons to debate DRM on the web.
Episode 70 Data Visualization with Scott Murray
May 6, 2014
We are collecting more data now than ever, and freely sharing some datasets on the open web. Web technology provides the power for us to present complex data interactively. How can you go about a data visualization project? What tools are available? Scott Murray joins Jen Simmons to explore the possibilities of data visualization.
Episode 67 SVG with Doug Schepers
April 17, 2014
SVG is one of several image formats for the web — one that has superpowers that the others don't. When would you want to use SVG & what can you do with it? Doug Schepers joins Jen Simmons to tell all.
Episode 66 Web Components with Peter Gasston
April 9, 2014
Web Components seem to be taking the JavaScript community by storm. The three parts of this technology give developers a chance to define their own HTML elements, adjust the defaults, and share with others. Learn about it all from Peter Gasston as he joins Jen Simmons to explain.
Episode 60 Web Annotations with Doug Schepers
February 27, 2014
People have been having conversations on the web since the moment the web was born. Comments, forums, linking, and more have provide ways for people to hold a back-and-forth discussion. But is that enough? There's a movement to create an annotation system for the web, one that might end up as a new web standard & feature in every browser. Learn what annotations on the web would mean with guest Doug Schepers.
Episode 59 Web RTC with Henrik Joreteg
November 1, 2013
Web RTC brings real-time communication to the web — peer-to-peer connections that can transfer data, video and audio between web users almost instantaneously. Henrik Joreteg joins Jen Simmons to explain how it works and what it means.
Episode 53 CSS Animations with Val Head
June 15, 2013
CSS has three powerful specifications that can be used to animate things on the page: CSS Transitions, Transforms, and Animations. Designer and author Val Head joins Jen Simmons to explain how they work.
Episode 32 Web Audio with Chris Wilson
August 28, 2012
The ability to manipulate audio in complex ways as part of the web page itself is yet another piece of the puzzle for using HTML + JavaScript to create complex experiences. Chris Wilson joins Jen Simmons to explain the Web Audio API and what it can do.
Episode 31 Canvas with Rob Hawkes
August 21, 2012
HTML5 Canvas opens up a whole new world of opportunity of what a website can be. Rob Hawkes joins Jen Simmons to explain what's possible using the Canvas element and it's JavaScript API.
Episode 23 Maps with Alex Barth
June 22, 2012
Alex Barth joins Jen Simmons to talk about maps. What is happening with the new Apple Maps? What options for web developers and app developers are there beyond Google Maps? Where can people get map data and what tools are needed to implement maps?
Episode 15 Browser Support and Polyfills with Divya Manian
February 1, 2012
When is it safe to implement all this cool new technology on your web project? Divya Manian joins Jen Simmons to talk about progressive enhancement, polyfills, collaboration, tools for developers, and the evolution of web browsers.
Episode 14 File API with Arun Ranganathan
January 18, 2012
File API spec maintainer Arun Ranganthan joins Jen Simmons to explain what new file handling capabilities will be coming to browsers soon. They also talk about the Drag & Drop API, open standards, and how the sausage gets made.
Episode 12 Video with Michael Verdi
December 20, 2011
An all-you-can eat historical and technical look at web video. What's up with HTML5 and these competing codecs? How can you use video today? Where are things going in the future? Videoblog innovator Michael Verdi joins host Jen Simmons for a double-length show on video video video.
Episode 5 Web Socket with Peter Lubbers
October 12, 2011
Peter joins Jen again to talk about the magic of Web Socket, and about SPDY & the Amazon Kindle Fire.
Episode 1 HTML5 with Peter Lubbers
September 12, 2011
HTML5 expert Peter Lubbers joins Jen Simmons on the inaugural episode of The Web Ahead to talk about what the heck HTML5, web apps, local storage, offline caching, and web databases are.