@media 2006 feedback

Now that I've had time to take a breather, recover from my recent hectic schedule and the mad-rush of the "results period" has almost gone at work I've come up with some specific comments about @media, other than it being excellent ;-):

• Jeffrey Veen used a neat example of the presentation of information as part of his talk (e.g. see this photo by Jan Brasna on Flickr) where he progressed from an unsemantic table of meteorological data to an application allowing users to explore the data. As a meteorologist <grin> I refrained from commenting at the time that the final step, where the rainfall data values were replaced by graphics, was a bad idea (from my pov) ... but it depends on who your users are/what the data/application is for: I preferred seeing the values in the web app.; others might prefer the raindrop symbols, depending on the purpose. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't sacrifice accuracy at the expense of simplicity -- e.g. make it the user's choice whether they see the graphics or data...
• In the final panel session it was suggested that few, if any, educational institutions were sufficiently fast at adapting courses to reflect the latest trends in web development. Whilst I agree with that in general (typical approval processes mean it takes more than a year to get a new course up and running in the UK -- e.g. a colleague here is just starting to look at "Web 2.0" for a master's level course and it might be approved to start in September 2007!), modules on established courses can adapt quickly and so:
  1. my 2^nd year JavaScript module is up-to-date in that it teaches how to write scripts using DOM methods;
  2. my 3^rd year "advanced web design" module this year covered things like accessibility, unobtrusive JavaScript, CSS-based layout and content negotiation;
  3. new this year we started a 3^rd year module on XML, including XSLT, XMLDOM.
  Admittedly this is because there are a few standards enthusiasts in my Faculty, but that'd be the same everywhere ... So at least one institution in the UK offers a half-field in Computing that uses web standards in a majority of modules :-D [There are more of us out there! Check out this SimpleBits post...]