Designers, Rico says, are inclined to do things a certain way, what he likes to think of as “instinct” or a natural tendency on doing things autopilot. For the purpose of illustration, when life gives you lemons, the natural tendency is to make lemonades. But as designers, they need to break away from their autopilot way of doing things, and I dunno, maybe get salt and tequila with the lemons instead.

Now this is the part where Rico deconstructs Philippine Star’s website layout. Ehem. And this is the part where you wait for his slides to be available online to see for yourself. :)

He discusses new and better ways to present search boxes, and hierarchies, ad placements, and lists. Viola, new and improved news website that’s better and easier to navigate. Rico encourages everyone to think out of the box, fight covenience, and come up with better ways to present things.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to liveblog a web design conference the way I did SEMCON and SMX East, so I thought I’d just pop up here and blog what I can within the day.

Nap Lara’s up right now on the stage. The (supposed) first speaker, who I was stuck in traffic with, had the audacity to pass through EDSA and Ayala Avenue on his car’s coding day. But no traffic enforcer can stop this party, no no! So give us a ticket already and let us go!

So.. onto Stephen Fuller Hall, Nap’s topic is Javascript 101: DOM, Events, and Objects. JavaScript today is often written with the aid of a framework like JQuery or YUI; Nap is covering the things that go on under the hood of these. DOM is the standard way of using JavaScript in web pages today without going through third party JavaScript frameworks.

I am obviously not the right person to live-blog about Javascript, so I’m pointing you over to FFC’s blog for some real liveblogging action.

First ever Philippine Web Design Conference, organized by web designers, for web designers. July 10, 2009, 8AM to 5PM.

Venue: Stephen H. Fuller Hall, 3rd Floor, Asian Institute of Management, Paseo de Roxas, Makati (view on Google Maps)

Program:

08:00am-08:45am – Registration
08:45am-09:00am – Opening Remarks and Introduction to PWDO by Sophia Lucero
09:00am-09:45am – Breaking your Instincts: Common bad habits and how to fight them by Rico Sta. Cruz
10:00am-10:45am – Javascript 101: DOM, Events, and Objects by Nap Lara
11:00am-11:45am – Web Standards, Accessibility & Usability: Experience is the Key by Regnard Raquedan
12:00nn-12:45pm – Lunch
12:45pm-01:15pm – Disabled Friendly Awards by Jojo Esposa
01:15pm-02:00pm – Sponsor Talks (Introduction to AIM by Prof. Ricardo A. Lim, Assoc. Dean, W. SyCip Graduate School of Business; Search-friendly Web Pages by Aileen Apolo of Google)
02:00pm-02:45pm – Death to Webdesign by Marco Palinar
03:00pm-03:45pm – Industry Tips for the Web Professionals by Gail dela Cruz-Villanueva
04:00pm-04:45pm – Strawberries, smileys and sheep by Luis Buenaventura II
04:45pm-05:15pm – Panel Q&A

Eight hours and counting. See yah! :)

I’m starting to lay off on pink, and I don’t like to write about SEO anymore.

I know. What am I supposed to do with this site now, huh? I’m starting to detach myself from the online identities I’ve carried for the past so-and-so years. I guess that includes PinkSEO too.

For now, just in case you’re looking for the person who used to blog here (and who used to be obssessed with pink and SEO), she’s somewhere else now, uhm, chasing dreams. c”,)

I thought it was going to help me be more productive if I move out of the office and/or my bedroom and spend quality time in some cozy coffee shop with my laptop and my Ipod. And I thought I’d get to have faster downloads too, I mean, last time I checked, wifi is relatively faster in coffee shops.

Hence I didn’t mind paying 100 bucks for 60 minutes of internet connection, because I thought they’d at least be worth it. WRONG.

And so I end up with an erratic internet connection inside an abnormally cold coffee shop (I’m brrrr-freeezing!), with my downloads running at 1.2KB/s to 15KB/s, no thanks to Globequest (I mean, yes, Globe Visibility still sucks sometimes, but I haven’t been victimized by another Globe product until now). Whut a slow. :(

On top of all these, I totally lost the mood to have a productive night because the Christmas carols playing in the background is louder than the music that’s plugged into my ears (not that I hate Christmas carols, but I’m not exactly in the mood to hear Rudolf and Jingle Bells right now).

So yeah, aside from for the complementary drink they gave me for I duno, being their only customer tonight?; and the additional Starbucks Planner stickers, my night so far is not going the way I hoped.

And no, don’t get me wrong. Starbucks is one of my favorite places! It just kinda sucks that you have to pay for internet connection that’s crappy anyway when other coffee shops (Bo’s, San Francisco Cafe, etc) provide it as a free service.

Blpht. I don’t intend to make this blog a venue of my complaints. It’s just that.. I need more space for this than my plurk page can offer. Heh. I stop now.

Also, I’m outa here in an hour.