Staffs Web Meetup

Thanks to everyone who came along to February’s evening of lightning talks.

Greg stepped up to give a talk on the Dark Web. Helping to define and dispel some myths.

Dan gave an introduction to building extensions for the Chrome browser. We now have our own “Staffs Web Meetup Checker” extension. Now you’ll always know when the next meetup is!

Bean enCounter’s Jonathan delivered a talk on the types of social network which occur IRL.

Barry shared some details about an upcoming event organised by the BCS. Technology behind the Stoke-on-Trent UK City of Culture 2021 Bid is being held Tuesday 14th March at Staffordshire University’s Leek Road campus.

A massive thank you to our sponsors – iWeb and The Deskspace Project, run by TopCashback’s Charity (TopCharity).

Talks

Spinning a Dark Web

Greg Mayes

In a time where online traffic is more scrutinised than ever, increasing amounts of people are being exposed to terms such as the dark web, the deep web, and Tor. This talk aims to helps to properly define these terms, and dispel false preconceptions.

An introduction to browser extensions

Dan Bovey

This talk will introduce you to the world of Chrome extensions, what’s available to you as a developer, and how powerful they can be to change your web experience. Also, lots of shameless plugging 🔌

How Humans Naturally Build Social Networks: Implications for Social Media

Jonathan Cushing

Jonathan, as an evolutionary psychologist, will talk about how humans innately create social networks – food for thought when creating social media websites.

Thank you to everyone who came to January’s meetup. Staffs Web Meetup held an evening of talks focusing on design and front end development.

Thanks to both our sponsors – TopCashback and iWeb.

Talks

Designing the progressive way

Fiona Knight – Staffordshire University

This talk shall touch on the state of mobile web apps, and the push of ‘offline first’, and how new items in the web platform, including web components, may help.

Integrating pattern libraries into an agency

Dave Redfern – iWeb

In this talk I’ll share what pattern libraries are and their benefits for developers, designers and website owners. Speaking about the challenges of developing and integrating them into an agency environment. I’ll include both the successes and mistakes we’ve made along the way. This is a real life reflection of how pattern libraries are working, and not working, for us.

Our last meetup of 2016! Thank you to everyone who came along and made it a great night. Enjoy your Christmas break! We’ll see you in the New Year for more!

We’d like to thank both our sponsors – TopCashback and iWeb.

Talks

Auditing Your Site: 7 On-page SEO Essentials To Look For

James Kinsella

We’ll cover 7 of the most common and critical factors of your pages to look for from an SEO perspective, as well as how you can get started running an audit on your site today. A big focus on SEO, some best practices for designers and a few things for your developer to think about.

James has published an in-depth blog post covering the topics raised in his talk. See Auditing Your Site: 7 On-page SEO Essentials.

Breaking down the wall with agile design

Martyn Hoyer

We’ve discussed in the past “the wall” between designers and developers. It seems we’re all agreed that we need to communicate and collaborate but that can often be unfeasible.

This talk aims to adjust the mindsets of both parties and help to pre-empt and mitigate some of the common issues that arise.

Staffs Web Meetup celebrated it’s 2nd birthday this month!

We celebrated with a beautiful cake, complete with candles and a chorus of happy birthday! Our thanks go out to the very talented Hayleycakes who provided us with both the cake and cupcakes.

A massive thank you to everyone who has attended and spoken over the past year. The continued enthusiasm and support has been humbling.

We’d also like to thank both our sponsors – TopCashback and iWeb.

Talks

Seducing Online Shoppers

Rebecca Troth

With the eCommerce world getting more and more competitive every day, creating a successful customer journey is more than just usability, it’s harnessing the power of persuasion and making customers want to buy.

If a customer has landed on your online store, they have done so with intent and there is an art to getting them to follow through with their intentions. In this talk I will go through the steps, the adventure, the epic pilgrimage that is conversion.

Test-Driven Development as Documentation

Greg Mayes

Documentation and testing are the bane of most developers’ lives, but what if there was a way that you could help to kill two birds with one stone? Tailoring your testing to act as a form of documentation can help to bolster understanding of the codebase within your team. The benefits of adopting this style of workflow will be discussed in the presentation, with a live coding demo towards the end. PHPSpec will be used for the demos, but the talk will be largely language agnostic.

Thank you to everyone who came to September’s meetup. We were joined by our guest speakers from the RNIB.

Rosie kicked off the evening with an introduction, outlining the definition of blindness and how sight loss is not the same for everyone.

John, who is registered blind demonstrated the accessibility features built into iOS. He moved on to show us a number of tools available for Windows.

Thanks to both our sponsors – TopCashback and iWeb.

Talk

Web Accessibility

Rosie and John from RNIB

Technology developed for people with sight loss is cutting edge, often pushing at the boundaries of convention. Screen reading software enables blind and partially sighted people to access and navigate information on computers and the web. Today’s digital devices – smartphones and tablets – have incorporated revolutionary features into their design that remove limitations and allow people to interact with them in innovative ways.

Join RNIBs Technology Coordinator John Hughes for a mind expanding evening learning about how people with sight loss use technology and the internet. John will demonstrate built in accessibility features on iPads and iPhones and discuss third party access software for Microsoft computer operation systems. Throughout the evening you’ll gain a new perspective on accessing information online and a deep understanding of why accessibility is a vital part of web design.