Last afternoon of Web Directions South 2007, it’s all gone a little to fast, this year there was a large number of people from under the radar. This was good. The use of the business stream at the conference would have done this.

Lisa Herrod - Usability: more than skin deep

Consideration of usability is more than just the visual layer, we have the consider the code aspect from the user experience and the technical aspects.

Day Two, after drinks at the Watershed. Early start with a small breakfast with Bert Bos. This was interesting to see Bert’s view and personal passions. His perfect world of online privacy and security has been tempered by his immersion into the security community. I can see why Bert has his view, but I think he needs to look into a real world view, things are changing. Also discussed was the proposed additions to CSS like translation of the print paradigm to the web paradigm.

Post Lunch, comes forth with the usual multiple stream conflicts as you normally get with a conference like Web Directions South. Lucky there is power charging and free wifi in the breakout areas. Looking forward to the Bert Bos discussion of the revision of HTML and CSS.

John Allsopp - Trends and predictions in web technology

John Allsopp repeated it again, the web is now the platform, he looked at the internals of the stack of the web platforms. The centre can’t hold it all, its all moving outwards, moving away from the control. Technology is removing the friction, off loading the boring stuff to the machines. Privacy and security are still important and should be considered, we must always be aware of the implications of the security and the information being held.

Yesterday was day two of workshops, time for Aaron Gustafson and Progressive enhancement with JavaScript a after trying breakfast at the Pen, not Concrete (got to check them both out). A review of these two cafe is coming, stay tuned.

Aaron went through the standard progressive enhancement spiel on starting from the base content and adding base http requests and then moving up to through the addition of the functionality and the hijax of the ajax components.

But the main show in today. The event we have been waiting for. As per the previous web directions conference, there is a social networking application - Meet Weaver, developed and designed by Tim Lucas and Cameron Adams.