TODCON 2007 Agenda

Robert Hoekman Jr. takes Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think! to the next practical level by discussing the qualities of great Web-based software and how to achieve them. Attendees will be shown several key character traits of great Web applications, to learn how to achieve success by creating more intuitive, obvious interfaces. Robert will perform “Interface Surgery” on several typical interfaces to make them more usable, useful, and learnable, and describe how each interface helps meet the goals of users. Covered in the session are an overview of seven qualities of great web-based software, plus in-depth discussion of building only what’s absolutely necessary, applying instructive design to complex interactions, creating error-proof interactions, surfacing commonly-used features, and applying iterative design to use cases, wireframes, and applications.

This presentation will examine basic approaches to page layout, and the ways to integrate them with DW templates, server-side includes, and contemporary CSS usages. If you are still unsure how to approach these tasks, then this is for you....

How wide is a computer monitor… or a printer page… or the screen of a handheld device? Do you still find yourself creating multiple versions of a web page for different users? If so, it's time to try liquid layouts and let the content automatically adapt to the display.

Starting from a tables-based page layout, this session will demonstrate the power of Cascading Style Sheets to separate the content from the style and layout. After using CSS floats and positioning to replicate the original page, the <style … media="…" attribute will be used to create custom views depending on the viewer's platform.

TBD

This session is based on an actual project where a form was designed and using Adobe Acrobat Professional, data fields were created to hook into an on-line form. The end result: User completes a form on-line, submits it, and a PDF is delivered to them by email with the data they entered displaying in the PDF. The session will walk you through the PDF-to-web design process and discuss where the key points are for collaboration on a development team.

Robert Hoekman Jr. takes Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think! to the next practical level by discussing the qualities of great Web-based software and how to achieve them. Attendees will be shown several key character traits of great Web applications, to learn how to achieve success by creating more intuitive, obvious interfaces. Robert will perform “Interface Surgery” on several typical interfaces to make them more usable, useful, and learnable, and describe how each interface helps meet the goals of users. Covered in the session are an overview of seven qualities of great web-based software, plus in-depth discussion of building only what’s absolutely necessary, applying instructive design to complex interactions, creating error-proof interactions, surfacing commonly-used features, and applying iterative design to use cases, wireframes, and applications.

To ensure students comprehend and retain subject matter, e-Learning needs to be immersive, entertaining and relate to the student’s real world experiences. In this session we will discuss several creative ways to take content and mould it into a interactive games that grab your student's interest and keep it. This session will also give you the introductory knowledge of how to build e-Learning games, manage your content externally, and how XML can help you achieve rapid and flexible development life cycles. In this session you will:

• Receive an introduction to interactive games and their benefits to learners and organizations
• Become familiar with the uses and relevance of XML in your e-Learning
• Explore ways to make your games flexible and scalable
• View many examples from training interactions to children’s games
• Review tips, tricks, and issues from a finished product

Just when you thought you had this "video" thing under control in Flash 8, Adobe went and changed the rules. In this session, based on the new book - Foundation Flash CS3- written by Community MX Partners Tom Green and David Stiller I will thoroughly review the new video authoring features including the use of the new Captioning component, full screen video and the reworked FLVPlayback component.

TBD

Discover how to build a thriving web consulting business with a limited (or non-existent) marketing budget. Neil Giarratana, President of Lucidus Corporation, will reveal his marketing blueprints for building a web business from scratch and dramatically increasing revenue for existing businesses.  Since last year's conference, Lucidus' revenue (and profitability) grew 400%. In addition to discovering what worked and definitely did NOT work in the past twelve months, you'll discover several all new ideas you can apply to your own business. 

Robert Hoekman Jr. takes Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think! to the next practical level by discussing the qualities of great Web-based software and how to achieve them. Attendees will be shown several key character traits of great Web applications, to learn how to achieve success by creating more intuitive, obvious interfaces. Robert will perform “Interface Surgery” on several typical interfaces to make them more usable, useful, and learnable, and describe how each interface helps meet the goals of users. Covered in the session are an overview of seven qualities of great web-based software, plus in-depth discussion of building only what’s absolutely necessary, applying instructive design to complex interactions, creating error-proof interactions, surfacing commonly-used features, and applying iterative design to use cases, wireframes, and applications.

ColdFusion developers have had Custom Tags in their arsenal of tricks since the early days of ColdFusion. With CFMX, the language has made it even easier to use custom tags on your pages. With the introduction of ColdFusion Components (CFC) in CFMX, the custom tag has taken a back seat to the versatility of CFCs, but some things are ideally suited to the ColdFusion Custom Tag API. This session will introduce custom tags and address one use of a ColdFusion custom tag: building a flexible template for your site that will feed every page on the site, based on a Community MX Jumpstart

Take advantage of Adobe's ColdFusion Report builder as we learn how to develop simple reports. We will discuss configuration, development and design of simple banded reports that take advantage of connecting to existing queries, stored procedures and even ColdFusion Components to display your data. We will also take a look at input parameters and how they can be used to dynamically filter data, modify report labels and show or hide report regions.

TBD

Break free from the timeline and reduce the overall size of your SWFs! Learn how to load MP3 files at runtime, toggle sound on/off globally, add sound effects to buttons using ActionScript, fade in narration/music and fade it out again, pause sound clips and restart them from where they left off, respond to the completion of a sound file by loading another or advancing the timeline, trigger visual changes based on cue points.