Hey, Marcy! Tell us a little bit about you.

I have a background in photojournalism and web design, and after struggling to get a job I pivoted into web development back in 2007. After working as a mainstream web developer at an agency, I became hooked on digital accessibility and steadily grew closer to the action until I worked on accessibility testing tools full time. In January of this year, I pivoted again and joined a new team as the Head of Learning at Gatsby, a web development startup with a great community. I’m really enjoying bringing an accessibility focus to such a high-impact project!

In my free time I love to cook, snowboard, hike, and ride bicycles, and I very recently started kayaking. My dog and cat frequently make me laugh and it’s amazing I get ever anything done with them around.

Congratulations on the new position! What will you be doing at Gatsby?

My job is to lead the learning experience and own the docs, making sure that users of all skill levels feel welcome and empowered to create Gatsby sites. Before joining, I’d recently redesigned and developed my website with Gatsby, as I was drawn to its method of building static HTML pages that rehydrate with React.js, with great defaults for performance and accessibility. Getting to work on such a big open source project full-time got me really excited, so I jumped at the chance! Themes are a big new feature that I anticipate will have an impact on the web soon, and I look forward to keeping an accessibility focus in the ecosystem.

What are some tools you find indispensable in your work?

I use color contrast tools a lot: the contrast ratio color picker in the Chrome devtools for web things, and the Color Contrast Analyzer from Paciello Group for sampling colors from PDFs, images and other things I can’t analyze in the browser.

Along with the Accessibility Inspectors in Chrome, Firefox and Safari, I regularly use the axe Chrome extension for testing webpage accessibility. I use Voiceover on the Mac, as well as a Windows virtual machine for testing with the JAWS and NVDA screen readers. This also enables me to test my CSS in Windows High Contrast Mode–which has a nifty media query that is in the process of being standardized for other browsers!

And you’re talking about CSS and accessibility at AEA. Does that come out of the work you’ve been doing?

Some of my work on Gatsby will apply to my talk; specifically, improving workflows for users who don’t exactly love CSS-in-JS or workflows outside of the thoroughly-documented “happy path.” There is some tension in the web development community over inclusive tooling, and as someone who cares deeply about accessibility, HTML and CSS as well as JavaScript, I feel right in the middle of that. I’m grateful for the opportunity to act as a bridge between communities, and hope to inspire people to do their best work in ways that they enjoy the most.

See Marcy’s talk “Emerging CSS Techniques and What They Mean for Accessibility” at An Event Apart Boston (May 5-7, 2019) and Chicago (August 26-28). Don’t miss your chance to see Marcy and sixteen other expert speakers!

Jason Pamental is a typography expert and consultant based near Providence, RI, where he thinks deeply about web typography and takes his dogs Tristan and Tillie for long walks. The author of Responsive Typography, he’s also written articles for publications and for the Mozilla Developer Network, and in a past position built the first live-text race commentary application for the America’s Cup in 2003. We managed to catch up with him and the pups to ask a few questions.

Hey, Jason! Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’ve worked on the web since about 1994 doing all sorts of different design and development things, gradually moving more into leading teams at agencies, working with clients on their digital strategy, and getting very nerdy about web typography. I just love the intersection of how a typeface can make us feel, how it can influence how we read, and how it impacts our experience based on how it has been technically implemented in a site or application. Each aspect impacts all the others, making it a super interesting challenge. So last year I quit the agency where I was working to see if I can focus more on typography and helping organizations and teams put it into practice better.

Oh, nice. How has that been going?

Over the past few months I’ve been working with the Digital Services team for the State of Georgia, designing and helping implement a whole new typographic and design system for their new web platform. They let me go all-in on everything I’ve talked about over the years: dynamic typographic scale using variable fonts and fallback font “tuning” and font loading management, all set up progressively enhancing based on browser capabilities. Older browsers get static web fonts, newer ones get variable fonts. I’m super proud of it, and excited to see what Lullabot, the development partner on the project, does with all the stuff we put together. They’ve been really amazing to work with on the project.

I’ve also had some really exciting developments in getting involved with a couple other organizations. I’ve been elected to the board of ATypI, the Association Typographique International, and hope to use that association to help develop typography curriculum for digital design programs. And more recently I’ve been accepted as an Invited Expert on the W3C’s Web Fonts Working Group, where we’re working on a new specification that could fundamentally change how fonts are served on the web. I really can’t believe I get to be even a small part of that. It’s incredibly exciting.

I’ve also started an email newsletter where I’m sending out a new tip every week. Each one will have a bit of history into the typographic/design origins, examples from print and how you would do it in HTML & CSS. Reception has been great so far, and I’m excited to see that community grow this year.

What are some tools that you’ve found indispensible to your work?

It’s been an interesting turn since AEA Orlando last year: I completely rewrote my talk in HTML & CSS, so one of the standby tools for speaking changed completely! I used to do everything in Keynote. So:

• A code editor like Coda or VS Code — I’ve been trying to switch over to VS Code, but habits are hard! I want to keep at it because the flexibility and configurability of VS Code is fantastic for both general work and also for projecting during workshops and talks.
• Browsers — I switched to Firefox as my default this year, and its font dev tools are amazing.
• Sketch, Photoshop, and Illustrator still get lots of use, but mainly in a supporting role—mainly for creating artwork, illustrations, and a much more limited number of style tiles and comps.
• I still do a lot of my writing in Evernote. I love the cross-device/platform ability to read and edit, and it’s got years of notes, articles, references, bios, talk descriptions—you name it.
• Probably the most significant addition to my toolbox over the past year: adding CodePen. I’ve used it to publish an essay showcasing Monotype’s first variable font (FF Meta), to collaborate on demos for TypeNetwork, to prototype the examples I used in writing the Variable Fonts Guide on the Mozilla Developer Network, and most recently to host all of the code examples in my newsletter.

I like that all of these things come together: talking about web typography and showing it live in the browser on stage was (albeit somewhat terrifying) the best decision I’ve ever made. It just feels right. So expect more of that to come this year!

We do! And speaking of talks, what do you have planned for AEA this year?

I’ve always felt there were three audiences that I’m talking to when I speak about web typography, and I honestly don’t want to leave any of them behind. There are trained designers who have studied typography but don’t know how much of it they can practice on the web; web/UX/UI designers who often have no formal typographic education; and developers who are tasked with implementing typography and fonts, rarely with a strong grounding in why they’re being asked to do so.

They all need to be able to connect the “why” and the “how.” I want people to come away inspired, with a little more grounding in what happens outside their own personal area of responsibility, and how to talk to their colleagues about what they are trying to accomplish. In truth, the developers are a really important part of the equation. They make design decisions in the process of coding up the front end all the time. I want them to have a good grounding in what makes typography work, so they’re better equipped to fill in the gaps between comps.

This year I’m going to be pushing the boundaries a bit both conceptually and technically, so I’ll be asking a bit more of the audience in following along—but I think it’s really important to “teach just past the smartest student in the class,” as my friend Mitch Goldstein puts it. That way everyone leaves with not only a vision of what typography can bring to their design, but a concrete way to get there.

See Jason talk type in “Dynamic Typographic Systems and Variable Fonts: Scalable, Fast, and Fabulous” at An Event Apart Boston (May 5-7, 2019), Chicago (August 26-28), and Denver (October 28-30). Don’t miss your chance to see Jason and sixteen other top-notch speakers!

Sarah Drasner is a core member of the Vue team, Lead of Emerging Markets with the Cloud Advocates team at Microsoft, and an inveterate pusher of the boundaries of the web with experiments and techniques like those found in her CodePen Public Pens, her GitHub account, and her articles at CSS-Tricks. We chatted with her for a few minutes between projects.

What motivates you to keep doing everything you do?

I have been passionate about the web and building weird projects on it for about 14 years. I’m a naturally curious person, so my projects range from SVG, three.js, and d3.js, to Serverless, Vue, Node, performance, you name it. I’m basically a web dev puppy. These days, at Microsoft, I get to do fun stuff with Azure Functions and Cognitive Services—that is, machine learning. For example, I have one that generates alt text from images, attempting to both what they are and capture any text inside the image, like there will be in most memes.

Besides the great stuff you’ve personally created, what are some tools you can’t live without?

• For building applications, I really adore Vue and using Nuxt to get easy server-side rendering, page transitions, and routing.
• In terms of animation tooling, my go-to is GreenSock because it is extremely intuitive and since they’ve been working on it for a decade, there are so many plugins, utilities, and finite offerings that other libraries haven’t thought of.
• I typically still use CSS animations and transitions for smaller interactions, and have had so much fun lately playing with the combination of three.js and requestAnimationFrame for more immersive, exploratory experiences on the web.
• For data visualizations, I love d3.js. It’s the Swiss Army knife of visualization tools, capable of so many different kinds of rendering, and domain/range capabilities.

I’ve also been super interested in combining CSS grid and flexbox to build interesting web layouts, though I’m no Rachel Andrew, Jen Simmons, or Mina Markham. [But really, who is? –Ed.]

What do you see coming in web animation?

There’s so much that the web is capable of! For example, at An Event Apart, I have a talk about the Future of Animation, and I’m so excited to give it! Usually I talk about foundational material when it comes to animation, but I think people are ready to go to the next level. Although we’ll be exploring quite a bit of code, my talk is for designers and developers alike. I’m covering what we can look forward to in the future, from teaching utility to accessibility, mesmerizing experiences that push the boundaries of what humans can create and build. It’s gonna be fun!

Catch Sarah’s talk “Animation on the Bleeding Edge” at An Event Apart Washington DC (July 29-31, 2019) and Denver (October 28-30). Don’t miss your chance to see Sarah and sixteen other world-class speakers!

Originally from New Hampshire, though these days he’s encamped on the sunny Gulf coast of Florida where he likes to spend his time outside surfing, skateboarding, and playing at the beach with his wife and kids, Scott Jehl has been a part of the Filament Group for the past 12 years as a web design and developer.

Hey, Scott! Tell us a little about Filament Group. A lot of us use the tools and resources that have spun out of Filament, but most of us don’t know anything about where they all come from.

Filament is an agency that does work for a variety of clients across industries from news media, to big retail, to financial tools, to workforce management. We’ve been based in Boston since the start, but our entire team is distributed around the US. We truly value and prioritize Research & Development and Open Source time, which I think is awesome – not only because it allows us keep aware of new and appropriate practices for our clients, but also because it keeps my daily work interesting, and gives me an opportunity to share what I learn at conferences like An Event Apart.

To help with coding, we use and maintain a number of snippets that help me organize and optimize page delivery. For example, tools like loadCSS for loading non-critical CSS files asynchronously, loadJS for conditionally loading asynchronous scripts, and criticalCSS for identifying and isolating the CSS most critical to initial page rendering. These are just some of Filament’s projects that help us deliver page assets in a prioritized manner, so the important parts arrive and render as instantly as possible. We also maintain UI components for carousels and menus and such that aim to give us design flexibility while remaining accessible for folks with using assistive technologies.

Besides the great stuff Filament has created, what are some tools you can’t live without?

As far as tools go, I think my preferences are pretty standard among web folks today.

• A text editor — most any will do, but lately, I have been enjoying Atom, particularly for all of the great extensions available for it.
• Sketch — We use Photoshop and Illustrator frequently as well, but more and more I’ve found myself in Sketch these days as it seems to lower the barriers in bringing designs into code.
• Firefox devtools — Browser devtools are quite comparable these days but I prefer Firefox for browsing and have grown most accustomed to its devtools as a result.
• Webpagetest.org — This tool is just incredible for testing a site’s performance and reliability. You an choose to test any URL from a range of worldwide locations, devices, browsers, and connection speeds and receive great detailed information on how a page loads in those conditions.
• Browserstack.com — For testing a site in real-time on a range of devices and browsers, browserstack is amazing. It really helps us refine our interaction design across different contexts, and it has nearly replaced our need for physical testing devices.
• Github — All of our code and discussion around it lives on Github.
• Our in-house Continuous Integration system — we have tools that deploy live, linkable versions of every branch of our projects every time we commit changes. It really helps us collaborate and test ideas quickly.
• Slack — Filament’s team of six is 100% remote, so real-time communication is a must.

What’s been keeping you interested of late, and what’s next?

In the past several years, I’ve been focused on the intersection of web page performance, responsive design, and accessibility, which I find are all quite complimentary to one another. This means I’ve spent a great deal of time finding tools and practices that make our sites sustainable and resilient to various browsing conditions and rapidly changing times.

Recently, I’ve been examining the common conflicts that teams face when trying to prioritize performance and access, and looking for ways that they can satisfy other priorities without compromising on their service’s potential. In fact, I plan to talk at An Event Apart about a mix of performance-minded techniques we should prioritize, and common challenges that teams face when trying to implement those techniques. The session will definitely feature code examples, but it will also speak to the “why” of those code examples, so non-developers will gain an understanding of the benefits these practices bring to the business and user alike.

See Scott present “Move Fast and Don’t Break Things” at An Event Apart Chicago (August 26-28, 2019). Don’t miss your chance to see Scott and sixteen other world-class speakers!

When CSS Grid Layout shipped into multiple browsers in the Spring of 2017 it heralded the dawn of a new way to do layout on the web. In this video, captured live at An Event Apart Orlando: Special Edition, Rachel Andrew looks back at what went right or wrong in these first few months, and offers help to those struggling to transition away from legacy methods.

In a practical, example-packed hour, Rachel helps give you the confidence and practical skills to fully embrace Grid layout. She compares common framework patterns to new Grid code, and teaches how to create a workflow that is right up to date—a workflow grounded in new CSS, yet able to care for old browsers and ensure a good experience for their users.

Developer, author, and entrepreneur Rachel Andrew is one half of edgeofmyseat.com, the company behind Perch CMS and Notist. She’s an Invited Expert to the W3C on the CSS Working Group, a Google Developer Expert, and the Editor-in-Chief of Smashing Magazine. Her books include the recent Get Ready for CSS Grid Layout and HTML5 for Web Designers, Second Edition.

Enjoy all the videos in An Event Apart’s library. There are over 40 hours of them—all absolutely free! For more insightful presentations by the industry’s best and brightest, come to An Event Apart—three days of design, code, and content for web, UX, and interaction designers. And for your free monthly guide to all things web, design, and developer-y, subscribe to The AEA Digest.