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     WEB DESIGNERS, programmers, and web enthusiasts gathered at this year’s web conference of the Philippine Web Designers Organization (PWDO) held last November 10 to 11 at the University of Santo Tomas (UST).

     In partnership with Association of Information Management (AIM) of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, UST Junior Philippine Computer Society, and TomasinoWeb, PWDO had yet another successful year for its flagship event entitled “Form, Function, and Class.” The 2-day event was open to all interested participants.

     Day one, Workshops The first day of the event consisted of workshops divided into morning and afternoon sessions, held at the Tan Yan Kee Student Center of UST. The morning session included Jesus Santos Jr., Rico Sta. Cruz, and Camille Zapata as presenters.

     Santos, a web developer at Wunderman, tackled Responsive Web Design that aimed to generate sites that are compatible for both computer and mobile gadgets. He said that at an age where Wi-Fi is onset to be a necessity for the modern man, responsive web design is intended to satisfy the users at home and outside.

     Sta. Cruz gave a talk about application interfaces and provided functional tips on how to make better interfaces and web designs. He is a co-founder and managing partner of Nadarei. He is also an open-source contributor on the web.

     Save22 interface designer Camille Zapata lectured on mobile interface, given that mobile web has become a big hit since smart phones were manufactured. The participants were encouraged to share their ideas on applications that they would like to have developed. Zapata noted that the apps should not only excel in the visual form and graphics, but on the function and substance as well.

     The afternoon session speakers consisted of JM Ibañez, founder of Codeflux, Inc; Julius Cerberos of IGDA-Manila; and Andrei Gonzales of Hugo Manila.

     Ibañez took HTML to a whole different level as he discussed how HTML objects can improve the quality of a website, making it more interesting for the web audience.

     Cerberos introduced the fundamentals of game programming. He explained the complex web of characters that enhanced the essential parts of the game and crucial mistakes that can impair the whole gameplay.

     Gonzales led an inspiring talk regarding the outlook of marketing online entitled “Mind Your Own Business.” He engaged the participants into thinking out-of-the-box and provided strategies on how to gain profit, developing the industry via web and the appropriate pricing on one’s work.

Day two, the Conference
     The second day of the event was held at the Thomas Aquinas Research Center (TARC) Auditorium where premier and brilliant web developers and designers shared knowledge and tips about certain aspects in the web.

     Lindsey Grande discussed about Web Typography. She said that typography is all about appropriateness. People usually bother about what is a good font to use, when they should actually be considering about who the content is for. She encouraged the web designers to experiment and go crazy on fonts, “We’re getting almost the same amount of freedom as print designers. So it’s a really good time to be a web designer today.”

     “Make your type mean something. Typography can influence your users, how they feel about your content. It can add value to your content. It’s not just about being pretty; it’s about making it mean something,” she added.

     Grande recently graduated Fine Arts at UST and currently runs The Color Cure Design Studio.

     A user group manager at Adobe, senior developer at Kihada in Canada, writer at Smashing magazine, and plugin developer at WordPress and JQuery, John Imbong discussed about HTML5 and CSS3.

     He had a short talk about the history of the web. “One of the more important things which made the web into what it is today is first and foremost, competition,” he said.

     He then talked about the features of HTML5, its tags and their uses. He mentioned accessibility as one of the reasons why people should use HTML5, commending its audio and video tags. As for CSS3, he said, “Before, you have to use mark-ups to create multiple backgrounds, but now you just have to separate it by space.”

     James Florentino, a user-interface designer at Wishbone Media and author of “Wings of Lemuria,” shared that the first problem he encountered for game development in Flash involving a lot of animations is that it exhibits a choppy behavior.

     Florentino talked about his transition from Flash to HTML5. He’s had an eight-year experience in Flash development before he decided to switch to HTML5 in 2011. What convinced him to hop into the technology was the canvas, audio, and video elements of HTML5 and its desktop notifications.

     Drei Alquiros, a quality assurance specialist at Spinweb Productions, Inc., discussed about cross-browser debugging. She started by giving a worldwide statistics of browser users: 1.39% uses mobile browsers; 1.62% for Opera, 7.77% for Safari, 22.36% for Mozilla, 32.39% for Internet Explorer, and 34.38% for Chrome.

     Alquiros said that as web developers and web designers, their goal is for the website to work in all browsers. “It would be better if your website would work in all browsers with as little code as possible.”

     She said that the key for cross-browser debugging is the CSS. She advised the participants to make their CSS as simple and with as little code as possible, saying that “all browsers begin with the basic things.”

     Noel Perlas, head of creative technology in Lowe and Partners, discussed about Designing for Interaction. “You start with understanding your user,” he said. Based on his interpretation of Bill Verplank’s designing the interface, these are among the several rules he follows: Feedback, Mapping, Redundancy, and Constraint.

     Marco Palinar, a veteran speaker in the Philippine Web Design Conference imparted knowledge on the topic “Things They Don’t Tell You About Being a Designer.” Palinar is currently a freelance web designer, working on several web startups as chief user interface designer.

     “Sure we all love design, it’s our passion, but we’re here to make design as our career and to earn from it obviously,” he said. Palinar also emphasized that it’s okay to say no.

     “There is such a thing as no deal. If it’s not attractive to you, you’re not obliged to engaged in the client or join that startup or company. It’s okay to say no.”

     “An idea is like a rollercoaster ride,” said JP De Guzman, chief creative officer of Rain Creative Lab. De Guzman talked about how to fight for your ideas. He gave his own three classifications of riders, with counterparts for individuals: the “naïve starters,” “almost there but not quite,” and the “thrill-seeking finishers.” The starters, according to De Guzman, are the people who are good at starting up things but not finishing them. The “almost there but not quite” types of people are those who are also good at starting but eventually losses confidence. Lastly, the “finishers” are the people who manage to get their ideas out in the open.

Web FWD, Innovation on the open web
     In time for the conference, Didem Ersoz was in the country to serve as a guest speaker. She discussed and promoted one of Mozilla’s newest programs: the Web FWD.

     Ersoz, project head of Web FWD, said in an interview with TomasinoWeb that what made them different from other incubators is that they don’t take equity from startups, they do not charge anything.

     “One unique thing, one strength of Mozilla is its community. Everything we do is with the support of our community. Everything we achieve is with the support of our community. That’s also how we operate with Web FWD.”

     When asked about her opinion on the potential applicants here in Philippines, she said, “What I see, like looking at this event and what I see around me, is that there’s a huge interest for startups, to build a business, to be an entrepreneur in the Philippines. And as far as I’ve heard from my local context here, there’s also good interest in open source projects. So I think there will be good amount of interest in the Philippines.”

     Web FWD is a 3-month global program that provides trainings, connection with experts, mentorship, and even legal support to entrepreneurs who want to build new web technologies. But there are requirements to be met.

     Since Mozilla’s main goal is innovation on the open web, the project should be open source. At least a certain part of the code should be open source. Another requirement is that there should be innovation in terms of technology. It has to possess a certain element of uniqueness, something fresh compared to the ones that already exist on the web. Lastly, there must be a potential to build a sustainable business around it.

     Because technology is so advanced, there is no need for relocation to participate in this program; everything is done online. Aside from the weekly links of learning modules and assignments, there will also be a weekly video conference team call where they discuss important topics related to your chosen field of business. And at the end of the program, the participants will be invited to go to Mozilla Headquarters in California to demonstrate their projects in front of experts, entrepreneurs, technologists, and enthusiasts to give them the chance to further develop their projects.

     The director of the program is Pascal Finette. Ersoz said that the program Web FWD was created because they want to support the mission of Mozilla which is innovation on the open web. They want to be able to access others who are innovating on the open web, outside Mozilla.

     One of the things that inspired Finette to create this kind of program is the story of John Resig, creator of JQuery. Mozilla wanted to support Resig with his project but there was no other way than to hire him as an employee. Upon hiring, Mozilla helped Resig to build his own project, JQuery. When JQuery reached its maturation point, Resig moved on and worked his own path.

     “So Mozilla wanted to help others, too, within following a structured program, that’s why we created Web FWD so that we can reach out to the open source innovators and we can support them [to] create their businesses, to transform their project into sustainable businesses,” said Ersoz.

By Chleobel D. Birginias and Mia Rosienna P. Mallari
Photo taken by Carmelo Culvera