Building a Better Web
June 11–12, 2018: Training
June 12–14, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
San Jose, CA

Web Pillars Track: Performance, Security, Accessibility

It’s no secret that today’s users expect their sites and apps to be fast, accessible, and secure. In this track, learn how to approach these pillars of development proactively and hear from developers and companies who’ve had success. We’ll go beyond why performance, security, and accessibility “matter” and head straight into practical, hands-on sessions on how to implement these critical cornerstones into the design and development lifecycle of your team’s product.

9:50am–10:30am Wednesday, June 13, 2018
When third parties stop being polite. . .and start getting real
Performance and UX
 Location: 210 A/E
Nic Jansma (Akamai), Charles Vazac (Akamai)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 6 ratings)
Nic Jansma and Charles Vazac perform an honest audit of several popular third-party libraries to understand their true cost to your site, exploring loading patterns, SPOF avoidance, JavaScript parsing, long tasks, runtime overhead, polyfill headaches, security and privacy concerns, and more. They also share tools to help you decide if a library’s risks and unseen costs are worth it. Read more.
11:00am–11:40am Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Hacking web performance
Performance and UX
 Location: 210 A/E
Max Firtman (ITMaster Professional Training)
Average rating: ****.
(4.71, 7 ratings)
After you understand how important web performance is and have applied basic techniques, what's next? Max Firtman covers extreme web performance techniques that will blow your mind, from new compression algorithms and new image formats to client hints and HTTP/2 push. Join in to learn how to hack web performance. Read more.
11:00am–11:40am Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Embracing vulnerability by empowering everyone to own security
Security
 Location: 210 C/G
annie lau (Trulia)
Average rating: ****.
(4.88, 8 ratings)
They say great software is secure software. But who should be responsible for ensuring and maintaining security excellence? Home and neighborhood resource Trulia says, "Everyone." Annie Lau explains how Trulia manages vulnerabilities through its bug bounty program and scales the responsibility of security across engineering, product, and business teams. Read more.
4:25pm–5:05pm Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Inclusive design: Putting humans back in focus
Accessibility
 Location: 210 A/E
Sarah Federman (Adobe)
Average rating: ***..
(3.00, 1 rating)
In a perfect world, every application would be usable by everyone. Unfortunately, it never seems to be that simple. Accessibility is vital to the future of the web, and we all have a part to play. Sarah Federman shares techniques for making accessibility a priority in your org through both top-down and grassroots efforts. Read more.
9:00am–9:40am Thursday, June 14, 2018
Rebuilding a browser extension for privacy
Security
 Location: 212 A/B
Princiya Sequeira (Zalando)
Average rating: **...
(2.50, 2 ratings)
Browser extensions built with the WebExtensions APIs are compatible with all modern browsers. Princiya Sequeira shares lessons learned migrating a legacy privacy add-on to a web extension, with performance being the key factor. Along the way, you'll explore all things web tracking. Read more.
9:50am–10:30am Thursday, June 14, 2018
Accessibility is important; now what?
Accessibility
 Location: 210 A/E
Juliana Gomez (Huge)
Average rating: ***..
(3.33, 3 ratings)
The dev community is increasingly interested in accessibility (A11y), but now we need the knowledge and tools to actually do it. Juliana Gomez demystifies the trickiest WCAG standards, shares demos of common accessibility nightmares, and explains how to make them accessible in the simplest ways possible using HTML, CSS, and plain JavaScript. Read more.
9:50am–10:30am Thursday, June 14, 2018
Field-tested interfaces for the next billion
Performance and UX
 Location: 210 C/G
Ally Long (Field Intelligence)
Average rating: ****.
(4.50, 2 ratings)
Ally Long explains how to design and build products for a different kind of digital landscape than many of us are used to: the billions of people around the world who now have access to connected smartphones but can afford only a few megabytes of data here and there, have cheap, low-powered devices and unreliable electricity, and are learning to use digital interfaces for the first time. Read more.
11:00am–11:40am Thursday, June 14, 2018
The art and craft of secrets: Using the cryptographic toolbox
Security
 Location: 212 A/B
Michael Swieton (Atomic Object)
Average rating: ****.
(4.00, 2 ratings)
Michael Swieton explores how the cryptographic ecosystem—which includes tools such as public key cryptography, signatures, password hashes, key exchange, and stream ciphers—provides security for our applications and explains how these tools come together to enable user-visible functionality like secure sessions, user authentication, and single sign-ons. Read more.
11:00am–11:40am Thursday, June 14, 2018
Raiders of the fast start: Frontend performance archeology
Performance and UX
 Location: 210 A/E
Katie Sylor-Miller (Etsy)
Average rating: ****.
(4.40, 5 ratings)
Making your site faster seems so easy in theory, but in practice, diagnosing and fixing performance issues on a large legacy codebase is like being an archaeologist excavating the remains of a lost civilization. Pick up a trowel and join Katie Sylor-Miller to learn real-life lessons on how Etsy uncovered and fixed performance issues in its mobile product page code. Read more.
3:35pm–4:15pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Patterns in Node.js vulnerabilities
Security
 Location: 210 C/G
Chetan Karande (DTCC)
Average rating: **...
(2.00, 1 rating)
Chetan Karande shares the findings from an analysis of over a thousand publicly known Node.js vulnerabilities. With intuitive data visualizations and statistics, Chetan details trends over last five years, explores common security mistakes made by Node.js package authors, and explains how you can prevent these issues in your own code. Read more.
3:35pm–4:15pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
To push, or not to push? The future of HTTP/2 server push
Performance and UX
 Location: 210 A/E
Patrick Hamann (Fastly)
Average rating: ****.
(4.40, 5 ratings)
HTTP/2 server push gives us the ability to proactively send assets to a browser without waiting for them to be requested. Sounds great, but is this new mechanism really a silver bullet? Using new research and real-world examples, Patrick Hamann leads a deep dive into server push and attempts to answer the question we're all asking: Is it ready for production? Read more.
4:25pm–5:05pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Meaningful UX performance metrics and how to improve them
Performance and UX
 Location: 210 A/E
Mark Zeman (SpeedCurve)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 4 ratings)
There are a wide variety of web performance metrics, but which ones should you focus on and share across your organization? Mark Zeman explains which performance metrics best represent the user experience and walks you through techniques for improving your UX performance metrics and getting the content that users care about the most in front of them as fast as possible. Read more.