On 16th and 17th of May the third edition of Mobilism will take place in Amsterdam. Today we're happy to announce two more speakers: Jake Archibald, who by then will be a Google developer advocate, and Josh Clark, mobile user experience designer extraordinaire and author of Tapworthy.

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Well, there were some interesting comments on my last post about connection speed in browsers. This post continues the conversation by giving my replies to a few notes, thoughts, and concerns.

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In the past week I’ve done the viewport tests on the latest crop of devices, and things are definitely looking better. The visual viewport dimensions are now well-supported, and a consensus on position: fixed is in the making.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: browsers, especially mobile ones, should give information about the speed of the connection they’re on, so that we know whether to send the high-res images or lowsource ones.

Currently no browser gives any sort of information about connection speed — they don’t even have access to it. Still ... well, let’s say that it’s possible that this will change in the future. But we need to figure out exactly how the system should work.

So this post asks a few questions, and the comments are open.

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During my media query test I found out that min-resolution: 0[unit] does not work in any browser for any unit. I find this weird.

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I held a JavaScript library poll in the last three weeks, and it’s time to publish the results. At least 3,350 people responded. With nearly 155,000 responses in total, and nearly 1,700 for the least-answered question, I believe this poll is fairly representative of my readers and the readers of my readers, and therefore gives genuinely useful information about current JavaScript library use.

• On average, respondents used 3.5 libraries in the past year, and about 2 in more than 50% of their projects. (Of course the latter figure might mean they use one library in 50% of their projects, and another in the other 50%.)
• 95% used libraries, which means that 5% didn’t. That’s something, though not much.
• 59% could have done without a library in his last project. That’s not too bad, but it still means 41% could not.
• 42% sticks with his current libraries because learning to use a new one takes too much time.
• The most-used library is jQuery with 91%. Duh.
• Second-most used is Modernizr (58%), and then come underscore.js (33%) and backbone.js (30%).
• From 25-40% of the users of a library use it in at least 50% of their projects. For Modernizr, underscore.js, and especially jQuery this percentage is higher. For Zepto, Sencha Touch, and Raphael.js this percentage is considerably lower.

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OK, there’s a budding consensus on how position: fixed should work on mobile. Android WebKit and Chrome both do it, and in iOS6 Safari has dropped the weird iOS5 stuff and moved to a sensible solution.

Instead of explaining it in words, here’s a video. HTC One X, Android 4.0.3, Android WebKit default browser. Test page.

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Back in Spring 2007 it dawned on me that what we needed in Holland was an association of professional front-end developers. Front-end was on the rise, but not nearly as popular as it is nowadays, and it was marred by archaic types who were still using table-based layouts and were discussing the use of CSS internally ... and discussing it ... and discussing it.

I started reaching out to front-enders I knew, and pretty soon it was clear almost all of them agreed that a professional association was a good idea. Consequentely, Fronteers was founded in September 2007, slightly more than five years ago. I was elected chairman.

In November I’m going to step down as chairman and board member (blogpost in Dutch), and I’d like to close off my active duty time at Fronteers with a retrospective. Which plans worked, which ones didn’t? Which lessons can you draw if you’re considering a similar association in your country?

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Yesterday W3C announced the new webplatform.org initiative of W3C and several browser vendors. I’d like to add something: I’m going to be involved.

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Two weeks ago I published a poll about the use of JavaScript libraries. So far it had 97,500 responses, but I’d like to make that 100,000 or more. So here’s the poll again, and I request you to answer as many questions as you can stand.

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In the next two months three important changes will take place in my professional life. These changes have a common theme: they reduce the time I spend on unpaid jobs.

1. QuirksMode.org is now sponsored by Microsoft, Google, and BlackBerry. The purpose is to grant me more time to do fundamental research without having to take on other jobs for money.
2. Starting after the Fronteers 2012 conference on Thursday and Friday, I’ll take a break from the conference circuit for at least a year; possibly longer. I will be present at conferences I organise in Amsterdam, but I will not travel.
3. I will step down as chairman and board member of Fronteers at the end of November. (Blogpost in Dutch.)

Why these changes? To be quite honest, I feel I’ve done enough free work for the web development community.

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