Well, it’s that time again. The popular and highly educational Web Design World Conference is making a stop next week in Chicago. There will be tons of great content and sessions, including talks by industry giant Jeffrey Veen of Google (and, Jeffrey is a giant - I know, because I was suffering from neck pain after craning my neck to talk with him last week at An Event Apart in New Orleans!), the always entertaining and informative Jared Spool, CSS luminary and allaround good guy Dan Rubin and my good buddy Joe Marini (even though he works for Microsoft now, I still love to hang out with him).

And on Day 3 of the conference, Stephanie Sullivan and I will be reprising our Adobe CS3 Workshop with over 6 hours of everything you ever wanted to know about Photoshop for the web, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, CSS, Flash and Flash video. Judging from the feedback when we conducted this all day workshop at WDW in Boston earlier in the year, it’s well worth the visit. And… we might just show something new this time around! ;-)

If you’re planning on attending, or you can convince your boss that you really, really need to head to Chicago next week, be sure to use the code “SPREW”, and of course to say hello - I’ll be the one with the beer in his hand at the opening night party - shouldn’t be too hard to find me! Cheers!

I want to make sure that all of my friends out there are aware of a brand new seminar series that will be kicking off in Los Angeles at the end of the month. We’ve partnered with some good friends, MOGO Media, founded by the amazing Mordy Golding, to get folks up-to-speed on designing cutting edge, standards-based web sites with Dreamweaver CS3 and CSS. The class will be taught by Brian Wood, who is an accomplished book author and an Adobe Certified Creative Suite Master.

“Our goal in presenting this one-day course on web publishing with Adobe is to help creative pros become confident with moving their content to the web,” said Mordy Golding. “By learning the benefits of CSS, these workshops teach designers how they can extend their knowledge of the Adobe toolset and get started with Dreamweaver.”

Whether you are just diving in, or you’ve been swimming web site laps for years but still get tired in the CSS end of the pool, the series is sure to offer tons of great tips, tricks and innovations. If you’re in, or can travel to, any of the following cities, I’m sure that you’ll have loads of fun and walk away inspired:

May 29—Los Angeles, Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey
June 4—New York City, Marriott Marquis Hotel
June 17—Washington D.C., Walter Washington Convention Center
June 24—Chicago, Chicago City Centre Hotel
June 26—Boston, Marriott Copley Place

You can get more information and register for the events on MOGO’s Seminar site. And be sure to tell them that “Greg sent you”! Cheers!

Well, today is a day full of emotions and memories. Today, Adobe announced the end-of-life of GoLive. Effective immediately, we will no longer be developing or selling GoLive. Of course, for many longtime GoLive users, they have sensed and even stated to me that the writing was on the wall the day that Adobe acquired Macromedia. With a dominant marketshare in comparison to GoLive, Dreamweaver is the tool that, of the two, would emerge as the HTML authoring tool from Adobe.

But for me, it’s more than just simple bottom line arithmetic. GoLive will always have a very special place in my heart - even though I’ve been the primary Dreamweaver evangelist for almost 10 years now. You see, dear reader, I was present the day the first lines of code were written for the application that would become GoLive.

For me, it’s a journey that started in Hamburg, Germany in 1990. At the time, the internet wasn’t even on anyone’s radar (ours included). At the time, I was the Product Manager for a Hamburg-based software company known as P.INK. We built the first successful desktop-based publishing system for newspapers and magazines. Those were great times… as the publishing industry was in a state of transformation. And, with the transformation, many publishers quickly began looking for ways to repurpose this new digital content. Our own desire was a way to retrieve and digitally republish the content from our editorial database.

Thankfully, one of our engineers was still completing his college degree and had, in 1992, written a project using a new subset of SGML, known as HTML. The first beta versions of Mosiac had just began to make their way around the web, and we realized that this could possibly be the solution we’d been looking for. But, of course, newspaper and magazine layouts were (and still are) very different from a web page. So, we needed a way to format and layout the stories from the database… Hmm, things haven’t changed much since then…

Thus was born the P.INK Web Editor, released for testing to some of our clients, who, in turn, just stared at it - not realizing they were looking into the future.

After our parent company, who was dealing with their own financial troubles, decided to shut our doors, we were able to successfully acquire the rights to our “invention”. After securing funding for our new venture, named gonet communications and later renamed golive, we released the very first commercial web editor “Golive” in the fall of 1996. Yes, friends, we even beat PageMill to market. (Adobe had acquired Seneca - not sure of the spelling after all these years - earlier in ‘96, but didn’t release it until a few months after our release.)

And with that release, the HTML editor wars began - but our renamed “Cyberstudio” quickly became the tool of choice for any Mac user building those early web sites. It was so successful that we were even approached by Adobe itself. Fortunately, or unfortunately - depending upon your point of view, those early negotiations were unsuccessful. It’d take another 18 months or so for the acquisition to become a reality.

In the meantime, there were many, many good memories made and people met… Like the Worldwide Apple Sales Conference where we gave away a box of Cyberstudio to every Apple employee! Our friends at Macromedia were so taken aback by this that they even complained to Apple directly! Must have been frustrating for them to watch every Apple person walk by their booth with a copy of Cyberstudio in hand!

Or, how about the MacWorld where we put a dumpster on our booth! If you put a copy of any competing product in it, we’d give you a copy of Cyberstudio… Even we had no idea what a silly idea that was - or more correctly, how many times we’d have to empty that dumpster!

Of course, success breeds opportunities and change. For us, that came when Adobe came calling a second time at the end of 1998. Having failed to get a new version of Pagemill out the door, the stars aligned and we became Adobe. But for me, the change had an even bigger impact. After some very serious internal debate, I decided to leave Adobe for the greener (there’s a pun there if you look closely) pastures of Macromedia, where I helped begin to shape Dreamweaver - and in turn, attempt to kill GoLive. Am I the only one who sees the irony in all of this…? And btw, click either of the two pictures here to go to a set of more trips down memory lane in my Flickr stream.

Well, there’s been a lot of back-and-forth between the two camps over the years, some justified and some just poking fun. But in the end, I think that we can all be truly proud of what we accomplished. To those GoLive users out there, my heart goes out to you. It’s never easy to watch your favorite product reach this point. However, there are many of us still here at Adobe who worked on GoLive over the years, and who now are directly involved with making Dreamweaver an even better tool. Yes, there are still things in GoLive that we don’t (yet) have in Dreamweaver, but we’re eagerly working to fill those holes, while continuing to advance Dreamweaver with cutting-edge new features.

In fact, just last week, I had the extreme pleasure to “sneak” a few of those features at An Event Apart in New Orleans. To say that the audience was excited would be a gross understatement. I wish I could tell you about all the things we have planned, but that will have to wait a while.

Until then, I’ll look back on today with a tear in my eye… but also with a huge smile on my lips. In the words of my hometown, Laissez les bons temps rouler! There’s tons of web authoring goodness yet to come. Now raise your glass and let’s give one last toast to GoLive… Prost!

Having just received my promo copies of Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 that I wrote with Stephanie Sullivan, I found it interesting that Eric Meyer and Jonathon Snook were discussing the topic of CSS resets on their blogs today. During the writing of the book, we actually used Eric’s reset in one of our chapters. But, honestly, I have to say that I agree with Jonathon, in that while Stephanie tends to use the reset often, I actually rarely do. Instead, I tend to do the same as Jonathon - I rarely reset anything, preferring to simply write a rule or two to address any inconsistencies between browsers. As Jonathon points out, whether a list has a circle or a square doesn’t really impact the design - and if it does, then a rule can be created to address it. Anyway, that’s my take on things… if anybody actually cares what I think. :-)  Cheers!

Just wanted to give everyone out there a heads-up: my team, Creative Solutions Evangelism, has a job opening. I’m looking for a Worldwide Web Evangelist. Is it you? You can read more about the position by going to Adobe.com’s job listings section. The job listing is number: CC030836 - or just hit the search and type in “Evangelist”.

In a nutshell, I need someone who has an expert’s knowledge of Adobe’s web tools (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash) as well as experience with Photoshop and Illustrator. You should have a solid foundation in these, but your focus will be on your skills with the Flash Authoring tool. Specifically, I’m interested in someone who knows the authoring tool like the back of their hand, from both a designer’s perspective, but also from a developer’s point of view, and knows the ins and outs of Actionscript 2/3 and has experience with Flash video. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?!) If you also know the Flash Media Server, even better!

Of course, as an Evangelist, you’ve got to have excellent presentation skills because you’ll be demo’ing these products around the world in front of small and large groups alike - at trade shows and seminars. You’ll also be regularly speaking at industry conferences where your knowledge will really be put to the test. In addition, you’ll be blogging, creating demos, and sharing your knowledge internally with the product teams as they create the next versions of our software.

I don’t care where you’re located - as long as you have a major airport within striking distance.

And I won’t lie to you, it’s a demanding job, as you’ll be on the road around the world 50+% of the time - but the reward is a highly visible position with great pay and excellent benefits in one of the best companies to work for in the world. If you think you have what it takes, leave a comment and let me know - or even better, apply for the job!

The worst part about writing a book (which just arrived today - no, this is NOT an April Fools joke), is the fact that print is so damned permanent. And once the chapter leaves your word processor and heads off into editorial production land, there is no easy way to “fix” a mistake or update a topic. And just this very thing happened with the project in Chapter 6 of the book.

In that chapter, Stephanie and I wrote about using the Spry Framework for Ajax to create an art gallery. In approaching the project, we chose to use the “new” Sliding Panels widget which was added in the 1.6 release of Spry. Unfortunately, what I didn’t “notice” during the writing of the chapter was that the panel sort of stuttered when clicking upon the panel navigation the first time after the page load. Apparently this is something that others have seen as well, because I was recently asked about that very problem in an online seminar that Stephanie was presenting and in which I was frantically answering questions in the chat window. So, there’s the issue and, more importantly, here’s the fix. (more…)

The time has come yet again. This week is “Amsterdam week” - doing several training sessions for our Dutch partners and a seminar for their customers. Should be a lot of fun, as the subject is Flash Media Server, Adobe Media Player and Flash video. I have to admit that I’ve actually had a lot of fun preparing for the sessions. I always enjoy getting the opportunity to delve into a new version of our software - and the newly released FMS 3 is truly a revolution. Not only did we drop the price (significantly), but we also piled on the features, including not only the ability to stream H264 content (in addition to FLV), but also to “automagically” encrypt video on the fly. This is done by simply adding an “e” to “rtmp” when creating the link to the stream. That’s it. And to make it even more amazing, it works with live video as well as recorded content. There’s tons of other cool stuff, but you can read about that yourself. In fact, I’d recommend the article that Kevin Towes recently posted to the Developer Center.

Finally, for those that missed it… there was a recent flurry of Twitter activity around a marriage proposal that I made to my co-author (and love) Stephanie Sullivan. Little did we realize just how much the “rest of the world” cared - LOL - it got picked up by Wired News! Prost!

The German/English web site, Create or Die, conducted a video interview with Rufus Deuchler, Jason Levine and myself during our recent tour through Germany and Austria. I unfortunately forgot to put up a link to the interview in one of my previous posts. So, as I wait to go to the airport to head for SXSW, I thought I’d add this little bit of hilarity for your amusement.

The concept behind Create or Die’s interviews is actually quite funny itself. Instead of an interviewer asking the questions, they chose to print the questions on cue cards. We each had to read the question and then respond. It made for a lot of fun. Additionally, I have to say that I was impressed by the level of research that Felix (our interviewer) had done. Specifically, he had scoured the web for interesting tidbits about each of us, and had questions relating to them. And, pay close attention, we even reveal the release date for CS4… ;-)  Cheers!

Tomorrow the annual gathering of geeks known as South By Southwest begins, and yes, that means I’ll be packing the bags to head to the Lone Star state. It should be a lot of fun, as Adobe will be well represented. In addition to three “meet and greet” sessions known as Clicks, which are new this year, there will be several of us participating in panel discussions and demonstrations.

I will be conducting a session on Sunday (at the obscene hour of 11:30am) on “Responsible Web Design“, together with Stephanie Sullivan. During the session, we’ll be taking a look at web standards from a “standardista” approach (Stephanie) and how Adobe is addressing these issues within our software (me, duh!).

We had hoped to field an Adobe team for the annual bowling tournament, but unfortuntely, the team registration filled up faster than an Irish pub on St. Patty’s Day. Fortunately, Stephanie was able to secure two spots for herself and me on the Yahoo! team - so we’ll be slugging it out and helping them beat back the Microsoft team (get it?!). Wish us luck!

But of course the main Adobe event is sure to be the Adobe-sponsored party on Monday night at the Dirty Dog from 8-11pm. There’s sure to be a packed house - because “open bar” is like a mating call for geeks. If you’re in town for the conference (yeah, right - you’re in town for the parties, be honest), then I hope to see you there.

Now, back to packing… where is that crate of Advil that I bought at Costco?! Cheers!

Well, the labor of love is finally finished, and on April 11th, Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 will finally hit the bookshelves! Yes, you read that right - we did it!! It’s done!! You can buy it!! And, no, I don’t have any free copies to send you - yet! :-)

I co-wrote the book with Stephanie Sullivan, the mastermind behind the new CSS starter layouts in Dreamweaver CS3, and although we originally “planned” on the book’s release to follow on the heals of the release of Dreamweaver CS3, we quickly found out just how difficult writing a book could be when you simultaneously have to do a “real job”. “It’ll be easy,” I said, “I’ve got tons of time to write while on airplanes, in hotel rooms, etc”.

But, I really should have known better… Most of the time that I’m on a flight, I’m headed off to do a conference presentation or a seminar roadshow. And, of course, in keeping with the motto of “keep it fresh”, I’m always tweaking files and experimenting with new ideas on the plane. Once on the ground, there’s food to be found, sports to be watched, and when in Europe, good beer to be consumed (oops, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned those last two). And while Stephanie gamely tried to keep me on task, her own travel, speaking engagements and the need to run a business quickly made us a procrastinating “pot and kettle”.

But, we finally did it. And, quite honestly, it was worth it - the wait, that is. One of the main reasons is that we were able to really work through the examples in a thorough manner, getting in all of the info that both of us are constantly asked about during conferences. The other great news about the delay is that I was able to completely change the last chapter of the book to incorporate the latest release (1.6) of the Spry Framework for Ajax.

This is something that was weighing heavily on us towards the middle of last year. The Spry team had done an amazing job with the initial releases of the framework, however, it still had some short-comings. We wanted our book to follow the best practices not only of CSS, but also of Ajax. And the issue at the time, was the inability of the Spry framework to deliver a version of the page if Javascript was disabled or unavailable in the user agent. But the 1.6 release changed all that.

Spry 1.6 allows for the use of HTML, and more specifically, the HTML within the same page, as the data source for its enhancements. This means that we can create a page, laid out perfectly with standard CSS techniques, but then completely change or enhance the page with Ajax functionality when Javascript is available. Believe me, this is definitely one of the coolest technologies that I’ve ever worked with - and I’ve seen a bunch in over 20 years in this biz.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy the book - we’ll both be looking forward to hearing your comments (only the good ones, of course!), and if you track us down at any of the numerous conferences and trade shows that we’ll be at this year, we’d love to hear your suggestions for our next book… Wait, did I just agree to do this whole thing again?! Shoot me now!