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!