As I began debating whether to make the move, I got pretty sentimental about the last 15 years – so much so, that I almost chose not to go. Thanks to GoLive/Macromedia/Adobe, I’ve gotten to help build tools that literally have changed the (web) world. I’ve also had the good fortune to travel around the world more times than I can count and accumulated frequent flyer miles and hotel points that will take years to use up. And along the way, I also got to meet and work with some truly amazing people, including my incredible wife, Stephanie Rewis. I want to thank you all – my colleagues, friends, travel buddies, conference attendees, et. al. – for so many great memories. Chili crab in Singapore, tuk-tuk rides in Dehli, climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge, dinner at Carnivores in Johannesburg, standing naked in a hotel hallway in Seoul (don’t ask), horizontal rain/ice in Helsinki in February(buuurrrr!), far too many beers at the Oktoberfest, sitting in the MacWorld green room with Steve Jobs, getting to fly with Paul McCartney – and so many, many more!

It’s been an amazing ride and I would be lying if I said that I won’t miss parts of it (expense reports excluded). I hope to still be asked to speak at conferences (hint, hint), and I will definitely be writing here and twittering there – it’ll just be less Dreamweaver and Adobe stuff, and more HTML5/CSS3/JS – and you’re all still invited to come hang out on Geeks4Sail. But, I’m also excitedly looking forward to the new challenges that come with change – and even better, I get to carpool to work with Stef (our offices are literally one mile apart)!

So, to my soon-to-be former colleagues at Adobe, I wish you all the best! Keep making great products! And to the rest of my readers, I’m not leaving you, so… um… carry on with what you were doing!

*Hat-tip to Leslie Jensen-Inman for the title of this post

I love my Galaxy Tab, but I am also eagerly awaiting some of the other new tablets. This is going to be a slugfest for sure. Thanks to Endgadget, here is a complete list of all of the tablets that were announced at CES.

The best announcement for me personally though, was the prospect of moving on from my Nexus One phone. While I’ve definitely loved the phone, it’s now 1 year old — and no self respecting geek could carry such a “brick”. The phone that sparked my imagination the most? The Motorola Atrix 4G. Shortly before the Motorola announcement, I was sure that I would be snapping up the HTC Inspire 4G, which is the North American version of the HTC Desire HD. I (sadly) purchased the amazing Desire HD last fall during a business trip to Europe — only to land back in the US to discover that it doesn’t support the US 3G bands. Doh! The HTC phone is absolutely incredible, and if it worked in the US, it would be my favorite all time phone – so I’m sure that the HTC Inspire will be a huge hit.

But, Motorola has lapped the competition with the Atrix. The phone itself is nothing spectacular to look at in terms of design, and were it simply a matter of choosing between it and the Inspire, I would probably choose the Inspire. But with the Atrix, there are two things that completely set it apart and on top of my list. The first is the NVidia Tegra dual core processor. This looks like it will be a game changer in terms of performance. But the second thing is the one that continues to have me daydreaming – a laptop dock. Yes, you read that right, but no, we’re not talking about putting your phone in a dock attached to a laptop. Instead the “laptop” is simply a shell. The phone is what powers it! For me, this is mind blowing. Imagine managing your email, social updates and casual surfing all on your phone, er…, laptop. When you plug the phone into the shell, it spawns a program called WebTop, which is an “operating system” overlay that gives you the feel of an actual computer – even though it’s your phone. Hard to imagine, I know, and even harder to describe. So, maybe you should just have a look at Motorola’s promotional site.

Don’t worry, I’ve signed up to be notified the moment this bad boy is available for sale, and I will definitely be first in line at my local AT&T store.

Pssst! New Secrets Revealed For Adobe Flash – Thought you knew everything about Adobe Flash? Think again, because you will be amazed at some of the ways to increase your productivity and get beyond the basics. You’ll learn some secret tips and trick about the latest version of Adobe Flash CS4 Professional. Vote for this session.

Modern Solutions For Old Problems In Browser Testing – Learn the latest solutions for simplifying cross-browser testing, from time-tested CSS best practices to online services. See how to test websites on popular browsers and operating systems and get tips on how to quickly pinpoint issues. Vote for this session.

I would appreciate your vote (and you should vote even if you’re not going to attend).

Also, a number of my colleagues have also submitted topics and I’m sure that they too would appreciate your vote:

• Online Video: What’s Hot and Who’s Not
• Major Sports Score Big On the Web
• Web Content Management Systems from a Designer’s Perspective
• Mobile Technology: What’s New, What’s Out, What’s Next?
• Are Magazines Dead?

Therefore, I’ve gone back through the slide deck and tried to annotate some of the “live code” – and here it is. Of course, there’s still tons of information that will fall through the cracks – otherwise you’d be downloading a 300 page PDF file… So, if you do have questions or comments, please feel free to either leave a comment here, or contact me via email (the address is in the About pod on the left).

Lastly, I’d like to publicly express my thanks to Geoff Bowers and his Daemon crew for another brilliant conference! WebDU continues to be one of the shining stars on the yearly conference schedule – from the venue (um… it’s Sydney… need I say more?!), to the organizers (one of the best organized conferences that I’ve ever attended), to the astute group of speakers (you won’t find a better line-up anywhere – year after year), and finally to those that matter most, the attendees. This year, as always, you inspired us as speakers more than you can know. I appreciated every conversation – and enjoyed the “challenging” questions as much as the easy ones (like which pub is my favorite in Sydney…)!

I’ve already started counting the days until next years conference… well… actually I haven’t really… because Geoff hasn’t yet said “when” we’ll all be meeting again. But rest assured, as soon as he does, I’ll have it reserved on my calendar! Cheers!

As suggested in the Post’s article, some people (such as Guy Kawasaki) seem to think that a measure of a person’s worth is the number of followers they have. But with all due respect to Guy, Ashton, and probably Oprah herself very soon, for me and many of the people that I know, Twitter is about something much different. I think it needs to be understood that some of us use Twitter to keep in touch and communicate with people that we actually know (or, at least, pretend to know – in the virtual sense).

In the “olden days” we wrote letters to the people “in our circle of friends/family” – remember dreading the Christmas card ritual every year? Then along came the web and we began to email the aforementioned circle – and we expanded it to include those which wouldn’t have gotten a Christmas card, but with whom we had a cursory relationship. We would “touch base” every so often – but most importantly, no longer just at holidays. Instant Messaging moved the needle again – but rarely would I share my IM name with someone that I had just met at a tradeshow or conference. With Twitter, the game changed completely. As a case in point, I literally just saw a billboard on the side of the highway with NO web address! Instead it simply stated that you could contact the company “@TheCompany’sNameWasHere”.

The fact that Twitter allows literally anyone to follow my every 140 characters (unless I protect my updates which seems to defeat the purpose of Twitter), means that I regularly awake to find that I have gained 10, 20, 30 or more followers while I slept. (I hope they didn’t hear me snoring…!)

Therefore, when I get a new follower, I routinely check their “stream”. The first thing that I do is look at how many followers they have, and how many they follow – as well as to read their Bio. If you’re in my industry (web design/development, web standards, Ajax), I’ll probably follow you back. If I’ve met you in person, or you are someone who “knows someone that I know”, you’re probably gonna be on my follow list. And finally, even if I don’t know you, you’re not in my “circle”, but you’re hilarious – you’ll definitely get a follow. (I’d send a shout-out to several of those that I follow for that reason, but they might be embarrased…). However, if you are up in the thousands (in terms of people you follow), it’s VERY unlikely that I will follow you back. Why? Because you won’t ever see/hear me.

For me, Twitter is about my friends/acquaintances. The list of people that I follow is a list of the people that I would like to invite to a special party or event – or that I, at the very least, have a professional connection with. They may not be my “best” friends or closest colleagues, but they are significant enough in my world that I actually want to hear how their day went or what their significant other did, or what the dog decided to chew on today. That’s not to say that I “don’t care” if I don’t follow you back. It’s just that I want to make sure that I can hear what my “friends” have to say – and anyone following more than 500 people can’t tell me that that is possible (unless they have people who tweet for them – like Guy).

On Friday, April 17th, Twitter will go even more mainstream. At 4pm EST, the one and only Oprah Winfrey will enter the Twitterverse (although as of this writing, she already has 56000+ followers without even having posted a single Tweet). I’m sure you’re asking yourself “Greg, do you actually watch Oprah…?!” Well, no. Although I have been known to have it on “in the background” while working in a hotel room.

The excitement surrounding Oprah’s interest in Twitter is much more narcissistic. While going about our day today, Stephanie and I received an email from one of Oprah’s producers. Apparently in doing their research for the show, they came across my Twitter proposal – which has now been acknowledged as the “first Twitter proposal“. According to the producer, we’ll be mentioned toward the end of the show – they’ve asked our permission to republish our Twitter exchange as well as to show a picture of us on-air. Too cool!

We’ll have our Tivo set – but if you stumble across the piece on YouTube, be sure to let me know! Who knows, maybe we’ll have to put Oprah on the wedding invite list for this summer! Cheers!

One of the coolest of new features in Dreamweaver CS4 allows you to take all of the “local” JavaScript code and externalize it with the click of the mouse – complete with unobtrusive attachment of events.

The question was basically “what’s the point” – is it because JavaScript is “bad” and you’re trying to be sneaky with it, or simply to clean up the HTML code itself. I got about halfway into my email response to the question when I realized that this might be worth posting here.

The issue with JavaScript as part of the HTML page is not that it is “illegal”, afterall <script> is a valid HTML element. It has more to do with the “best practice” of separation. In real life we talk about the need for a separation of church and state because they each have their own “realm of authority” – or at least we hope they do. But in the web content world there are really three things that need to be separated: markup, presentation and behavior.

In the long forgotten stone-age of the internet, markup was routinely mixed with presentation much as the alchemist mixed their secret potions in the hope of getting gold. As designers we wanted big, bold, red headlines and the font tag was wielded with complete disregard for the semantic “meaning” of the text to which it was applied. But thankfully within a few years CSS was born. With its advent, it was suddenly possible to return to a more simplistic and semantic markup – afterall this is what Tim Berners-Lee and company had in mind when the original HTML specs were conceived. The idea of markup was to describe an element’s purpose or meaning without regard for how it would be presented. And with CSS, we could use an h1 or h2 to emphasize the importance of an element, but style it however we wanted without it losing its “meaning” in relation to other elements. Not only did this lessen the amount of markup that we had to deal with, by externalizing  the CSS we had achieved two other important goals. First, we could modify a single CSS rule and effect all (or some) of the page elements spread across multiple pages in one fell swoop. Second, we began the journey down the progressive enhancement road.

If you’re like me (old), then you might remember those early days of the web as the browsers began their slow embrace of CSS. But then again, maybe you don’t remember those days – or you didn’t “notice” it, because you didn’t have a browser that supported CSS. And that’s the important part. If you didn’t have the latest and greatest browser, you still got content (if proper seperation of markup and presentation techniques were used). It’s all about properly marking up the content to begin with. Then, the presentation “layer” can work its magic in numerous ways. In fact, as my good friend Dave Shea’s site, CSS Zen Garden, so wonderfully illustrates, the very same semantic HTML markup can be presented in an unlimited number of ways. (Side note: if you’ve never visited Dave’s shrine to CSS creativity, run, don’t walk over there!)

Today, it’s fairly safe to say that the concept of separating markup and presentation is a “standard” and being implemented “for the most part” around the web world. But with today’s more “rich, interactive” web (read: Ajax) we find ourselves once again polluting our markup. And it’s for the very same reasons that we began separating markup and presentation that we should separate markup and behavior. We can reap the same rewards as well. By attaching JavaScript to elements unobtrusively, we eliminate a large part of unnecessary markup. Secondly, by centralizing the code into an external JavaScript file, we can make site-wide changes more easily. And finally, if we’ve adhered to the “leave no one behind” mantra of progressive enhancement, the page doesn’t “need” the JavaScript in order to deliver its content to the user agent. Instead, the page (and experience) is simply enhanced by its presence.

Thanks to my colleague for prompting me to write this – I hope it makes sense – and either way, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on the subject.

As a frequent flyer, who has averaged over 200000 flown miles every year since 1998, I have a vested interest in your survival as an industry. I completely understand your need for revenue – however a few recent developments have caused me to question not only the wisdom of your decisions, but also whether or not the people making the decisions have actually flown in the last seven years.

I completely understand that things like water and soft drinks aren’t free for you, but I also know that you get some sweet deals in terms of pricing on these items in return for announcing that “your airline is proud to serve soda X”. I also know that I just paid a hefty price for this ticket. So, it’s a bit ridiculous to ask me to pay $2 for a bottle of water that cost you $.35. Buying onboard food – fine, if I want other food I can bring it from home. Keep charging the $5 for beer and wine too – but don’t rape me for something that was free a few months ago back when fuel prices were, hmm, exactly where they are again now! And especially when that particular item can’t be brought through security anymore.

But even more troubling is the new baggage insanity fee. Again, I’m all for making money – but in a smart and equitable way. Your recent requirement to pay $15-25 for a checked bag has done nothing but cause passengers to attempt to stuff their entire apartment into a roll-aboard and backpack (neither of which can fit into the overhead bin without using a crowbar and personal lubricant). The result is that bins are completely full before even half of the passengers have boarded – a process which is also slowed because of the time needed to wedge all of the oversized duffelbags into the minimal space available. And then your flight crew gets to waste even more time checking the rest of the carry-ons in the gangway – for free!!! I’ve even heard passengers giving each other tips about this very thing!

Let’s get real – there are two far more intelligent solutions to this problem. Feel free to chose either one…

First, charge a carry-on fee instead of a checked bag fee. Charge the same $15-25 for any bag larger than a standard computer backpack or briefcase size. Upon paying, issue a bag tag that is attached to the bag in order to bring it onboard. It’s far less time-consuming for a gate agent or flight attendant to glance at the rollaboards being brought on than to fill out 20 or 30 luggage tags for bags that can’t find an overhead bin space.

Not only would this free up bin space, thereby alleviating the major bottleneck in the boarding process, it also ensures that the majority of bags go through more rigorous inspection than that afforded at most checkpoints – helping to keep us all safer.

Now if you don’t like that idea, how about just tacking on the stupid $15 to the price of every ticket as a fuel surcharge? That is the reason that you’ve said you needed to add the baggage fee, isn’t it? So let’s be fair and make everyone shoulder the burden of the higher fuel costs. We’re all getting on the plane – why does my checked bag cost more in the cargo hold than the one in the overhead bin? And don’t tell me it’s a matter of weight – you already have weight restrictions – and you are able to distribute the weight in the cargo hold much more effectively than you can in the cabin. And a fuel surcharge could actually be decreased or even recended as fuel prices decrease (as if you’d ever actually do that…).

The bottom line is that we all know the economy sucks – but I also know that every plane I get on is packed to the gills. We all want you to survive and even to turn a profit, but nickel and dimeing us in a way that makes the entire traveling experience even more of a headache is the quickest way to lose any goodwill that you might still have following 9/11. And, yes I know, as a frequent flyer I am not subject to the bag fees – but I do still have to get on the plane in a timely manner. And when I can’t manage to be one of the first ones on the plane I still need to find room for my bag. Think about it – or better yet make your executive fly coach (in a middle seat) on six flights this week. I bet we’d see a lot of changes come next week. ;-)

Sincerely,
Greg

P.S. To my readers, I’d love to hear your thoughts on my ideas – or any of your own airline stories. Comment away!

I mean, think about it… could this happen in your job? Could you go tell your boss that you’re going to go look (and campaign) for another job? Or more importantly, could you tell him/her that what you were doing was in the best interest of their company, but if you didn’t get the new job, then you’d be back to doing your “same ‘ol, same ‘ol” the next day? Oh… and you’d also like to loan the keys to the motorpool and use the limos/planes/boats/etc to ferry yourself and your entourage around during the interview process.

As the governor of Alaska, shouldn’t Sarah Palin have turned over the keys to the kingdom to someone else as she runs around the country? You can’t tell me that she (in addition to being a mother of five kids, including a baby with Downs Syndrome), can process all the information she needs to in order to make decisions for her state, while bouncing from campaign stop to campaign stop… Unless, of course, there’s not much to being governor of Alaska – which would open up a whole different set of questions.

Don’t read anything biased in there either – the same goes for Obama and McCain. Are either truly exercising to the fullest the mandate that brought them to the Senate – to serve the people of their state.

If you’re giving 5-10 speeches a day in 4 or 5 cities in states whose capitals you can’t even name, you can’t be paying much attention to what is going on on the Senate floor…

Shouldn’t we be demanding that our “potential” elected officials play by the same rules that we have to? If you want another job, fine – look for it on your own time. But if I’m paying your salary (and as an Arizona resident, Mr. McCain, I AM paying your salary), then you need to resign from your office. Go campaign. But if you lose, I don’t see how it is fair that you come waltzing back into the Senate (or Governor’s office, Ms Palin) as if nothing ever happened.

Just doing a bit of thinking out loud… Thoughts? Cheers!

Well, the thing that pushed me over the edge and forced the upgrade was my (relatively) new iPhone 3G. You see, not only have I (grudingly) fallen in love with my iPhone – I’ve also been on a tear in the App Store. Thankfully there are a lot of great apps there for “free” – so I’ve not (yet) begun to equal my enormous investments in the musical side of the iTunes store. But I digress…

Probably my biggest complaint about blogging is the writing itself. I don’t mean the ideas – I have plenty of those. But it always seemed in the past that I would have a great idea for a post, but no way to actually write it because my laptop was not at hand, or I wasn’t near a hotspot, didn’t want to go through the trouble of logging on, etc. I have repeatedly commented to those around me that I would blog more IF I could just do it from my phone. I tried to set it up with my old Nokia e61i, but never got it to work.

WordPress on the iPhone

That’s why I was delighted to find a WordPress app on the App Store. Of course, after I downloaded it, I realized that I was in trouble. The version of WP that I was running was not supported. Argh… So I bit the bullet, and nervously read through the instructions for upgrading.

Is it just me, or do you get nervous when the first three paragraphs of instructions are all about backing up and how a failure to do so could leave you without a working blog, unable to login, and generally cause the fall of democracy… OK, it was exactly that dire, but I was nervous none the less.

But my kudos to the WP team for making the upgrade incredibly simple. After a couple of changes to a config file, copying my theme into its proper place and uploading it all back to the server, life was good. (The funniest part of the upgrade though was a message that told me “Your database needs upgrading. This could take some time, so please be patient.” After clicking on the button, it literally took 1 second to finish. Glad that I had that much patience!)

Editing a post on the iPhone

So, now I can successfully write/edit from my iPhone – FTW! And hopefully that will mean more frequent updates here… but I guess time will tell… :-)  Cheers!