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!

As I was perusing my Twitter stream to see what I missed today (while actually conducting a 20 hour workday, if we count the fact that I had to get up at 4am to fly from Hamburg to Vienna, do press interviews immediately upon arriving at the venue and then, after six straight hours of presentations, head for the airport to fly to Dublin in order to speak at the first ever Irish Web Technologies Conference tomorrow… er, today, since it’s now past midnight), I noticed a Twitter from Guy Kawasaki referring back to a blog post – see the post from Köln and Hamburg for more info on Guy. Just had to blog this, since it is one of the funniest posts I’ve read in a long time.

What I forgot to mention in that post is the fact that I had the pleasure of presenting GoLive Cyberstudio (I’m mentioned in the article – and yes, back to the original conversation, as the GoLive evangelist) in one of Guy’s infamous “post-MacWorld-keynote” keynotes. For those that don’t remember these stalwarts at MacWorld, or were perhaps not even born… these events were legendary. Guy would invite what he saw as the coolest technologies for the Mac from the previous year. Then, you got 5 minutes – and ONLY 5 minutes – to impress not only Guy, but the audience in general, with your absolute best demo ever. I’m proud to say, as I walked off stage after my 5 minutes of fame, Guy said to the audience “That was amazing! That guy should sell juicers on late-night television!” Or, as my boys would say, “w00t!”

And on a complete sidenote, that year was the first year that Steve Jobs (who I also have gotten to meet several times) graced the MacWorld stage after leaving Apple. Little did Gil Amelio (remember him?) know what was about to happen…

Anyway, it is great fun to get to meet famous people – and even more fun when they actually know what you do, or at least the technology that you are a part of helping to create. Like the immigration officer in Australia that asked “who do you work for?” And when I responded (at the time) “Macromedia”, he said “I love Flash – it’s so cool!” Now, that immigration officer isn’t famous, but the fact that technology can reach across borders, boundaries, income levels, etc is defintely amazing. The difference is how the “famous” treat you, or if you’re so lucky to be “the famous one”, how you treat others. Because I’ve been around this industry soooo long, and have had the pleasure to be associated with some of the most famous and successful pieces of software to be released within the web space, I often get the “famous” treatment – not to the level of Steve Jobs or Guy, but it’s still fun nonetheless. However, my friends, I still love hearing from you, talking with you after my presentations and, most importantly, even learning from you! You’re the real heroes out there – the ones creating amazing content with Adobe tools. I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve “borrowed” from your ideas and questions to help shape my demonstrations and presentations.

Now, ask me nicely and I might tell you the story of how not only did I get to meet Paul McCartney – but I got to spend five, uninterrupted hours talking with him… Cheers!

As a political junkie, I am surprised that I had not heard of a movement towards a more fair Presidential election. I happened across this story, reported by the AP, on Yahoo!. The interesting thing for me is, it’s logical – duh! Having lived in Europe for a large majority of my adult life, it was always “interesting” to try and explain the American political process to Europeans. This is especially true when it comes to the election of our President.

Of course we all remember the election of 2004 – and regardless of which side of the aisle one stands, it does seem somewhat “backwards” when we have one candidate winning the popular vote and yet still losing the election. It’s an interesting proposition and one that deserves some intense scrutiny.