Obviously one of the most stressful times in a software evangelist’s life is during the “launch” phase of a product. And, in case you’ve been under a rock, we’re in exactly such a time right now. Creative Suite 4 is not only shipping, my team and I are crisscrossing the world with seminars and at tradeshows. During this brief (um, since when is three months brief?) period of time, we will log countless miles, way too many nights in hotels, and slowly forget what “home” even looks like. And all the while, we’ll be singing the accolades of CS4.

The problem with these launch seminars is that we simply have too much to show and far too little time to do it in. Case in point, we (Jason, Rufus and myself) have just launched CS4 in Oslo, Helsinki and Stockholm. Thanks to all the folks in those three cities for spending their morning with us. All told, we’ve already seen over 2500 of our nordic friends on this tour – and we still have 5 cities in Sweden and Denmark to go!

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about… Instead, I wanted to mention a really welcome feature of Dreamweaver CS4 that I’ve simply had no time to show during the seminars. During the CS3 timeframe, Dreamweaver supported the use of our own Spry Framework for Ajax, but if you wanted to use other frameworks, it was a completely manual, done in source code, tedious operation. What’s more, since DW didn’t understand any of the JavaScript from the “foreign” framework, we spent half of our development time bouncing over to the browser.

With Dreamweaver CS4, however, the team has truly embraced the “neutral” nature that Dreamweaver long ago pioneered with its support for application server models such as ASP, ColdFusion, PHP and JSP. Now in CS4, if you prefer to work with a framework other than Spry, not only will you find support for it in Code View, you can also leverage Dreamweaver’s new Live View to see your chosen framework’s widgets rendered as they will be in the browser.

In addition to this, Dreamweaver is capable of reading and introspecting the framework in order to provide tooltips and auto-completion when typing JS functions of the chosen framework.

But you aren’t just limited to working within code – on the Dreamweaver Exchange you can already find 20 interface widgets for JQuery, MooTools and YUI, that you can download and immediately leverage in your projects.

I’ve been playing extensively with JQuery over the past few weeks and am really impressed – and perhaps even more so because I’ve been able to integrate both JQuery and Spry in my playground of applications. If there’s any interest in this, I’d be happy to share… Leave a comment, and if there’s enough interest, I’ll get a tutorial or two up here.

Now back to the playground… I’ve got too many ideas that I want to try out, and only the weekend to do it in… Skål!!!

To say that our seminars in South Africa were a success would be a gross understatement. Just as I experienced during my first trip to South Africa more than 10 years ago, this is an amazing country with a truly beautiful, friendly people.

Our trip began in the amazingly stunning setting of Cape Town, where we stayed at the Radisson Waterfront Hotel – that’s a view from my hotel room balcony above. As the name implies, the hotel is literally on the water, only a 10 minute walk to the Waterfront shopping and restaurant district. Be sure to kill a few hours on a sunny afternoon at the Quay 4 pub, located on one of the wharfs.

Our Cape Town audience came out in such numbers to see CS4 that we were forced to hold two simultaneous sessions – with Jason, Mo Jogie (our South African colleague), and myself running between them in a three hour show.

We then moved on to Johannesburg, where Jason and I were pleasantly surprised to find our hotel, the Palazzo, is not only a beautiful hotel, it is adjacent to the Monte Casino complex, which would be the venue for the launch event. My only gripe about the hotel is that the hotel bar closes at 11pm! And yes, even on weekends!

The folks in Joburg turned out in big numbers as well – and if the laughter, smiles, applause and nodding heads is any indication, they all had a great time, but more importantly they love CS4! After an enjoyable event with the local press, we can officially say that CS4 is off to a great start! Our day concluded with a small team dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the world, appropriately named Carnivore. This is a brazilian-style restaurant, where meat is grilled on skewers over an open flame and then brought in waves to the table. The catch here being that the meat is primarily game from Africa. And yes, it’s all on the menu, from ostrich to kudu to antelope to crocodile to wildebeast and on and on. Absolutely a must!

We wrapped up the week with two truly spectacular trips. The first to Lesedi, a self-proclaimed African Cultural Adventure. At the Lesedi complex, they have created mock villages of the five primary tribes within South Africa. Touring each one, you learn about their local habits and traditions. The visits are short (too short, if you ask me), but still fun. After the tour, the tribes come together for some serious dancing to drum rythmns, followed by a “typical” South African buffet.

What’s a trip to South Africa without a trip to a game park? We embraced the idea and spent our last day in South Africa staring in wonderment at some incredible animals. To top it off, we even got lucky and stumbled upon a lion pride lounging in the middle of the road, as well as a cheetah that was truly amazing. I’ve posted more pictures on my Flickr stream.

Now, my friends, it’s back to Phoenix to literally shower and repack. Tomorrow takes me to Webbuilder 2.0 in Las Vegas. Thankfully, Stephanie will also be speaking there, so we don’t have to be apart.

Prost!

One look at my calender definitely tells me that the Creative Suite 4 party has begun. So I wanted to give everyone a heads up on where I will be showing the CS4 apps over the next few months, culminating with Adobe MAX in San Francisco.

This week finds myself and Jason Levine joining our South African colleagues for launch events on Tuesday in Cape Town, and on Thursday in Johannesburg. We hear the registration numbers are great, so we’re really excited. (It’s been a long time since I’ve been to SA, so I’m also Looking forward to a little bit of sightseeing as well.)

Then it’s off to the WebBuilder conference in Las Vegas, where Stephanie Sullivan and I will be orchestrating a full day of CS4 fun. From there it’s a two week tour with Rufus Deuchler through the Nordics, and wrapping up with a week in the Benelux with both Rufus and Jason.

So if you’re around any one of the stops, I hope you’ll attend the event (please check your local Adobe website for registration information). I can guarantee that you’ll be amazed at all of the new features packed into CS4.

7 Oct : Cape Town
9 Oct : Johannesburg
15 Oct : WebBuilder 2.0, Las Vegas
21 Oct : Oslo
22 Oct : Helsinki
23 Oct : Stockholm
27 Oct : Aarhus
28 Oct : Copenhagen
29 Oct : Malmö
30 Oct : Göteborg
31 Oct : Copenhagen

See you soon! Cheers!