On the heels of my previous post regarding the call for sessions for Adobe MAX 2009, I’ve just learned that there is currently a huge disparity in the submissions. It seems that an overwhelming number of developer types are really, really interested in learning about Flex and Actionscript – which of course is good. But on the other hand, MAX is supposed to be a gathering of Adobe enthusiasts from all disciplines.

In other words, do designers and creative types care? Do you want to learn new techniques to improve your productivity or creativity? If so, it’s time to step up and be heard! Regardless of which product you work with – Photoshop, Fireworks, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, there’s surely something that you’d like to know more about. Let’s face it, these are tough economic times and we’re all in competition to be better, faster, more creative, more productive than “the other guy/gal”. And knowledge is the single most effective tool in the tool chest.

The dev side of the house is letting their voice be heard – now it’s our turn. Come on, creatives, get the word out and get involved! Submit your ideas! Let’s make sure that MAX is also about the creative side of the house. I want to see sessions covering CSS, prototyping with Photoshop/Fireworks, Ajax from a designer’s point-of-view, and… what are your ideas…?

Head over to the MAX session and submission site now!

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 will be the first to admit that I rarely think about validating my pages while I work. Okay, sometimes I don’t validate at all. I know I should, but I can usually come up with a good excuse for not doing it – an elephant ate my homework still works on occasion. ;-) And as a Dreamweaver user, validating against the W3C validator was always that “extra step” that I didn’t feel like taking. But with Dreamweaver CS5.5, there really is no excuse anymore – it’s now built directly into the app!

When you’re ready to validate your page, simply click the W3C Validator button and choose whether you want the local page on your computer validated or a page on a server.

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