Perhaps the most unhelpful error message of all time: Parameter incorrect. That's the error message that only a handful of Dreamweaver users were experiencing when trying to install Cartweaver3PHP.mxp version 3.1.13 into Dreamweaver CS3 or Dreamweaver CS4. Originally, we were getting reports of this issue from Vista users. We thought for sure Vista was the culprit. Eventually someone reported having the install issue on Windows XP. Most people had no problems installing the extension on both Vista and XP, yet for a handful of users the install would only fail. Since it wasn't just Vista anymore we could conclude that it wasn't a simple Windows OS issue, so what was it?

As the sole extension developer for Cartweaver, it was my job to figure out why this was happening. I turned to Tom Muck, PHP developer for Cartweaver, for some advice since he happens to be a long-time Dreamweaver extension developer himself. Tom gave me a few ideas to look into and we both tried to help customers with the usual extension trouble-shooting methods. Unfortunately none of our suggestions worked for our customers.

Debugging this issue was difficult to say the least, particularly because none of the Cartweaver team could duplicate the problem. If you're a programmer, you know that it can seem nearly impossible to fix something if you can't make it happen yourself. Similar to how one might debug a website having an issue, we had to determine what the customers who were experiencing the problem had in common with each other. I also had to try and determine what they didn't have in common with the people who had no trouble installing the extension. Usually this sort of approach proves fruitful and the issue can be narrowed down to some difference between systems. In the case of extensions, it is often another installed extension that's causing the conflict. I carefully compared lists of installed extensions between users who had the issue and did not find any conflicts. I was stumped.

Lawrence (founder of Cartweaver & owner of Application Dynamics Inc.) put together an email list for people having the issue who were willing to volunteer to help figure this out. One volunteer noticed that the install process writes files to the TEMP directory, and he pointed out that he believed it stopped writing files at a specific file. Once I heard this, I thought there could be some meaning there but couldn't find anything wrong with the last file that got written, the file directly before it, or the one that should have been written next.

The last time a strange error happened in one of my extensions, it was due to a line break in JavaScript (which was 100% legal). Was this another case of whitespace in a file causing an issue? I'd go insane trying to find a stray whitespace -- especially since I was never able to duplicate the issue on any of my configurations. I'd likely drive our customers to madness by asking them to retry a billion times. I was not a happy extension developer.

Lawrence and I talked about it some more and decided to just try and repackage the extension and see if that worked. I was afraid that if it did work, we'd never know why the issue happened and it might happen again in the future. A part of me hoped it worked so I could make customers happy, but part of me wanted to know the reason the MXP wouldn't install so that I could make sure it never happened again. I tried packaging it on several different systems with several different versions of the Extension Manager. It was always the same result; the extension worked for all of us at Cartweaver but our volunteers still couldn't install it.

I'd asked our volunteers to send me their TEMP files and I started taking a closer look at their files. I stared at the files in Beyond Compare for what felt like days. I could not find a problem anywhere. Why though, were both of their systems stopping at a specific file? There had to be something wrong.

I was staring at the files in Windows Explorer and noticed something odd. The file's Last Modified Date was listed as December 31, 1969! How strange. I checked the file on the Mac in Finder and it was December 31, 1903! As it turned out, the file was missing a Creation Date even though it had a Last Modified Date. As you may have guessed, that was the cause of the install issue all along.

One part of this issue remains a mystery to us still. Why in the world did only a few people have the problem and not everyone? My guess is AV software or security setting were somehow set to not allow files without a creation date to be written, but that's just a wild guess. If you know the answer, be sure and let us know as it'd be nice to know.

Thanks to all the Cartweaver 3 PHP customers who experienced the issue for being so patient as we worked to resolve the issue. Hopefully I'll never encounter anything this difficult to track down again!

My membership in the 2009 Adobe Community Experts program has been renewed. Dan's has too. (He's sure got a way with words; I'm so boring.)

I'm honored to be part of the program. Thanks Adobe!

Happy National Regex Day!

To celebrate I'd like to share some tips for working with Regular Expressions that have helped me over the years I've been using them. I've got 5 tips to share today (#1 is already in the post on Ben Nadel's blog that I linked to but thought it worthwhile to repeat here, sorry if it is a dupe for you...)

Tip #1, for Dreamweaver Users: If you're a Dreamweaver user and need to build a regular expression, start learning about the Server Behavior Builder. When you create a server behavior, Dreamweaver generates a regular expression to match the code block(s). If you're in a hurry (or especially if you're just learning regular expressions), the regexes Dreamweaver generates can be a good starting point. You'll find the regexes it generates are in your user's Configuration in .edml files (which are XML files).

Tip #2, for CFEclipse users (assuming this works in other flavors of Eclipse as well): When you use the Search dialog (ctrl+H on the Mac), there's the obvious Regular Expression checkbox. With your focus in the Containing Text field, press Ctrl+Space to get a handy regex cheat sheet.

Tip #3, a Workflow Tip: When trying to come up with that perfect regex, take the time to build a static page or two that has what you want to match in it. Essentially, create a use case document. Then use your favorite regex capable Find and Replace tool to work up to creating the perfect regex. For instance, if you have a huge string to match, start by trying to match only the first 5 characters then add on to your regex and test again. When you've got it matching your use cases, then go ahead and plug it into your ColdFusion or JavaScript code (you don't use other code right? ;-))

Tip #4, Debugging Regular Expressions: You'll most likely find yourself debugging a regex at some point or another, and for me its usually because I missed a use case. (That's when its time to update the use case document.) Any time I've got a regex that isn't quite working right, I trim it back. In other words, I do the opposite of what I described in the first part of my workflow tip above. Stop trying to match what you really want to match in its entirety, take a bit away from the regex at a time until it starts matching your use case file. (If you didn't make a use case file, now is the time to do it!) Then build that regex back up again little by little until you have it matching everything you want.

Tip #5, Application Comments: In the case of using a regex in an application (versus in Find and Replace), always, always make a comment on what that regex means in plain English terms and why you need to use it in the first place. Sooner or later, someone will look at the regex and quite possibly have their eyes glaze over -- it could be you! So do yourself and others a favor and take a couple minutes to comment it. If you're extra geeky you'll have your comment refer to your use case file so they can actually see exactly what the heck that fancy string of characters is supposed to match.

I Googled. I googled some more. I found lots of blogs where people asked in the comments how to wrap text in a CFGRID tag, but either no answer was given or the format was Flash.

Well, for the sanity of those on the same mission I was on, I shall blog the solution that satisfied my quest. (It may or may not satisfy yours depending on what you're trying to achieve.)

A simple line of CSS did the trick in my use case:

div .x-grid-cell-text{white-space:normal;}

UPDATE: To fix IE, add display:block; to the rule above.

That's it, one line of CSS. Hope it helps!

It's true; Adobe sells ColdFusion. In fact, they have for a few years now. Ever since they acquired Macromedia.

Gotcha...Just like last time.

For the last few weeks there's been a lot of buzz about IE8 and how Microsoft intended to make IE7 the default display as not to break existing websites. Recently Microsoft decided to go ahead and render IE8 as itself and many seem to be relieved. I am still skeptical...

I've been meaning to blog on this topic, but I honestly haven't had time to keep up with all the online chatter about it and hence was unsure I should bother. Perhaps what I have to say has been said before? Oh well, I'm going to say it anyway...

What I haven't yet seen talked about is the possibility that a dot release -- or even a full version -- of IE may be incompatible with a website, leaving the web developer wanting to 'skip' it somehow.

The proposed "version targeting" would allow someone to declare the site's compatibility with a specific version of IE so that it would render as that version, despite what the user had installed on their system. For example, the user has IE 15, but the web developer declared IE 7. The IE 15 user is stuck looking at an IE 7 site.

That seems to be the common example that raises all sorts of concerns about the web, user experience, standards and what have you. But what if...

What if IE 9 renders my site perfectly, but IE 9.1 doesn't. IE 9.2 is also perfect. Fixing IE 9.1 would take 40 hours of work and my client doesn't want to do it. Shouldn't I be able to skip IE 9.1 somehow?

Please don't try to tell me that sort of thing doesn't happen. It's happened to me with other software. (Safari being one and QuickTime being another.) So it is fair to say that Microsoft could release a version (be it major or minor) of IE that I don't want to support.

All users shouldn't be forced to the lowest browser supported by the site. In my mind, users should get the highest browser supported. That is, a browser experience that is equal to or the next lower supported version than what they have installed.

Let's pretend I have a list of versions I support on my website that looks like this:

7,8,9,9.2,9.3

Let's say the user has 9.1 installed. I don't support it, they should get the 9 experience.

How does version targeting propose to handle such a situation? Is it something anyone has even though about or discussed? I don't know, and if Google knows it hasn't pointed me there yet.

So therefore I blog, in hopes to spark some conversation be it in my blog's comments or on other blogs.

I have few other odd-ball ideas around this topic but I'll start with this one and see where it goes before revealing more of my wacky thoughts...

It's been roughly 3 months since my last blog. I was almost afraid I've forgotten how! (I forgot my username and password; it took three tries to get in.)

There's good reason to come out of my unintended hiding I've been living in the last few months... I was reading Eric's blog and came across a post he made that stirred up quite a fuss.

Really, I'm not that surprised at the reactions. Reading something that Eric writes (or that anyone writes for that matter) is far different than hearing it spoken. Some people are far to easily offended by words, especially when taken out of context...

People are far too busy to read carefully these days and are quick to take a blurb out of context and run with it. I'll resist the temptation to ramble on about this topic.

Bottom line is, if I were as good a writer, I probably would have written the same thing as Eric did on the topic of diversity in conference speakers. I really couldn't have said it better myself and I'm sure just saying this much is enough to make some people mad at me. Oh well, I can't please everyone and not everyone is out to please me either!

I've spoken at quite a few conferences and it bothers me to think that I may have been chosen because I'm a woman. I'd like to think I was chosen because I know the subject matter well and am recognized by my peers, but who knows!

At least I know that if I were to ever be asked to speak at AEA, it won't be because I'm a girl!

Joseph Lowery, and Eric Meyer both have new titles avaialable at lynda.com!

Joe's newest book, Dreamweaver 8 Beyond the Basics is available for sale in the lynda.com store. Check out the three free sample movies from the CD, including one that covers Spry. Spry is the latest big buzz word in the Dreamweaver community. If you haven't checked out Spry yet, Joe's movie is a good place to start.

A few weeks ago, Eric spent some time in Ojai recording CSS Site Design, which is now available in the Online Training Library™ and coming soon on CD-rom in the lynda.com store. There are several Free sample movies available, including the following:

• What is CSS? 5:34 11.8 MB
• Design tour 2:38 4.9 MB
• Installing the Web Developer toolbar 4:34 9 MB
• XHTML essentials 3:55 3.1 MB
• CSS essentials 5:17 4.1 MB
• Embedded style sheets 2:20 4.7 MB

I've been meaning to blog this for a couple of weeks now... Two very popular speakers in the web design/development arena, especially among the Dreamweaver community, Joe Marini and Molly Holzschlag have recently come out with training titles at lynda.com. Joe was one of the original Dreamweaver product engineers and has been an inspiration to many extension developers, myself included. Molly is widely recognized web standards advocate and author.

There are a few free sample movies in each title...Enjoy!

XML Essential Training with: Joe Marini

CSS for Designers with: Andy Clarke and Molly E. Holzschlag

I recently autographed about 6 copies of Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips. The first copy went up on eBay about 10 minutes ago and sold right away.

They're being listed by Five Star Billiards. Hurry, while supplies last...

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you already know that I've been working for lynda.com since late January of this year. I started out as the Web Interface Architect and have since moved to a new position, Web Production Manager.

We've hired Dan as our Web Application Architect. (If JD can "out" my new job, I can certainly "out" Dan's!)

To those who know both of us, to answer your question... Yes, I am Dan's supervisor. Nope, that's nothing new. ;-)

We're building our web team and are looking to fill a few positions in the Austin, Texas vicinity. Please visit http://www.lynda.com/jobs/ for available openings.

The bottom line when it comes to working with templates, is that where there's a will there's a way. (This applies to most anything in life in my opinion and I've found it to be the truth for the most part.)

Huh? What am I talking about? Patience dear blog reader...

In my observation, it seems that so many people find themselves in situations where templates don't seem to be able to do what they're after. Often I've heard people say that they feel overly constrained by how templates work and that they find templates unusable. Anytime that I witness this type of situation (usually on the newsgroups I visit), I feel compelled to try and help. Unfortunately these questions are often complicated and I just can't spare the time to help out like I'd like.

It is my hope that this blog post helps someone struggling with templates in Dreamweaver...

All I really have to say is that I've struggled too and when it comes to templates I've yet to find something that's completely stumped me that I can't make work for the site's needs. Sometimes, the solution isn't what I'd prefer it to be and is not what I'd call "ideal", but it works.

Please don't take that as an open invitation to try to stump me. Remember, I said I don't have the time to reply and help as tempted as I get to try...

My point is, that setting up templates to work for you and reach your template goals can take some heavy thinking. Chances are there's a suitable solution if you open your mind and are willing to explore different strategies.

To the intermediate to advanced template user: Yes, I know there are some issues and things could be better. I don't dispute that at all. That's not what this post is about; this post is for template skeptics or people new to templates.

Templates take some effort, have patience; they're worth it. Take the time to read the Dreamweaver help documentation. (It may seem like a boring thing to do, but its important.) Visit http://www.dreamweavermx-templates.com and buy their book. (I did some tech editing on it way back when. Even though its 2 Dreamweaver versions behind, its still relevant and worth it.) Learn about how templates work, get some practice doing template tutorials, and you'll be much better off when doing your own templates.

Lastly, don't expect to be a total template master over night. Dreamweaver's templates are extremely powerful and once you start using their advanced features it can get very complex.

Adobe realesed the Dreamweaver 8.0.1 updater today. (It is sure going to take some getting used to not saying "Macromedia"...)

Get the scoop on what's been fixed by checking out the Resolved Issues: http://www.macromedia.com/go/f56452a8

In the first paragraph of the Release Notes you'll find a link to the download. Be sure to read the installation instructions! (Don't forget to disable virus protection like I did...Oops!)

Here's a tip for you if you don't want Dreamweaver to render a specific <cfinclude> tag in Design view. Look at the tag in the previous sentence. Now go back and look at the tag in this subject line. Spot the difference?

If you close a cfinclude tag as if it were an empty element like in XHTML, Dreamweaver does not render the contents of the cfinclude.

This won't render in Design view: <cfinclude template="/includes/header.cfm" />

This will render in Design view: <cfinclude template="/includes/header.cfm">

Why wouldn't you want Dreamweaver to render a cfinclude you ask? Oh, I can come up with a lot of reasons... I'll give you but a few of them.

• Dreamweaver parses the code in includes, hence rendering can be slowed down in Design view.
• The Server Behaviors panel may take longer to load.
• If you work with others who use Dreamweaver's Server Behaviors panel a lot, but they won't have any reason to touch your code you can hide it from them this way. (Sure, they can get around this but I mean hiding it from a Designer who might mess things up.)
• If you're doing conditionial logic and showing includes with an if/else or switch case, Dreamweaver will render all of the includes. Having all includes render at once could distort what the layout might look like if only one were showing. So you could disable includes using this trick and only enable the one you need to see.

If anyone cares to share some potential uses for this trick, please be sure to leave a comment.

To any Adobe employees reading this blog post: Please do not "fix" the translator to account for the space and closing slash. This is not a bug; its an undocumented feature. ;-)

It seems that many people are wondering whether or not Adobe will continue to support ColdFusion. Let me first say that despite whatever you might think given what you (may think that you) know about me, I have no "insider" information. That said, here's what I think about it...

I've been to numerous government websites that are powered by ColdFusion. If I were Adobe, I wouldn't want to upset the government. Can you say tax audits? ;-)

In all seriousness, I don't think ColdFusion is going to disappear anytime soon -- at least not in the next 2 or 3 years. According to Macromedia's website, ColdFusion 5 is still supported in some capacity until January 1, 2007.

Further, they are still selling their Gold Support Program which is unlimited email or telephone incidents for one year. Adobe would have to honor that agreement, so that says to me that there's at least one more year where ColdFusion will be supported.

So I say, stop your worrying! You can start to worry when you see that Adobe has updated the site and it says they won't support ColdFusion anymore. When they do so, I doubt very much that it would be an overnight end to support. Most likely it would be at least a year from such announcment that support would be discontinued.

Keep in mind that Flex is also tied closely to ColdFusion. Imagine the uproar among Macromedia's (now Adobe's) enterprise level customers if they were to discontinue technologies they invested so much money in.

The aftermath of such a thing would surely damage Adobe's reputation and rattle customer confidence. Adobe has to know this, they aren't blind.

Granted large companies make stoooopid mistakes all the time. In my opinion discountinuing certain technologies such as ColdFusion would be a huge mistake. I just can't see Adobe making a mistake of that magnitude.

If I happen to be wrong and Adobe doesn't keep ColdFusion going, another group/company is sure to pick up where they left off. (If the sky did fall, there's always BlueDragon.)

I for one am sticking to ColdFusion.

I'll get right to the point. There will not be a Dreamweaver 8 Killer Tips so buy MX 2004 if you haven't already. For the full story, visit DWKillerTips.com and have a laugh or three.

There's a bunch more interviews up on SYS-CON.TV from MAX, including one with Dan Short who is the Lead Developer of Cartweaver, a coder extraordinaire, and more. (Yes, I am quite biased!)

Find out why Dan's asking for "more love" and from whom. View Dan's interview or check them all out, whatever you'd like...

First print ads, now I'm on TV! Ok, so it isn't regular TV, it's SYS-CON.TV but its still TV...

On Tuesday (October 18, 2005) at about 5:45pm I was interviewed by SYS-CON.TV's Jeremy Geelan, live and unscripted. The interview was recorded at MAX 2005 right there in SYS-CON's booth. The interview appears to be completely unedited*, lasting a bit over 5 minutes.

*The interview is a bit of a blur, I was so tired at the time. To the best of my memory, everything recorded is being played.

I think the camera added a good 10lbs., I say "um" and "uh" a whole lot, and my grammar could have been better if I'd thought a bit more before answering, but otherwise it was pretty good for me. (I'm probably my worst critic...) Once you watch the interview, feel free to leave a comment here on my blog to let me know what you thought.

Today I gave my Dreamweaver Killer Tips session twice at MAX. During the second session someone asked about changing the order of files once they're open. I joked about how Adobe has that technology and since a merger is pending there's hope for that feature in the future, the audience all chuckled and that was pretty much that...or so I thought.

After the session, Jen Taylor (Dreamweaver Product Manager) and Alain Dumesny (Dreamweaver Engineer) came up and informed me that the feature is there; Alain added the ability to drag document tabs to reorder them as a last minute new feature. Way to go Alain! I'm glad it is in there (even if it isn't obvious since there's no gripper indicator or other visual queue... hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

I would not have minded one bit if Jen or Alain chimed in to say the feature was added in there at all. I love learning new tips as much as my audience. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing what I do...

Most importanly I'm hoping that the 300 people in the room forgive me for my mistake! I am blogging this for you in hopes that I've made it up to you.

I'm truly sorry I missed that feature, but hopefully your feedback to Macromedia will help show them that there needs to be some little enhancments to make the feature more obvious. (Click-n-hold an open document's tab while dragging it where you want. Release your mouse when the filename tab is where you want it.)

Thank you Jen, Alain, and all of the Dreamweaver product team for all the "lesser known" features in Dreamweaver and even a few of the "bugs" which I consider to be "undocumented features" (like docking the Code inspector to the right or left of the document window).

The team has done a great job listening to the community. For that I thank Macromedia for hearing us and I also thank everyone who fills out the wish form to report both features and flaws. Keep up the good work!

I can't believe I forgot to blog this, so rather than update the original post...

I showed Gaetano the MXDJ and told him to look at all the pages. He flipped through them and commented about various things that he saw. When he came to the "MAX is Angela Buraglia" ad, he said to me. "That looks like you mama... That is you!" It was too cute :-)

In case you've missed the news elsewhere, Studio 8 is now available. You can also download a 30-day trial of Studio 8 or each of its core products individually.

My apologies if this post seems at all vain. I'm posting mostly for family and friends who are interested. Few others will care at all, except for perhaps my supposed fan club in Italy...

Back in July when the ads first debuted via email, I had no idea just how much more the ads would circulate. I got a good laugh when David Robinison said:

"This afternoon I got a couple of emails in my inbox with Macromedia's new MAX ad campaign. They both begin "MAX is..." and have the names of MAX 2005 speakers. I got Angela Buraglia and Justin Everett-Church. (They seem like little trading cards in some ways...collect 'em all!)"

Since then, variations of the ad have appeared on sys-con.com's site and full page ads inside the MX Developers Journal (Volume 3 Issue 7), just inside the back cover of ColdFusion Developer's Journal (July 2005 Volume:7 Issue:7 & August 2005 Volume:7 Issue:8), and just two pages away from being the centerfold of the Special Issue: Studio 8 edition of the MX Developer's Journal (Volume 3 Issue 8).

I've been told the ad will also appear on webdeveloper.com and a devx.com and possibly others but I haven't seen them yet. If you happen to spot me somewhere please let me know.

I've uploaded a copy of the original email blast, the sys-con site's ads, and a PDF copy of the full page magazine ad if you're curious.

Long before I was ever a web developer, I was an aspiring actress turned makeup artist for film. I never expected to make it in print work! ;-)

Word on the street is that Macromedia and Adobe shareholders approved the acquisition editor for, say it with me now... 3.4 <voice character="Austin Powers">billion</voice>. Regulators still have to approve it, though I can't see why they wouldn't.

Given the sneak peek I posted about, I'd say both companies expect it to be official soon. Looks like it will be in the Fall, on schedule.

This just in... Macromedia has put up more MAX session sneak peeks. Yes, there's even one from yours truly. Ok, so I'm not "yours" but you know what I mean.

Some things in life are free, like Macromedia's online (live) seminars, recorded seminars, and regular old-fashioned-style seminars. So if you're looking for information on Studio 8, get it straight from Macromedia, free!

Macromedia will be visiting the following communities to present a free three-hour technical seminar all about Studio 8 between 08/23/2005 and 09/22/2005: Boston, Burnaby (Vancouver), Calgary, Chicago, Los Angeles, McLean, Montreal, New York, Ottawa, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington DC.

Hurry, space is limitted and (online) registration is required to attend.

This month's Macromedia Edge newsletter has an article called, "Top 10 Reasons to Attend MAX 2005" that you should definitely check out even if you have no intention of going. (Hint: You may find #10 interesting.)

If you've been looking for more Dreamweaver 8 sneak peeks, here's a few you may not have seen yet. The following three links will lead you to previews of three MAX 2005 presentations. Can you guess which one of these three were written by yours truly? ~ Using the Power of XML with Dreamweaver ~ Using the CSS Box Model for Page Layout ~ Dreamweaver Killer Tips

It's true...

You asked for it, now you can get it; Cartweaver 2 PHP is now available. (If you didn't ask for it, we'll still let you buy it don't worry.)

As you can probably tell, we're quite excited to have a new product to offer. PHP is a very popular server model and many people have contacted Cartweaver support to inquire about a PHP version of our popular shopping cart software.

The ASP, ColdFusion and PHP versions all look the same online. To make it easier for developers who code in multiple server models, we kept all three versions as similar as possible structurally.

As for the Dreamweaver extensions, between all versions everything is identical with the exception of a few minor differences in the installation and setup due to server model requirements.

Special thanks to Tom Muck, our PHP developer for all of his hard work. You've done an incredible job Tom!

Ben Forta has said it well, "Since the announcement hit the wire this morning, the various ColdFusion related lists have been buzzing with rumors, speculation, and predictions. Of course, that is all they are, rumors, speculation, and predictions. I don't think anyone really knows what this means for any product yet, and it'll be a while until all that gets figured out." (Read Ben's entire blog post for more of his take on the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe.)

I have been asked by several people what I think will happen to both Dreamweaver and ColdFusion. First, I'm not sure it really matters what I think. Second, I don't know and thinking about it only makes my head hurt wondering. I'm waiting for answers just like anybody else.

To that end, if I happen to spot any info online that might be of interest to those reading my blog I'll be sure to point it out. I have no inside scoop to dish out and was completely surprised when I heard the news. (When my boyfriend told me I thought he was just teasing me!)

There has also been the usual attempts to discredit any reactions favoring Macromedia given by a Team Macromedia Member. (I happen to be a TMM.) It seems to be popular belief that TMMs must at all times sing the praises of Macromedia and their products no matter what happens.

I guess I can't blame people for making that assumption. It does make sense that we speak in favor of Macromedia. However, to the best of my knowledge, nowhere is it written that we must never criticize and only say good things when it comes to Macromedia and their products. Sure, it is probably in our best interest to do so if we want to remain TMMs... (After all team members should like the team they're playing for else the other people on the team won't want them around, right?)

I trust that when someone such as Ben Forta says that ColdFusion MX 7 is selling very well (even though he couldn't share exact numbers), that it truly is selling well. I don't doubt him; the quarterly reports should be out soon enough to prove his statements to anyone who does have doubt.

To me it makes sense that a product that sells well will not be dumped as a result of the acquisition. Does that mean it won't be dumped? I already said I don't know; I have no inside scoop! I sure wish I did though...

In the meantime, I will wait for more news from Macromedia and\or Adobe and refrain from speculations best I can.

Shortly after Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 was released, I made this recording of Gaetano. I could have sworn that I blogged it at the time, but I can't find a post referencing it. It must have been one of those times I started blogging and got distracted or something...

Gaetano now recognizes both the Macromedia logo and the Dreamweaver logo too, as well as the words Macromedia and Dreamweaver. He's always proud to point out that he knows them both.

If you listen to the recording, he doesn't say Macromedia but he does say Dreamweaver. Back then he could only say mack-ee-me-tee-uh, but gradually it became Macromedia. He now says Dreamweaver properly as well.

Guess I'd better start teaching him to say Adobe and showing him their logo as well! Should be a lot easier to say, what with so few syllables. <grin />

If it were April 1st, I'd think it was a hoax. April Fools lasts all month to some but this would be one elaborate prank. With that out of the way, you can see proof that Macromedia is being acquired by Adobe at both of their websites.

Adobe's site is running super slow right now, probably due to the load of traffic. Be patient; the URLs provided above link to the press release on their respecitive websites. Macromedia's home page is currently linking to a page on Adobe's website that has a lot of information.

I've added a new section to my blog today called Speaking. That's where I plan to list my speaking engagements at conferences, user groups and other special events. This month there are two conferences I'll be giving presenations at, Powered by Detroit and TODCon.

I plan to eventually add past speaking engagements as well and possibly include past presentations and\or other materials related to my sessions such as links or extensions and whatnot.

If you have any ideas about ways I can improve what I've posted so far or have suggestions about things I can add to this section please be sure to leave a comment. I'll take any serious suggestions under consideration. - Thanks!

I haven't gotten my copy of the new ColdFusion MX 7 Web Application Construction Kit, but Ben has gotten his already and he's written about it on his blog. Ben has also published a description and the table of contents to his site for anyone looking for more info.

Hopefully my copy will be here tomorrow! Thanks to Ben for asking me back again. I am honored to have done my part, and have my name listed on the cover with such phenomenal authors.

Due out soon, is Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Web Application Construction Kit by Ben Forta and Ray Camden with Leon Chalnick and Angela C. Buraglia (that's me!). I only wrote chapter 2, which is an overview of Dreamweaver geared towards ColdFusion developers. (The new ColdFusion MX 7 extensions for Dreamweaver are covered in other chapters, not the one I wrote.)

Ben will be posting the table of contents on his site. I do have the back cover copy from the book that I can share:

Macromedia® ColdFusion® MX 7 Web application construction kit

The ColdFusion MX 7 Web Application Construction Kit is the latest edition of the best-selling ColdFusion book of all time-the one that most ColdFusion developers used to first learn the product.

This reference starts with ColdFusion fundamentals, then progresses to techniques for all the most critical functions, including creating data-driven pages, building complete applications, implementing security mechanisms, integration with email, building reusable functions and components, generating data driven reports and graphs, interacting with Macromedia Flash, and much more. From design and installation, to application deployment and troubleshooting, this book is all you need to succeed with ColdFusion MX 7.

New ColdFusion MX 7 features and options covered in this edition include:

• Using Dreamweaver MX 2004 extensions to simplify application development

• Creating printable documents in PDF and FlashPaper formats

• Leveraging ColdFusion's new reporting tool

• Generating engaging Flash forms

• Harnessing the power of XForms and XSL

• And much, much more

CD-ROM includes:

• Developer edition of ColdFusion MX 7

• Evaluation version of Dreamweaver MX 2004

• Ten bonus chapters on more advanced ColdFusion topics

• All source code and example applications

I just got done reading a post by Tom Muck about rogue extensions for Dreamweaver. Though his post is geared towards Dreamweaver, it is important to note that the same issues exist for other Macromedia programs such as Flash and Fireworks which also rely on the Extension Manager to install/uninstall extensions. Tom's post is a must-read for anyone using any Macromedia product that uses the Extension Manager to install extensions.

A rogue extension can come from any extension developer, including reputable companies. There are no regulations in place to prevent extensions from the problems described in Tom's post.

For the average user it is not easy to determine if the extensions offered by any particular person or business are safe to install without worry that their configuration will be corrupted. At this point, the average user is left to trial and error...

Rest assured that any extension that I've written and will write will never "overwrite" a Macromedia default file. If it means that I can't release the extension without modifying one of Macromedia's files, oh well. I'd rather know that I haven't caused the frustration of even a single extension user than be selfish and write my extensions without regard to repercussions.

I feel it is important to spread the word about the potential for problems. Tom's points are all very valid concerns. At the same time, I hesitate to write on this topic because it could easily be seen as trying to bash a potential competitor or further my own business.

On the other hand, if I say nothing at all, then what? The potential for conflicting extensions becoming a common problem is definitely there in my opinion. I can't just sit back knowing this and say absolutely nothing about it.

This post alone possibly risks causing certain companies/people to become upset with me for speaking out about it. I sure hope it doesn't ruffle any feathers because my intentions are good, but I guess that's a chance I'm taking...

I doubt it is Tom's intention, and it certainly is not my intention to scare people into avoiding extensions. If you run into a problem, removing\renaming your User's Configuration should restore things normal. Worst case scenario, you'll have to reinstall.

It's almost time for the 2nd Annual March Mingle to be held this Wednesday, March 16th at Dave N Busters in San Diego, California. There's no cost to attend, with free pool and finger foods. Just bring a few bucks for drinks.

There will be about 20 user groups represented this year from all over Southern California, who's focus range from web design, to Macromedia products, to operating systems, and programming languages. ColdFusion, .Net, PHP and general geeks alike (that's a compliment) will gather to eat, drink, shoot pool, socialize and network from 6:30pm to 10pm.

Oh, and you don't have to be a user group memeber to attend either. So even if you're not a user group member, you should come and shoot some pool, meet some people, and possibly win some very cool door prizes.

For the Dreamweaver users attending, Site-Drive Inc. (DWfaq.com) is donating a bundle of all DWfaq.com Dreamweaver extensions and Application Dynamics Inc. (Cartweaver.com) is donating a license of Cartweaver as door prizes.

There will even be some not-necessarily-just-for-geeks prizes, a very cool Cuetec Black Graphite Cue and a poker chip set courtesy of FiveStarBilliards.com. There will be more door prizes from Macromedia, The O'Reilly User Group Program, Sterling Ledet and Associates, and That Technical Bookstore too. With as many prizes as there are to be given away, there's a pretty good chance of winning something.

Sorry it's taken me so long to blog this folks... Wednesday night was the SDCFUG Meeting and I have to say it went really well once we got started. I had more than my usual projector problems and at the last minute had to borrow Dan's laptop because it had less trouble. (I had to look at the projection rather than my screen to see what I was doing.) Anyhow...

Having never seen CFEclipse until 2 hours prior to the meeting and only a vague idea of what its capabilities were, I think Rob and I managed to do a nice side-by-side comparison of CFEclipse and Dreamweaver. Both of us realize that the two products are complimentary and neither is intended to replace the other. To that end, our presentation was not a duel of any sort and very good natured and friendly.

As I understand it (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), there is a limitation that prevents the usual switch back and forth abilities of Dreamweaver with CFEclipse. Hopefully that will be fixed in a future release of CFEclipse making the two programs even more complimentary.

I was quite impressed by Rob and all he's done (and the team that works on CFEclipse) with the program so far. There's a few features in it that I'd love to see in Dreamweaver, like "trigger text" which lets you assign keywords to snippets rather than a keyboard shortcut. Another nice feature that's similar to Site< Locate in Site that fires automatically was pretty cool. I loved that the tag attibutes that you use get removed from the list of available attributes.

I was surprised that all of the attendees have Dreamweaver and use it except for one who chose not to use it since he's mostly a .NET guy anyhow. Usually the CF groups I speak with don't even want to look at Dreamweaver let alone hear about it, so this is a nice change indeed.

I'm going to try to make it to future San Diego meetings, and look forward to the oppurtunity to speak there again in the future. It was nice meeting all of you!

HomeSite/CFStudio and CFEclipse, Dreamweaver definitely is not. Perhaps someday it will be, maybe not...all that remains to be seen. In the meantime, please if you want to see Dreamweaver add features that are part of your other favorite editors be sure to tell Macromedia.

If you're in the Southern California area, I'll be speaking at tomorrow night's San Diego CF User Group meeting. I'll be talking about using Dreamweaver as a ColdFusion developer and Rob Rohan will be speaking about CFEclipse.

Don't be shy; be sure to say hello if you attend. Attendees usually go out afterwards, so plan for a nice evening out with fellow geeks!

More info: http://www.sdcfug.org/

Macromedia has brought back Macrochats by popular demand. Macrochats are live Breeze presentations by Macromedia which have a chat room going during the presentation with questions at the end answered by the presenter.

There's a new Macrochat scheduled for January 18th, 2005 by Macromedia Product Support Engineer David Alcala that covers a wide range of troubleshooting tips and techniques for Dreamweaver users encountering FTP problems you may want to consider attending if you've ever had FTP problems in Dreamweaver. You need to register to attend, so don't delay because space is limitted.

We've been working on Cartweaver ASP for what seemed like an eternity, and now it is finally available. Dan posted on his blog that he's finally done. Ha, he's too funny. There will be customers to support, add-ons to create and who knows what else... The way I see it, we're never "done". <grin />

Writing a single toolbar to manage multiple Cartweaver server models was no easy task let me tell you. (It's ok if you give me a blank stare, nearly everyone else does when I start talking about coding extensions.) I laid the groundwork for multiple versions from day one, but there were things that I couldn't have accounted for that needed adjusting when the time came to actually support multiple server models.

As it turned out, the ASP version required several more fields in its Setup, so that brought along a whole new interface for the Setup that is similar to the Preferences dialog in Dreamweaver. Then "feature creep" set in and I started adding other new features to the extension. Before we knew it I'd added context help icons for nearly every field in each dialog that pop up a little window that tells you what the field is for and its valid values.

I added a bunch more little features here and there that most people would take for granted. I won't bore you with all of them, but one of them is that if you make a mistake in a certain field, the error message tells you which field, then switches to the right category for you and puts focus in that field so you can make the correction right away.

If you read my post yesterday you know all about DWfaq CCR. Cartweaver ASP uses DWfaq CCR's syntax for conditional regions already because Dan has been using CCR nearly 2 years now. So it was decided among the Cartweaver Team that it would be cool if Cartweaver ASP could render the tabbed regions like you see when using <cfif> in ColdFusion.

So we decided to go ahead and add an ultra-lite version of the CCR translator, of DWfaq's CCR for Cartweaver since I already had the work done. Cartweaver ASP customers will see "CWASP: If" in the tab, but if DWfaq's CCR is installed the If statement itself renders in the tab.

You're still reading this? Wow, that's great...thank you. Anyway, I don't want to bore you so I'll quit while I'm ahead. <wink />

I'm sure I'll end up babbling about Cartweaver here again soon. Thanks for listening...

Since I've been back from MAX it's been non-stop work! I've been coding extensions and making site updates all day and all night... Below is the official announcement of some the work I've been doing in addition to the soon-to-be-released Cartweaver 2 ASP.

If you have any questions please let me know!

CCR began nearly 2 years ago, but never got packaged for public use because I always had one thing or another going on. I can't express how pleased that I am to finally release it! I must take this opportunity to thank Dan for all his hard work and patience. I'd also like to thank Tom Muck for introducing me to writing translators the EDML way nearly 2 years ago. I wouldn't have been able to do CCR without you two...thanks guys! I'll add another tick to the tally of beers I owe you both... ;-)

Well, it looks like one of the links I provided in my Dreamweaver Killer Tips session is down. Good news is, I have a new link for you and I'll see about getting my presentation updated. The link I'm refering to is to Tom Muck's Speedup Hints for Dreamweaver MX article which covers a variety of methods you can use to help speed up Dreamweaver. (Though it was originally written for Dreamweaver MX, it still applies to Dreamweaver MX 2004.) The new link to his article is: http://www.tom-muck.com/articles/speedhints/

Thanks Tom for getting that taken care of so quickly for me!

I just wanted to post a few words about the Community Pit at MAX. If you didn't stop by there you seriously missed out, especially if you didn't come by on Tuesday after the conference was done for the day. All you had to do was talk to one of the TMM's or MMUG managers to get a raffle ticket to win a cool bag. There were at least 20 given away and several t-shirts given out too.

At the Community Pit there was also a little introduction to Macromedia.com's new knowledge base. "If you put your hands on the keyboard and try it, you get (free) Louisiana hot sauce."

There were huge comfy bean bag chairs and cables for getting connected to the internet for those without wireless access. It's the hangout spot for TMMs and MMUG managers, making it the place to go to get your burning questions answered by non-MM employees. (There was also an area of MM product support engineers answering questions.)

If you missed "the pit" this year, be sure to stop by next year. I'm sure there'll be more fun to be had, and we're a friendly bunch who loves to talk to people. Don't be shy!

Thanks to Amy Brooks, Ed Sullivan, Scott Fegette, Christine Lawson and any others who were responsible for the Community Pit and the sponsored event. I had a great time. (Special thanks to Amy for going easy on us with the t-shirts this year. In comparison to the ones we had to wear last year, these were great!)

Thursday was the final day of Macromedia MAX 2004. This year was even better than the last, and I'm already looking forward to next year's MAX. (Hopefully, next year will be scheduled a tad further away from Halloween or other holiday.)

I met a few people at lunch yesterday that were at the same table who were at MAX last year and caught my last year's session and my session this year. I'd been worried that people who attended both years would not be happy to see some of the same tips. They assured me they were more than satisfied with the ammount of new content, so I'm relieved.

There were a few people I didn't meet that I had hoped to meet. If you're Steve from Fig Leaf or Randy Edmunds from Macromedia and you're reading this, I kept my eye out for you but didn't find you. Mike Hazard, I was also hoping I'd get the chance to introduce myself and say congrats on the MAX award. When they played the video, your name seemed very familiar to me, and sure enough you're also a DWfaq.com customer. :-) Hopefully I'll get to meet all three of you next time!

It's always nice to meet the people that I exchange emails with and DWfaq.com or Cartweaver.com customers. This year I met Cornel Ivanescu, who is using Cartweaver to sell registration for the upcoming ColdFusion and Flash focussed Powered by Detroit conference in April 2005. (Cornel, it was a pleasure meeting you and see you in April!) I also met Scott Fegette, Christine Lawson, Ray Camden, Rob Christiansen, Angela Kozlowski, Michael and Judy Dinowitz, Adam Bell, Shlomy Gantz, Simon Horwith and quite a few people who's first names I remember and last names I can't remember how to spell so please forgive the exclusion here. ;-)

It's an overwhelming experience meeting so many people! Here's hoping that I get to see all of you again next year at MAX (or other event) and if I draw a blank on your name, please don't hold it against me. I'm terrible with names, but after we meet a second time I usually can remember...

Until next year...cheers!

Wednesday I gave my session twice, both having the same projector issues. Nobody was able to solve the problem, so I adjusted the same way I did on Tuesday. The audience was understanding, and I didn't get started late at the second session, so all the better. (The projector guy messed everything up so nothing was working and I had to figure out how to get it back myself, so we started about 5 minutes late. He had checked extended desktop, oy!)

Both sessions were well attended and audience feedback tells me they learned at least 2 things. In one of the sessions I asked if they learned 3, 4, 5, and 6 things. Half of the room was still raising their hand at 6 things! I was amazed and naturally quite pleased. C'mon, can you blame me? I admit, I get a big kick out of seeing eyes lighting up when they learn something new. The best part has been talking with attendees one on one and showing them how to do things that are new to them.

There was a special cocktail hour even for Team Macromedia members, User Group managers, and instructors at the Hilton hotel nearby the conference center. I saw lots of pictures being taken, so if you know where I can find them do let me know. A few were snapped of me talking with various people while enjoying a Corona. (Hey, you can't expect me to turn away a free beer. Well, at least not the first one since one is my limit...)

Later on we went to the Macromedia event held at Mardi Gras World. It was interesting to see all the floats, but the event as a whole wasn't too exciting for me. I would have rather they thrown it at the aquarium and let it be a more quiet event, but perhaps that's just me.

Those who read my blog regularly are probably noticing an influx of posts... Well, I wrote the previous post at MAX in a .txt file then forgot to post it much until later. Sorry! I'm also fudging the time stamp on this one and a few more. I know, I know... Cut me a little slack will ya? These conferences are so busy that I just didn't find the time to post sooner. Now, on with Tuesday...

Last night Dan, Joe Marini and I went to a tasty little place in the French Quarter called Bayona with the folks from Lynda.com. The food was incredible, and the company was very nice. It's always fun hanging out with Joe and talking about Dreamweaver's extensibility.

If you get the chance to go to Bayona and you're a fan of garlic like I am, be sure to try the Cream of Garlic Soup. Yummmmm

I just finished my first presenation of Dreamweaver Killer Tips at Macromedia MAX 2004. Aside from a few typos in my slides (the slides should be updated on Macromedia's site in the coming week) and a projection glitch, I think it went over pretty well. Whenever I give a tips session, I make it my goal to teach the audience at least two things they didn't know before they came to my session. From the show of hands it looks like I accomplished my goal.

Unfortunately a problem with the projector got me started about 5 minutes late. It was cutting off the first 300 pixels of my screen so I had to adjust. Instead of doing the Power Point full screen as a slide show, I had to open Power Point and click through the slides along the left. Things weren't as large this way unfortunately but at least it was all showing.

My presentation is available online at Macromedia's site for conference attendees. I noticed a few typos in the slides, and will get those fixed and over to Macromedia so they can upload the changes. The typos weren't anything too major. I'll list them here so that those who don't want to download again (or wait for Macromedia to upload the changes).

On the slide "How to Create collapsing Borders" it should say: table.tabulardata, tabular.tabulardata td, tabular.tabulardata th{ border: 1px solid #000000; border-collapse: collapse; }

There was a funky character encoding going on in the "Resources: Extensions for Dreamweaver" slide that changed a line continuation character into something that looked like an E with a ^ above it. The URL should be: http://www.macromedia.com/exchange/dreamweaver/

Two silly mistakes of which I'm sorry. Hopefully if you were there you learned at least 2 things and that made up for the typos and projector glitches. Thanks to everyone for their patience with the pojection issue.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions here on my blog or shoot me an email (at the address on the last slide). I'm always my worst critic, and know I'll do better the next 3 times. :-)

Thanks!

If you don't speak Spanish, you're probably wondering what the subject of this post is all about. Well, Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips has been translated into Spanish and renamed Dreamweaver MX 2004 Trucos Esenciales. Trucos means tricks and esenciales means essential. So the new title is Dreamweaver MX 2004 Essential Tricks.

I'm not sure why they changed the title...My best guess is that "Killer Tips" doesn't translate nicely and might somehow be considered violent. I haven't received my copy yet, but Joe tells me that it looks great and was done in full color like the original.

Two other translations are in the works, Chinese and French. I'm really excited to see what they look like. I can't help but wonder how some of our wacky humor translates... Hopefully our translators had a good grasp of English and knew when to keep our humor and when to use their own.

I'll be sure to post when I have info on the Chinese and French translations. I'm pretty sure some of you are just as curious as I am to see what those are like...

I'll be presenting Dreamweaver Killer Tips at this year's Macromedia MAX conference being held in New Orleans from November 1-4.

It's best to register early for MAX because you have to choose your schedule in advance and sessions do fill up quickly. Last year I gave the session only three times, and it was full for all but the final presentation (but I think it was not quite filled because it was last session in its track of the last day). So this year, they're having me do the session four times!

I won't be giving the exact same presentation, though a few tips are too cool that I will have to include them even though I did them last year. Not all tips are in the book either, so Killer Tips fanatics can walk away with something new too.

What kind of tips do you want to see? Let me know by leaving a comment. Hurry though, I have deadlines to meet that are coming up really really fast. (Macromedia doesn't mess around; they have all sorts of deadlines for presenters months in advance of the conference. It's very well organized.)

I mean it; let me know what kind of tips you want...ColdFusion, CSS, WorkFlow, etc. ? Click the link* to leave a comment already...c'mon, you know you want to... Do it frenchy!

• If you don't see an Add Comments link, you're reading this from an RSS feed. Here's the URL for commenting on this post:

http://www.dwmommy.com/addcomment.asp?id=503

Yesterday's presentation was my first time presenting using Breeze Live. It seemed the presentation was well received despite that I wasn't as collected in my thoughts as I usually am. Had the hours prior to the session not been so hectic, I'd have been more "together". Although friends present said they couldn't tell anything was wrong, it still affected me to a small degree.

To do a Breeze Live presentation, it is recommended that you have a second computer set up in the meeting as a guest. This computer is used to see what your audience sees so that you can account for delays.

So I turn on my desktop and the mouse is busted. I run out to Circuit City to pick up a new one. I get back, restart, and my keyboard doesn't work! I have a required login, so I can't even get logged in. I try everything, finally resorting to an old keyboard from another computer (that won't start either and can't connect to the internet). Luckily, it worked!

Now it is nearing time for me to join the meeting. I have to be hardwired (as oposed to my wireless connection) during the presentation. I switch over and my entire internet connection dies on the network. I'm frantic by now, thinking I'm not going to make it. With some sound advice and calming words from Dan, I rebooted the router and after a couple of minutes the internet came back up. Phew!

Once I'm in the meeting, I am looking around for the special Presenter controls and I'm not finding them. I buzzed the moderator and didn't get a reply. I'm in the room only as a guest, uh oh. I try to send a message to her, and accidentally send it to the whole meeting...D'oh! Amy called me, and got me hooked up just in time.

I didn't have my usual couple of minutes to collect my thoughts and get in presenter mode, but it went fine. After a few minutes, I was alright.

It's tricky doing Breeze Live, and next time it will be much easier. There is so much to pay attention to. You have to watch the other monitor to be sure it is updating for the audience. You need to remember to click a few buttons (wish it were just one) to share the screen. You have to remember to then switch back to slides. All the while you are supposed to try and ignore the chat window that's whizzing past you. Then your other computer goes to screensaver and you have to wake it up so you can make sure what the audience is seeing is the same thing you're talking about.

As overwhelming as it was, I loved it. I know I could give the same presentation again much better, and hope to have the opportunity to do so. Even if I do a different one, now I know what to expect with Breeze Live and it will go much smoother next time.

Thanks to all who attended for being there, especially the Cartweaver customers who joined us. It was nice to see so many familiar names present. The thanks and grattitude was overwhelming. Thanks again to those who sent private chats and email. You're all so very kind!

Of course, thanks to Dan for helping me out -- both with the internet connection and fielding questions during the presentation.

If any of you have any feedback, I'd be happy to hear it as it really helps me to do better in the future. I'm really looking forward to doing this again.

I'll be giving a live online presentation tomorrow, Tuesday May 18th at 4pm Pacific, for Macromedia's Community Week. Here's the official description:

Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips with ColdFusion Discover little-known features and pick up some tips-n-tricks for Dreamweaver MX 2004 specifically geared towards ColdFusion users. This presentation covers concepts that range from basic to advanced.

You must register (it's free!) for this presentation as participation is limited. (You will need to scroll to the bottom of the table Tuesday May 18th.)

7 weeks in the making, Toggle-O-Matic Suite is finally released! I can't even begin to explain how excited I am about this extension package. What is this Toggle-O-Matic stuff anyway you ask? Allow me to explain...

Toggle-O-Matic Suite was inspired by my project (Project 2: Toggle-O-Matic Menus) for Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic. Toggle-O-Matic Suite is comprised of three behaviors: Toggle-O-Matic Class, Toggle-O-Matic Display, Toggle-O-Matic Visbility. The Toggle-O-Matic behaviors switch an ID'd element's class, display property or visibility property respectively between what is specified and the element's original state.

Sound's technical doesn't it? It's really not. It's very very simple. In fact, the navigation on DWmommmy.com and the comments both use Toggle-O-Matic. You can toggle any ID'd element, with the only limitations being your imagination and browser support for your CSS.

Toggle-O-Matic is $45 and only available at the DWfaq Store. (Cartweaver 2 customers may purchase at 50% off by May 16th! Log in at DWfaq to verify eligibility.)

Full documentation is available online with a bunch of examples too. There's also a list of sites using Toggle-O-Matic so you can see how it is put to use in the real world.

If you have any questions about Toggle-O-Matic, please feel free to ask!

Special thanks to Dan Short for all his help (especially the examples). A big thanks to Alex Mariño for the sketch of the product logo. Thanks to all the beta testers (you know who you are). You guys and gals have been fantastic!

Get your mind out of the gutter people... :-) Last week I released a new extension, Strip List Whitespace, which fixes a bug in Internet Explorer on the PC. The download response to this extension has been utterly amazing. I think it is because this is one of those "must have" type of free extensions. There are other ways to remove the whitespace, but it all comes down to personal preference, and this happens to be mine.

I also updated Strip <?xml?> Tag, which removes the XML prologue which throws Internet Explorer into quirks mode. The update was to fix a bug found only in Dreamweaver MX 2004, that kept the extension from running if the document was currently in Code view.

They're both on my Free Extensions page, so you can read more about them there. As always, they're only available for download from the DWfaq Store, where I host all my free and commercial products.

I really should have blogged about this sooner, I know... I'm going to make an effort to post speaking engagments well in advance, really! :-)

Yesterday I gave a Productivity Tips for Dreamweaver MX 2004 session at the SCCFUG Winter Conference in Costa Mesa, CA. Some of the tips were from our book, but some where not. This was the first time I've ever spoken to a purely ColdFusion crowd and it looks like it won't be the last either. I truly enjoyed the experience.

All in all, I think the session was well received. A quick poll of the audience showed me that most people learned at least 2 things about Dreamweaver that they didn't know. Many learned 3 and I didn't poll for 4. I am guessing that there would have been around half or more though. I even caught a gal bouncing in her chair in excitement over learning something. I love that kind of reaction!

I spent a good amount of time answering questions even after my session in the lobby and at the bar afterwards. (Thanks to the folks from Blue World for sponsoring drinks! I was teased for my O'Douls but I enjoyed it just the same as the real stuff.) Oh yeah, questions...

Unfortunately there were several complaints about Dreamweaver corrupting code. Almost all complaints came from Dreamweaver MX users. There were only one or two that had problems with Dreamweaver MX 2004. Macromedia really seems to care about code trust and have put a lot into DW MX 2004, but it still has the occasional hiccup it seems. In a few cases, I was able to offer workarounds. In most however, all I could suggest was to try the trial version of 2004 and see if it still happens. If there is a problem in 2004 I couldn't solve the best I could say was to report it to Macromedia and send them test files if possible.

At the end of my session, I had 7 prizes to give away. I'm known for my typlexia. This time I decided to ask the audience to look at their copies of the session in the handbook and point out my typos for a prize. I gave away 3 copies of Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips, 3 copies of Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic, and one license to Cartweaver 2 CF.

I wish the event lasted longer. For me, these types of events are like going to summer camp. I work from a home office and have little contact with adults. The opportunity to hang out with fellow geeks is a very welcome one. I really enjoyed meeting everyone and the opportunity to see a few folks again that I'd already met elsewhere.

Back in late October, we launched Cartweaver 2. It has been an incredible few months since. Cartweaver is selling in record numbers, and I couldn't be more excited about it. This version is such a gigantic improvement over Cartweaver 1, and that's no marketing hype either.

If you haven't heard of Cartweaver yet, it is a ColdFusion shopping cart and adminstration area built specifically to be compatible with Dreamweaver MX and Dreamweaver MX 2004. The biggest changes in this version are the improved database, choice of 3 different ways to display products, a complete PDF user's manual that's nearly 100 pages, and the Cartweaver 2 extension suite.

My role in all of this is primarily extension development. My other work includes CSS, help documentation, the Cartweaver site and first level support on the Cartweaver newsgroup.

Back in May of 2003, Dan, Lawrence and I met in San Francisco and began working together on Cartweaver 2. (Lawrence had already begun, but Dan and I joined in at that time.) Over the next few months we worked daily and we're all very proud of the outcome.

I can't explain just how proud I am of the Cartweaver 2 extension suite especially. I've put my heart and soul into building these extensions, from creating the icons pixel by pixel in Fireworks to writing the HTML and JavaScript in Dreamweaver. I even built a couple of translators which required me to use HomeSite because Dreamweaver would try and translate my code and corrupt it. All in all it has been a great learning experience for me. I've become a much better programer because of my work on Cartweaver 2.

I would be remiss to not thank Massimo Foti and Danilo Celic for giving me permission to use a few of their functions, saving me the time to build my own. I must also thank Tom Muck for pushing me in the right direction on more than one occasion, helping me get over the code writer's block. Last but not least, a special thanks goes to Dan for inspiring some damn cool array code and showing me the way. Thanks guys!

Anyhow, enough rambling from me. If you have any questions or comments about Cartweaver 2 and/or my work on the project I'd be happy to hear from you.

Nobody can explain XFN better than its creators, Tantek Çelik, Matthew Mullenweg, and Eric Meyer. At the request of Eric, I'll be making an extension based on the XFN Creator for Dreamweaver. I'm honored to be involved.

Yes, I know as of this post I haven't XFN'd my links yet. I'll do them once I've finished writing the extension.;-)

It is always nice when I can help Dan with work, considering he's always helping me with things. About the only two things I ever help him with are JavaScript and Regular Expressions, because he claims he's allergic to them. :-) This time, I helped him take a user's selection in a popup window and select the right item in a select list in the parent window.

If you look at Lary McKee's site, you'll see a hyperlink under the in the Options section that says: Preview Mats. When you click it, you'll be able to choose an outer and inner mat, then click on the Choose Mats button to close the window and set the select lists in the Options section. Dan did all the fancy JavaScript that changes the Mats using CSS, and I did the part that happens when you click the Choose Mats button. We make a great team, I say! :-)

Lary's work is gorgeous, and highly detailed. Would make a nice Christmas gift if you're lacking ideas. ;-)

I'll be there, will you? If not, I'll be posting highlights from MAX here so stay tuned. Only a few days left so book it now if you haven't already.

Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips made Amazon.com's Top 10 Editors' Picks Computers & Internet books!

I hate being commanded to "sit back and enjoy" only later being required to "use the interactive menu" to navigate the site. ~BigHead

Happy 28th birthday Dan! :-) Be sure to call your parents and thank them ;-)

Wow, time is really flying by lately. I'm pretty much recoverred from surgery now. In about a week or so I can start excercising again. Better news than that, I'll be able to eat low-fat instead of darn-near-close-to-non-fat. For those curious, low-fat means 15g of fat or less per day. That's hardly anything! I did zero fat the first 4 weeks, and admittedly have about 4g of fat a day since then though I am supposed to have done non-fat for 6 weeks. I just couldn't take it anymore. At least I lost some of the weight I gained back over the summer, but not all of it and I definitely need to excercise to get back in shape again.

Why haven't I posted lately? Busy! Sooooo busy. I've a huge extension project I'm working on that's in beta and will hopefully be complete soon. Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips has shipped to the printer and we're wrapping things up on Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic now. So yeah, I've been rather busy, I'd say. More from me about some of the other cool things I'm working on as soon as I'm allowed to say more ;-) Oh yeah, I got my Dreamwever MX certification finally too. Yep, I think that's all there is to tell now...back to work!

Macromedia has announced Studio MX 2004. Naturally I'm most excited about Dreamweaver MX 2004. :-)

"Never judge a page until you've scrolled to the bottom." ~Dan Short

No matter how bad a day is, it always brightens when you hear your efforts have influenced someone else in some way, no matter how small. I got a little bit of that today when Tom showed me a comment on his blog that was in reference to DWmommy (or at least "net mommies" in general). Thanks jjshea. :-)

"many technotes + many beers = book" ~Tom Muck

"Technote+Beer = solution" ~Dan Short

"Authors don't have lives...." ~Dan Short

Somehow or another when I moved to the new DWmommy design, I left out the pictures from my trip to San Francisco. They're in the Dreamweaver gallery because we visited Macromedia while there. ;-)

Alright, let's hear it; how do you like my stripes? Would you like me to have a style changer? Do you want to submit your own theme? Tell me what you think by adding a comment. I'm listening...

Well, I got most of the images uploaded today. I still need to add captions to many of them though. Please feel free to recomend captions to me. If I like 'em, I'll add 'em. I have rougly 35 more images to crop/resize/retouch/upload tomorrow from my camera. Then on Monday or Tuesday I should have more from other people to upload too. Sure is time consuming, but better to do it now then to slack and never get around to it... I'm way sleepy, goodnight.

Susan, a.k.a. SES on the newsgroups, has posted her TODCON pics at Ofoto.com.

Happy birthday to Tom Muck! It's actually on the 7th, but it is already his birthday in his time zone...

Well, I've uploaded pictures from my second day in Vegas for TODCON. Unfortunately I'm having trouble writing to the XML file on the server so captions are still forthcoming. Please bear with the icky file names for now, and check the blog for news of when the captions are done. You'll want to go back and read them ;-)

Thanks to Eric Meyer, <a href="http://www.websiteic.com/blog/"k>Jay Grantham, and Jim Babbage for their shots and permission to host them here. I'm still waiting for shots from Adam Carr and Steve Fleischer, but don't expect them for a few more days. Looks like TODCON MX Vegas is going to be the largest gallery I have on this site so far.

In case you're looking for the TODCON MX Vegas image gallery, it is temporarily offline while I rename images. It should be back up in about an hour. Sorry for the inconvenience. The good news is I'll have more pictures up from Day 2 at that time. Still, I have many more photos to crop, upload, that will need captions too. Thanks for your patience...

Ray left the network up just so I could get Day One's pictures up. Some of them need to be re-cropped because of bad batch processing, and the captions could use some help. Feel free to make suggestions. :-) There will be tons of shots from Day 2 soon as I can get those uploaded. Eric Meyer, Jim Babbage, Adam, and Steve Fleischer all have images they've either contributed or will send to me. We all had too much fun to take many shots today but there are some. So much to say, and no time to write it all since the network is going down any...

They're about to shut down the network! Nooooooooooo. I guess I'll be posting more tomorrow when I get home. Damn... Hopefully I can get a connection around somewhere.

My Find and Replace session was attended by only 5 people! I expected this though, since I was up against Eric Meyer. Really, I was hoping nobody would show, so I could attend his session. No such luck though. Eric's session was standing room only; packed.

My session went pretty well though, especially since the group watching were experienced enough to follow along without excruciating explaination. In prep for this session, and during the session, I've found several Find and Replace bugs that I must report to Macromedia. In fact, one regular expression I used, should not have worked, blatantly wrong, and it worked! I have to tinker some more to figure out why exactly I was so lucky it worked. Massimo, Tom and I were all amazed. Definitely a bug. :-)

I'd love to give this session again some time. Everyone said that they learned something totally new that would save them hours of time. So I was quite pleased. Afterwards, during the lunch break, I redid several portions of the session for those who missed it. Lots of fun. Reg Exes are cool. ;-)

Even though TODCON is officially over, we're still going strong and having a blast. There's so much to say, and so many photos to crop, upload and captionize (is that a word?). So please be patient, and I'll do my best.

Murray's talking about creating menus using template parameters and template expressions to determine the down state of a button. He definitely knows his stuff, and how to expose the power behind these features. Not to mention it is just fun hearing him use the word "spawn"...

I'm pumped! My session went smoothly without any glitches. Not only that but I had a perfect audience. Everyone was familiar with CSS enough that I didn't need to really explain the code, but just demonstrate it's output. None of the audience use Win98 or Macintosh (with the exception of Eric Meyer who uses OS9 and he wasn't worried about DW's multi-user configuration). Russ Helfland, Macromedia Principle Engineer, was in attendance, and taking notes. <innocent>I <hinted /> at some features I'd like to see (fixed).</innocent> The session wasn't just tips in the book; about 40% are not in the book. All in all, I'm pleased with how my session turned out. :-)

I didn't do much more blogging because I spent a good hour or so going from room to room in the hotel to find one where the wireless connection works. Finally Jay suggests we try an even numbered room which is closer to the base station. Sure enough, that did it!

By the time I got rooms switched and went up to the conference level it was about 5:30. Hung out with everyone up there awhile then we decided to meet back at 7 for dinner. We wound up going to a sushi place in the Luxor. Dinner conversation... well, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas as they say... However, I was taking down quotes and will add some of them to a page on this site. There are images taken by Jay, Eric, and Adam. (Adam will email me those when he gets back home.) Jay and Eric were going to give me theirs tonight but I never made it out of my room to get the laptop. I wound up staying here in my room and taking care of some things, losing all track of time. Jay called and said I stood them up at about 11:45 that they were all going to bed. Sorry guys! I got sidetracked...it happens.

Hopefully I'll get the pictures from them and uploaded some time tomorrow. I've my Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips session to do tomorrow first session of the morning. After that I'll try to get the pics up and some work done too. Stay tuned...

Since I teased Kevin earlier about using CFStudio to do his session, he's decided to do this one using Dreamweaver MX. :-) He's doing just fine, but only because he's handcoding everything! ;-) I'm going to have to talk to him a bit and show him the light...

I've been trying to add the captions to the TODCON MX Vegas shots, but I'm getting file permission errors for creation and saving of the XML files that store the data. The error I get is to contact my host. Hopefully my host will be able to help me while he's on vacation... Otherwise we may be captionless! Oh no... Please be patient and if you see anything funky happening, it'll get fixed, don't worry. :-)

Ed Apostol is speaking about CFML basics with a handout provided and a downloadable PDF. I'm not sharing the link either, so neener neener to you for not being here. ;-)

I've decided that whenever I'm not speaking at one of my sessions, I'll most likely be at ColdFusion bootcamp. Kevin Schmidt is doing the first session as I type this message. He's going to start us from the very beginning, installing ColdFusion. He'll show us around CF Administrator too. I'm getting the feeling that we're all being assimilated without our knowledge. ;-)

Tables are evil :-) Nah, not really... Not when they're used for tabular data at least. However if your clients aren't ready for standards, then there's no point in doing it economically speaking.

I've been to a lot of keynotes, well about 5 or 6 at least... and Eric is impressive. We're all awake, nobody dosing off. He's not preaching table-less design at all like one might expect. Instead, he's talking about standards-oriented design, keeping the code lean and clean. If you use a table for layout, avoid nesting tables excessively, spacer GIFs, and HTML elements for styling.

I'm liking this because though I've been pushing for XHTML and table-less designs whenever I can, I do realize that the audience and other factors must be considered before making that design decision.

We're here at "Summer Camp For Geeks" and about to have Eric A Meyer present the keynote.

Last night the speakers and Community MX authors joined for a special dinner of Filet Minon and Chicken with creme (not-so) brule (but still yummy) for dessert. Open bar...yummmmm.

Unlike past conferences, I've taken pictures from Day 1. I even have them all uploaded already but I need to do captions so I'm not revealing them to you just yet. All in good time... :-)

Ray says we have to eat the food :-) There's lots of it even...

Eric Meyer's introduction (Ray West): We've tried to get Eric Meyer here for a year and half. I've had his passport revoked and taken two of his children so he can be here.

I've been writing down some great quotes as they happen and will either post them or use them as captions in the photo albums.

I'm about to leave for TODCON MX Vegas. Everything is packed, just have to run to the store real quick then it is off to John Wayne airport. I should be getting to the hotel about 4pm. I've heard that there will be wireless access there, so if it works for me, I'll try to blog "live" from TODCON.

Earlier today I added a new Favicon. I created one for Dan's Shorts too, but he's yet to add the necessary code to make his show up without the user jumping through hoops, so you may not see his yet. I like to call 'em fav-eye-cons because they're close-ups of our pixel people's eyes. :-) I'm just cheesy like that y'know.

I used Icon Forge to create them by importing GIF images. I have 4 uses left of the trial, and I'm pretty sure I'll buy it since it was just so easy to use.

Three people – who could have checked the source code because they know how – have asked me already if the navigation on the left is Menu Magic 1, by Project Seven. No, it's not Menu Magic 1. :-) If you don't believe me choose View » Source.

Menu Magic 1 is a great extension and I use it on the current version of Site-Drive.com. Actually the new DWmommy menu was done for the upcoming new version of DWfaq.com. I liked it so much that I decided to use it here too. Dan and I are still refining the JavaScript and CSS. Eventually I'll be making an extension out of the final code. Of course, I'll talk about it here first...

I've gone wireless and launched the new blog today. You can now comment on my posts even. You may notice that I've all the features of Dan's blog-o-matic too. Thanks Dan!

Happy birthday to Marion Kaltenschnee and Pete Hawkes from the Dreamweaver newsgroup! Turning out to be a better birthday than I expected. :-)

Had a great time working on some top secret stuff in San Francisco from the 14th thru 18th. (Try not to draw too many conclusions about why we were there.<wink />)There are some pictures in the gallery if you're interested.

While there, we visited Macromedia twice. Billy Ray took us for a long walk up many hills to have sushi. Well worth every step to get there. Billy also took us on a tour of Macromedia, which is spread out over 3 buildings. Our first visit was Thursday and there were hardly anyone left. Apparantly they all went to go see Matrix 2. Didn't anyone tell them we were coming? Oh, the nerve. :-) So we returned on Friday and met many of the Macromedians we exchange email with or see on the newsgroup, including John Dowdell, George Fox, Heather Hollander, Chris Valliquet, Donald Booth, Jeff VonWard, and Scott Unterberg. (Please excuse any mispellings!) It is always nice to put names and faces together.

Only bad thing about the trip was that my laptop died on Saturday night so I didn't get much done after that happened. Luckily Dell will be here by tomorrow (hopefully) to fix it. Meanwhile, I'm stuck on my desktop...

Just when I needed a good laugh, I found out about the contest to spoof Mike Chambers. I've spent about 30 minutes looking through all the entries in the comments section. If you want to enter you'd better hurry; contest ends tomorrow at 5pm Pacific.

Chris Flick is absolutely amazing; he's done it again. His MX North Cartoons are hillarious. I'm particularly fond of the one of Massimo dealing candy and Ray running around like a chicken with his head cut off. Great stuff!

Wow, what a night. Matt (my cousin "Nasby", a radio DJ in Palm Springs) and I were up almost all night working on the new layout and it is looking pretty darn good if I do say so myself... I think I got to bed at about 3:30am and was up by about 8:30. Been working on the site all day. Can't wait to get it finished and online!

I wrote a server format suite yesterday and so far it seems to be working perfectly. I'll package it up and put it into beta by tomorrow. As for the server behavior, I'm getting some feature requests that are going to be extremely difficult to implement. I have to decide if I want to release it as is and add features later or take the time to do them now. I used to be the one that came up with wild feature requests now the tables are turned I feel guilty for my crazy requests. They say what goes around, comes around...well I'm getting it all back now!

Finally! It's taken quite a bit of work, but I've done it. I've written a really cool Server Behavior and translator that uses some fancy shmancy conditional code that's new to extensibility in MX (all undocumented stuff of course!). Thanks to Tom Muck for pointing me in the right direction!

This extension is commercial, but I'll have a light version available for free soon as I am able to put that together. (So far this is ASP/VBScript only. I may do a ColdFusion version, but no promises!) As usual, you'll hear all about it here first.

38 Dreamweaver newsgroup users listed in my MSN Buddy list... no wonder I get so little done lately! So I've buckled down. I've moved that MSN over to my 2k machine so that I'll only chat when I'm checking email. Its been a couple days now, and I'm feeling a bit more productive already. I'm sure productivity will increase significantly once I get back into the groove. (Still recovering a little from MXNorth.) So if you were one of the 38, don't take it personal; you're not blocked. :-)

I've added a new link to the navigation, Galleries. Right now all the personal stuff is mixed in with Dreamweaver stuff. I may change that eventually... My pictures, and some Dan took are up in the MXNorth 2003 category if you're interested. My camera was acting up so I didn't get many this time unfortunately. However, Jim Babbage took some great pictures at the conference. He's got the only picture of me wearing my glasses on the web.

I'm back home from MXNorth now and just trying to catch up on things today. So many emails! I meant to post here while I was away but I didn't get online much. It was actually kind of nice being so disconnected. I'm too tired to get into much detail, but I'll give some of the highlights:

Thursday night Dan and I went for my first time eating (raw) sushi. The first two bites were alright but the third one had some wasabi on it... WOW! That's some good stuff! I tried salmon as well and it was okay too, but I didn't care for the octopus since it was rather chewy.

Friday just flew by me.Roughly 220 in attendance this time. I met Brad Halstead and Derren Whiteman for the first time, both sweethearts just like in their emails/chats. I did some book signing at the afternoon break for Dreamweaver MX Magic with Dan, Massimo, and Brad. Dinner was at a little place called Adega across the street from the hotel. We were there for I'd say about 3 hours, so we were late to movie night. When we got to the hotel, they were showing My Big Fat Greek Wedding. They even had a popcorn machine in there I was told... but since I've seen the movie 5 times and have the DVD I skipped it. Instead I hung out with Dan and worked on DWfaq.

Saturday I gave my Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips session with Joe Lowery. The session went well, but we didn't get to do everything we hoped for. Lucky for conference goers, the whole session is up until tomorrow for them to review and pick up extra tips we didn't get too. I prefer to overplan than to be left standing there with nothing left to say... All in all I was pleased with how the session went. Saturday night we went to a trendy little night club for a party for all attendees. The whole place was reserved for us thankfully, since it was very much a "How you doin'" kind of bar.

Sunday I slept in and missed the keynote. I was late to Joe's JavaScript session but the half I was there for, I picked up a bunch of great info. A bunch of people took off before I had the chance to say goodbye, which is always a bummer... Ray, Laurie, Manuella, Massimo, Dan and I went back to Fune for sushi. This time Dan got pictures! I'll share at least one here soon... Afterwards we went to a place called Just Desserts for drinks and desserts. I had a yummy chocolate cheescake with strawberries... After that, Dan, Massimo and I hung out for awhile. They were speaking advanced geek and I couldn't keep up so I fell asleep! Lucky for me Dan didn't have his camera with him then or I'd be busted. After my nice little nap Dan and I worked some more on DWfaq. A lot of stripping out tables from the code was done, but we have a long way to go still.

I'll be posting photos soon as I get Dan's from him. My camera was acting up so I didn't get many pictures at all. :-( Darn camera goes from a full battery to empty after only one shot! I think it needs a new battery (yes it is a proprietary one)... That's about all I have to say about the trip really. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone in Vegas in just a couple of months. It is going to be a really great time.

I'm not having a good day... My laptop has been doing weird things to me. Earlier I did a system search for .dwr files (those are saved queries). No results! @#$% was my reaction...I need them for my presentation at MXNorth. They were there yesterday but gone from my desktop. 9 hours later they turned up in a folder that's on the desktop after I already remade a bunch of regular expressions.

Then I fought the age old battle of changing a site from root relative to document relative paths. MAJOR PAIN... All this because Dreamweaver would need me to have IIS to preview locally. That's something I'm just not prepared to deal with less than 10 hours before leaving. You're thinking I should have built it document relative from the start. Well, the site that this is going on had a template already so I thought I'd use that and save time. It was a 30 minute headache, but a headache nonetheless.

I had some software installation problems too. A few other things went wrong but I'd rather not talk about it :-)

I'll be on my way soon, and I'll feel much better once I'm there I'm sure. Hope to meet a lot of new people and spend time with old friends. I'll try to post while I'm there, but no promises!

So much to do, so little time! I'm getting things ready for my trip to MXNorth over the next couple of days. I'm anxious to break free and relax with friends while being a geek around people who'll understand! This is certainly going to be a new experience for me. A) I'm not used to snow or cold weather. I'm very Californian like that :-) B)Dan and I are going to have sushi at a little Japanese place called Fune that's close to the hotel. It'll be my first sushi experience, and I'm scared!

Meanwhile I have too much to get done. Thankfully I'm done with the Free Image Gallery extension for nCubed. I'll announce that here when it goes public. It's pretty darn cool if I do say so myself. I'll be adding a sample gallery to the site with it soon too. Back to work for me...

Oh my goodness, I'm gonna cry, don't know what to say... Just saw Jay's blog and I'm really touched. I wish we lived close together too... Thanks Jay. :-)

Last night I went shopping with a friend and while we were out we decided to stop in at Borders book store. Believe it or not, I hadn't been to a bookstore since Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips was released. I wanted to see if Borders had it in stock since I heard they're cutting back on carrying computer books and may not get in much new in way of books released after Christmas. Well, great news... they had one copy left! :-) Usually a book store carries between 2 and 4 copies so finding one means the others have sold ;-) I was also pleasantly surprised to see a single copy left of several other books I'd worked on last year which I'd not seen on a book store shelf before either. Kinda made it all real for me. :-)

Such a proud mommy moment that I must share... Gaetano came up to me with a plastic bundle of baloons from his 1st birthday cake. He pointed to one and said "That's red" and he was right! Then he did each color in the bundle successfully. Colors are something I haven't really worked with him that much on --least not as much as I should. So I'm pleasantly surprised that he's caught on so quick. Before I know it he'll be using Dreamweaver and writing extensions ;-)

Well, it was nice while it lasted... Hopefully we'll climb back up into the top ten again. :-)

What a nice way to start my morning... I got an email from our publisher that Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips is in the top 10 best sellers for Computers & Internet books. It got up to #4 before I woke up they tell me, but dropped a couple slots to #6 at the time of this writing.

The moment I've been waiting for since July has finally come and I barely know what to say... Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips by Joseph Lowery and yours truly is now available!

Today is my dad's birthday. Happy Birthday Dad, I hope I made you proud :-)

Belated Happy New Year! :-) Better late wishes than never right?

I've been busy busy lately, hence the lack of posts (although I'm pretty good about posting regularly even when I'm swamped). Gaetano is going through a clingy phase -- especially since he has a cold. All day long I hear his sweet little voice say things like: Mama come sit. I want you to sit. Mama kiss? Shake hands? I want a hug. I want to hold you. I want a kiss now. Hug, please? Pleeeeeeeeeeeease, I want a kiss. (I think you get the point.) I don't mind it at all, although it hasn't been very good for my productivity lately!

Yesterday I got an email from someone that read my interview in Inside Dreamweaver MX. It is the second email I've gotten from that interview. This one made my day though. The person who wrote was looking for a way to inspire his wife to get into web development with him. She felt she needed schooling to do so though. He felt my interview was just what he needed to show her that "all anyone needs is a strong will and some guidance". He's right! :-) It's emails like that which keep me going and make what I do worthwhile.

I also forgot to mention that there is an update for Strip <?xml?> Tag now, version 1.5.0. This version is to fix it so that the xml declaration is removed from PHP files, which it was not set up to do in version 1.0.0.

Oops! I forgot to mention here that JavaScript Assistant is now available for FREE from the DWfaq Store. CSS Assistant is well underway now, and I hope to have that done soon.

Merry Christmas!!! I didn't have time to get JavaScript Assistant ready for Christmas delivery, but I do have one extension to treat you with. Strip <? xml ?> Tag is now available from the DWfaq Store, free! Happy Holidays, and keep your eyes open for JavaScript Assistant coming soon.

I'm feeling pretty motivated now that the stress of the holidays are almost over and the book is at the printer. (It is on schedule and should be out in mid to late January.) Provided that I get everything all done for Christmas tonight, tomorrow morning I'll finish up some backend work on the DWfaq.com Store and give out 2 new extensions free in time for Christmas. Cross your fingers for me folks :-).

Well folks, I finally got it finished. JavaScript Assistant will go into beta some time today and be released in a few days. Here's just some of what it does:

The JavaScript Assistant is a toolbar that can be used in any kind of document that you'd use JavaScript.JavaScript Assistant is designed to analyze your selection and place the cursor in the next logical position based on that selection. For example, if you select a single word, then click the function button, the cursor is placed inside the () since you may need to add arguments to the function. If your selection contains multiple words or multiple lines of code, the cursor is put before the () so that you can give the function a name. The same principle applies to the Insert If Statement, Insert Else Statement, and Insert For Loop buttons.

There are 11 buttons in the JavaScript Assistant. This extension will be free, and available from the DWfaq Store.

I was doing my usual look through of the MM DesDev feed at DWfaq and found a link to an article by Ben Forta which contains links to PDFs of chapters 2,5, and 6 of The Macromedia ColdFusion MX Web Application Construction Kit (a.k.a. CFWACK). Sorry folks, you'll have to buy the book to read the chapter I wrote (chapter 7). For those of you who find holding this 5 1/2 pound book tiresome (who wouldn't!?), I thought you might like to grab these PDFs. For those of you who haven't bought the book yet and were thinking about it, these chapters should convince you. :-)

Whatever will I do...? I just sent in the final chapter of author review on Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips. Even though I'm done, it doesn't feel like it yet. I'm excited, yet strangely bored and unsure what to do next! :-)

On this Thanksgiving Day, I'd like to share some of my thankfullness here because I know it will reach the right people (some of whom I have no other way to contact). I really do count my blessings often (should be every day, but it is only just often, lol). My biggest blessing I'm thankful for is Gaetano, but I'm sure you knew that. I love my littly guy! Of course I'm thankful for my wonderful husband and family as well.

The folks that may not realize their importance to me are who I'm hoping this message reaches. To every single tutorial author at DWfaq and every DWfaq beta tester: You're the greatest. DWfaq wouldn't be the same without your help. I appreciate everything you've contributed and it is a pleasure working with all of you. To Brad and Mike, extra thanks for all your help admining DWfaq. Dan Short, you're like a brother to me and I'm so grateful to have you in my life. (I'll spare the folks reading this all the mushiness and not to embarrass you too much <wink />.) To those I work with on various projects and/or books, I'm thankful for the opportunity to work with such talented people. Those who have helped me learn Dreamweaver and write extensions (you know who you are..) I'm so grateful to you for your help and will never forget it. To all my friends, I love you and am thinking of you today. I'm sure there's more I could say, but I'll spare you all, and return you to your holiday festivities. Happy Thanksgiving!

Well today didn't turn out nearly as bad as I thought. :-) Had some difficulties getting my dentist appointments on time, but in the end I finally got there alright and had the work done. I'm feeling much better than before too.

Good news, I think I have solved the bug that was holding up production of JavaScript Assistant and CSS Assistant. If my solution continues to work as I re-introduce the code I removed for debugging, I'm gonna be thrilled! I've workd well over a hundred hours on CSS Assistant alone, plus Danilo has put a lot of time into it. It would have been a shame if the world never saw it because of a stupid bug. I just don't like releasing a product if a bug this bad can't be fixed or worked around unless. I'll definitely post my progress here as always.

The past 2 days have been very frustrating when it comes to coding my latest 2 extensions. I'm basically battling a bug in Dreamweaver and it is one I'm clueless how to squish at this point. Basically both of my new extensions involve the ability to wrap the user's selection with some code. That all works fine and dandy. The problems start when the user changes their mind and does and Undo. If the user does an Undo, then makes another selection, the selection is not recognized and the code is inserted after their previous selection before the Undo. It is very annoying to say the least and will prevent these two extensions from being released if I cannot find a workaround. Wish me luck folks, I seriously need it.

I should learn to not get over anxious and think certain things are simple. :-) It turns out there are some nasty little bugs that need squishing in JavaScript Assistant. I'll work with it while coding CSS Assistant too, and not rush releasing it until bugs are properly squished. Just wishful thinking on my part that this would be easy... and yes, I've added features -- only because I'm lazy and I know they'll help me in the end. If they help me, they may help others... that's the plan at least! :-)

This morning I was chatting with Laurie and decided that I didn't feel like working on CSS Assistant, because I was lazy writing all that same JavaScript over and over again. So I decided I'll make a JavaScript Assistant as a freebie, since it was so easy to write that in 20 minutes I was done. Well, excpept for the icons (that's always the tough part). Besides, I could have made them all Snippets; there aren't any real special features or anything. I just happen to lik clicking buttons and having them in easy reach. When I'm coding JavaScript, I like to have the full width of the window, so I tend to hide all panels. Really, nothing special, just a matter of comfort for this one. I'll be releasing this one probably late tonight, or possibly tomorrow. Stay tuned...

I forgot to mention it... shame on me! That adorable little hand in the ad for Color Assistant belongs to none other than my adorable little Gaetano :-)

I always announce here first, as promised :-). The Color Assistant is now officially launched, and available for just $10 at the DWfaq Store. I hope you enjoy using it as much as I have!

As always, I show it to you here first :-). Here's the Color Assistant Flash Demo for the DWfaq Store. I'll post the link to the store soon as it is ready for sale, which should be in about an hour or so. Thanks to all my beta testers for your help, you're the greatest!

The problem with adding new features is that it almost always introduces new bugs! Sure enough several bugs were found in the new features, and I believe I've squished them all now. Assuming beta testers confirm I've fixed all their findings, and don't discover anything new, it won't be too long before Color Assistant is released. The more I use the extension, the more I like it... and several of the beta testers have told me the same. I'm hoping that's the general perception for it, but we shall see...:-)

So far beta feedback has been very helpful, which means enhancements need to be made. I can take it though. :-) I've already fixed 3 bugs, 2 typos, and added 1 new feature. If I can add one more feature this release, I'll do it, otherwise I'll work on it for a dot release because it is a cool idea. Since you've been so patient, I'll tell you that the name of the product is Color Assistant. It is the first in what may turn out to be a line of "Assistant" extensions. I don't want to release feature details just yet, but soon as they're locked down, shortly before release I'll post it here first. :-)

I'm very excited about this little extension I must say. I've added all the features into this release. I'm just writing the help file that explains how the preferences work, then I'll package it up again and send it off to beta testers for checking. Writing this extension has taught me quite a bit and will help me finish the next extension, CSS Assistant. I'm looking forward to beta feedback on this version, since it incorporates some things that they requested. I'll keep you posted!

I forgot to mention earlier... would you believe that yet another feature has creeped into this release? Yep, another. The latest 2 features are some user preferences. I've coded the preferences menu already and have the checkmarks toggling as they should. Now it is just a matter of adding those features to the output code. Should be pretty simple to do that part. I have it mapped out in my brain already. These past 3 weeks have been really good for me from a JavaScript perspective. I've learned so much and ideas keep lighting off in my mind now. I knew eventually things would snap into place for me; it is definitely a great feeling.

I've added some validation routines to the extension now to prevent bad input from a user. (Thanks to Danilo for help with the Regular Expression - got me going in the right direction.) A clue for those of you still wondering what this is all about. Here's part of the regular expression #[1-9A-F]{6}. We're getting closer to a final product now. I can't wait!

Woo hoo!!! I've got a prototype working now of the fix/enhancement request that my beta testers asked for. So when I get back from Halloween festivites, I'll fix that right up and ship it off to beta again :-)

Just a friendly reminder that today is the last day to get my Template-Lover's Suite at only $2. Tomorrow the price goes up to $6.

Well there goes my idea! I asked a friend for input on possible causes for a global variable issue I was having. So I told him what my extension was and he had done the same thing already. He plans to release his next week along with others. So, sorry folks this one isn't getting released publicly. I'll think of something else though. I already have a few ideas brewing...

Two reasons to celebrate today: Dan's Birthday and the Anaheim Angels won tonight. Tomorrow is game 7 of the World Series. I suspect my sister-in-law will have the baby around the ninth inning tomorrow making it a very exciting day... We'll see!

Meanwhile, I'll be coding away at my next extension. It has just one bug that I'm fighting and once I get that settled off it goes to beta. If you hand-code your CSS in Dreamweaver you're going to love this! More clues as I near beta :-)...

Phew, I did it! I finally released the upgrade to the Template-Lover's Suite. Originally I planned to add only 3 new objects, but of course my beta testers asked for more. Ask and ye shall receive (this time at least)! I have another extension in the works and lots of other good things going on to keep me busy. As always, this is the place to keep up with what's going on in my life... stay tuned!

Today I'll be tidying up the Template-Lover's Suite upgrade. I plan to release it by Friday if all goes well, but could be as soon as tonight. More details to come... stay tuned.

Sorry ladies, Danilo is officially married. He's even sent me pictures to proove it and has given me permission to share them with you. (I was a little lazy and used the Web Photo Album 2 extension with a pre-made template so don't look at the source code ;-).) Danilo will be back in town next weekend - hopefully with pictures of their trip to Hawaii. Congratulations Danilo and Melissa!

We're official! Dan has just announced our DWfaq Date/Time Server Formats on the newsgroups and on DWfaq. Thanks to everyone for your support and encouragement.

We're only a few hours away from release now. Just working on setting up the store for the product and some last minute touches on the help file. We asked our beta testers and several people who were shown our promotional material (that sounds so professional but all it means is screenshots and demos) and got a wide range of price suggestions. Prices suggested were as low as $20 and as high as $65 (I'm not gonna count the one guy who said $150! We think he was a little too excited and is welcome to pay that much if he'd like :-)). We've settled on "The bargain price of $29.95". Those asked all said that it would take them hours and hours to figure out the ASP and they'd not have the convenience of Dreamweaver to use the code again (except by snippets which isn't as convenient). Dan and I both put a lot of days and time (pun intended) into this one. We hop people find it as useful as we have. :-)

I can breathe a nice relaxing sigh now, and get back to work on the Server Formats. I've just sent in the last Author Review (that's what they call it when the author looks over and addresses the Tech Editor's and Copy Editor's questions/suggestions). The next phase is reviewing the chapters all laid out with their respective screenshots. We'll make sure that it reads well, and the shots make sense as cropped and their given size. After that, it goes to the printer. January will be here before I know it...

105 server formats! We're in beta now, and hoping for a realease probably on Friday.

Ok, before I go, I had to take a few screenshots of the formats to show you. This is the current (and likely final) layout for all the menu options in the DWfaq Date/Time Formats menu. Here's what the Edit Formats List looks like with the editable DWfaq Formats listed. Last but not least, here is a sample of one of the dialogs used to make your own variations of the DWfaq Date/Time formats. Okay, now I'm really leaving...

Server Formats are all done. I just need to make the final MXP and get it into Beta. I'll do that soon as I get back from shopping. Yep, I'm playing hookie from work for a few hours to spend time shopping and have dinner with my son and husband. Of course when I get in I'll get back to work as always.

Whew! There sure are a lot of server formats in this suite... I'm up to 86 built in ones and have yet to decide what to include for the Past format and Future format. That'll put us definitely over the 100 mark easily. I started doing the math to figure out the potential number of custom format (not counting delimiters as a factor in difference) and I lost count after 2,600. I'm too tired for math right now anyhow :-). It may sound like overkill, but we wanted our customers to be able to have any possible regional format they could imagine, so that's why I built in all the customization stuff. Aside from deciding the defaults for those 2 formats, I'm all done. I'll consult with Dan on those, add them in, and then release the MXP to our beta testers. We'll be ready to release this sometime this week. More on that soon as beta feedback starts rolling in. ;-)

Well folks, I'm almost done with the Server Formats. So far there are 76 potential formatting options! By the time I'm done there will be over 100. Don't forget, you can even customize many of them to make your own. I've looked around to see what is out there comparatively and I just couldn't find a suite of Server Formats this expansive. I've yet to find any that are written in a way to allow for you to make more of your own either. Sorry, but I can't help but get excited about this... I'm looking forward to your (the public's) opinions about it. So far I've had a few emails from some of you reading this and the feedback has been great. I'll keep you posted...

The Server Formats saga continues... I've thought up several more Server Formats that will be done after the Date/Time ones as separate products. I'm about 1/2 way through making the Date/Time ones now. Here's a screenshot of what I've done so far. Yeah I know it looks like a lot of menus, but if we don't do it this way, the main menu would be way too long. We'll have demos up and screenshots within the next few days. We'll run it through some beta testing, and in a week or less it should all be ready.

I know I mentioned a potential price in a previous post I made... Well, so much has changed and improved that we'll have to account for that of course. We've not decided on a price yet, but I'll let you know when we do. (Don't worry it won't be expensive.) If you have any questions about the Server Formats, please feel free to ask me.

We just had a case of Feature Creep. Dan and I spent a whole hour talking about all the potential Server Formats we could add to the suite. This has grown exponentially... by how much, I'm not exactly sure but it is going to be really cool. We'll be letting users create their own formats from predefined ones. For instance, we supply you with Current Month, Previous Month, and Next Month. You could then make your own that will do 6 months ago, or 3 months from now. I spent a bunch of time playing with Weekday Name earlier just for fun. That one can be used to figure out things like what day of the week you were born based on your date and year of birth. Lots of fun to be had with these Server Formats. Stay tuned for more info as it becomes available...

It's kind of exciting to watch the book come together now. I've just seen the cover at New Riders' website. We're about 12 1/2 weeks from release now and everything is on schedule. I just can't wait to see it complete and hold a copy in my hands...

We've added 2 more Server Formats to the list. They are: 13. Seconds Stripper With Dots - 9:50 P.M. 14. Seconds Stripper Lowercase Without Dots - 9:50 pm

You'll notice that the difference betwen 11 thru 14 is whether or not there are dots and if the time of day is lowercase or uppercase. These will all be found under a Date/Time» Seconds Stripper submenu. I've done 11 thru 14 now so that's 4 done and 10 to go.

Dan was proud. :-) He also helped me to better my function as well. Within a matter of a few minutes, we decided to put together a suite of 12 VBScript Date/Time formats that we'll be selling from DWfaq. Right now we're planning on $10 and the list of formats are currently:

1. Week Start
2. Week End
3. Week Range
4. Weekday Name
5. Month Name
6. Days In Month
7. First Day of Month
8. Previous Month
9. Next Month
10. Last Day of Month
11. Seconds Stripper - 9:50 PM
12. Seconds Stripper Lowercase - 9:50 p.m.

We should be done with it in only a few days. Of course Dan and I will both mention it in our blogs when it becomes available. With luck, I'll figure out the ColdFusion equivelants and release those seperately.

Dan's gonna be so proud...I actually wrote my first VBScript function late Saturday night. I spent most of my day on Sunday with my friend for her birthday, but my mind was on getting home to work on converting the function (which I'd already made into a working Server Behavior) into a Server Format. What's the difference you ask? Well first let me tell you what my function does. Dreamweaver offers Date/Time Formats through the Format column of the Bindings panel. None of them output the time in a 12 hour clock format without seconds. For example, look here at my blog. See that the time for this entry is 5:39:27 AM? What if I wanted to remove the seconds so it shows 5:39 AM? I'd use my new function ;-). I originally made it a Server Behavior, but the problem with that is, rather than convert the selectiom. DW assumes I have yet to enter the field on the page. Second problem is that the Server Behaviors panel is cluttered with things enough as it is, and really shouldn't have something that is just done for the sake of formatting. So, I set out to build a Server Format. Now that I've done it once, I think I'm unstoppable... I just need to read up on how to package a Server Format because it requires adding to the Formats.xml file, and I'm all set. Next, I'll see if I can tackle the same concept for ColdFusion, and I'll release both when they're ready. I needed to apply this code to at least 10 pages and I wasn't about to handcode it each time or use Snippets. So "necessity is the mother of extensions", also known as my need to be lazy ;-). As Laurie put it to me on MSN, "laziness is the mother of extensions". Stay tuned for an announcement for the release of "Seconds Stripper" some time (much) later today...

You're going to have to take my word for it on this folks, but it has been 2 years since I first posted on the Dreamweaver newsgroup. How do I remember this? Well, last year I looked it up shortly before TODCON. TODCON happened to fall on the 3rd of October last year. When I went to look at the Dreamweaver newsgroup archives at google, I can't get more than one record for October 3rd, 2000 to show at all. So I know something is messed up at the archive. I even searched for Murray who posted at least 10 times a day back then and got zero results for the first week of October 2000. So, looks like the archives are hosed and you'll just have to take my word for it. Happy 2nd Anniversary to me. :-)

It is finished. Well we're done writing that is. I can't believe I've actually written 1/2 of a book. The work isn't over for me yet though. I still have to review the chapters as they come back from editing. I'm sure there will be a few screenshots that need retaking (there always are). But it is a great feeling to be done writing.

Now I can focus on some of my extensions that are almost complete. I'll be getting those done in the next couple of weeks and releasing them via the DWfaq store as they become available.

Dan's been gettin' fancy with his blog. I think he's trying to make me jealous. He's doing a fine job of that if he is! Soon as I'm done with Killer Tips I'll have some time to play around and add all the features I'd been planning. One of them is an archive of pages I make when helping folks on the Dreamweaver newsgroup. I'll assign it some keywords, a link to the original thread at google, a description, and a link to the solution page. It should be fun to chronicle these things, and eventually be able to pass out the links when duplicate issues occur on the newsgroup. See folks, this site isn't all about me talking about things like potty training; it is about the average day in the life of a Dreamweaver developer who happens to work from home and is a mother of a (precious) 2 1/2 year old boy. :-)

Only a few more days of writing the book left. It has been a great experience and I'm really looking forward to seeing it in print. After I'm done, I have plans to get 2 commercial extensions finished up. One is called CSS Assistant and the other is an update to the Template-Lover's Suite. I'll be sure to announce it here when they're done. On another note, Dan fixed our store product delivery issue by giving the customer the option to download the product or have it emailed to them. I can't always be online, and it seems that the few download problems we've encountered always happen just minutes after I go to bed at night. This should really make things easier on the customer and on me.

Hello friends, family and everyone else... I'm back from TODCON. It was absolutely fabulous and even more wonderful than last year. I've posted some pictures under TODCON 2002 for your viewing enjoyment. (Thanks Laurie for the second photo of Dan and I!)

Ahhhhhh...another chapter done and only 5 left. 10 days left until TODCON now and I've a lot of prep to do yet, so I may not be posting here as often as I'd like. I'll do my best though to keep up.

Well it is only 11 days left until TODCON and I've 4 pounds left to lose before I reach my goal. One less pound and I'll have lost 20lbs. since the last TODCON, so I hope I at least lose that. Yesterday and today I did a Salsa dancing aerobics workout for 30 minutes. I just got back a little while ago from a 1 hour walk. I'm guessing it was about 2 miles, but I'm not sure. I had a good idea for a major upgrade to an extensio I wrote awhile back. I'm working on that tonight, and if I can get it done in the next few days that would be great. It would be my second commercial extension.

Flipping through the book now and it looks fantastic! I like the new layout for this edition. Gotta read my chapter first of course – #7 Introducing Macromedia Dreamweaver MX in case you are curious.

Woo hoo!!! I just got my copy of the Macromedia ColdFusion MX Web Application Construction Kit. Tomorrow my top should arrive (see today's earlier post) and it will be fun to see if they actually match in color as well in real life as they do in the pictures.

Earlier today I approved 3 new ASP.Net-VB Script snippets by JoJo Caine the alter ego of Adrian Senior. His Rounded table corners snippet is in 2nd place for the most downloads currently. I'm sure these will be popular amongst ASP.Net developers.

I spent most of yesterday working on the book, trying to get a bunch of writing done. I did quite a bit of research as well. So far it has been a lot of fun working on this project, despite the hard work.

Yesterday was my niece Francesca's 6th birthday. We spent most of the day getting ready for that with last minute gift shopping and all. I'm way behind on work now though, and shouldn't have stayed there so late, but hubby wanted to hang with his family. Actually, for a nice change, I had a pleasant visit.

Today Dan helped me learn how to make ZIP files on the fly so my co-author could download screenshots and not have to have FTP access to the server. I'm not quite done with that page yet, but I sure learned quite a bit.

I'll be spending the rest of today catching up on the book. I've a bunch of writing to get done over the next couple of days... fun!