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

Macromedia, err I mean Adobe, has released Flex 2! It just so happens that lynda.com released Flex 2 Essential Training yesterday and in Chapter 1 there's a free 9 minute movie that answers the question, "What is Flex?". You'll also find a few other free movies in chapter 1, Getting Started.

Enjoy!

If you've been reading JD's coverage of the MIX06 event in Las Vegas, you now know that I have "joined lynda.com" and have been here at the Venetian for the conference.

It's true; I am now employed by lynda.com and I've been meaning to blog about it but wasn't quite ready to do so. I had the feeling that by being here at this event it would come out, and sure enough it did... I should have blogged it sooner, but oh well. (No worries JD!)

I won't go into any detail now, but I'm sure I'll be blogging more in the future as I'm able to share. I'll probably blog more about the MIX06 experience later too. Lot's to say, but too much to do!

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.

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.

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 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.

It's official folks, ColdFusion MX 7 is now available. If you weren't part of the very large public beta and don't already know what it's all about, be sure to take a look at the new features CF MX 7 brings.

There's a lot of juicy new bits, including application.cfc files, rich forms, the ability to create PDFs and FlashPaper documents on the fly, and so much more...

I'm also pleased to report that Cartweaver 2 CF works in ColdFusion MX 7 as well.

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...

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!

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

I wish that I could set up a message rule in Outlook to send off an auto-reply to all messages received containing spelling errors. The auto-reply would read something like, "I'm sorry, but your message contained spelling errors and has been marked as spam. Please correct all spelling errors and try again." As a courtesy I would provide a link to tutorials on how to set up Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, and other popular email programs to automatically check spelling before sending. The message rule would either move all these messages to a special folder or delete them.

Perhaps the message rule could check for people in my contact list. This way, it doesn't hurt anyone's feelings. ;-) (The sender may not be bad at spelling, but simply suffer from typlexia.)

I think that this would be the Ultimate Spam Blocker... What do you think?

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!

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.

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 ;-)

I don't have a gall bladder anymore. At least I have a decent dialup here in the hospital...

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

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. ;-)

I'm alright, just a little unwell. I've had a really painful headache today and yesterday one of my infamous stomach aches. Life's pressures are certainly getting to me, but I know I'll be alright.

A few of my online friends have noticed my abscense from MSN Messenger recently. One friend, Alex, even emailed me to make sure I was alright. (That was sweet, thanks Alex.) I told him that if he didn't see me blog in two days, or post on a newsgroup we both frequent, then he can worry. For those who only watch my blog, no more than a week should pass between posts. So don't worry!

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...

Thanks to Bill Horvath for 5 pictures and a bunch of new captions for the TODCON MX Vegas gallery. If you've already seen the gallery it is worth checking out again just to read his little quips. We're still waiting on pics from Jim, Steve, and Adam. I'll keep you posted!

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 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...

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.

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. :-)

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!

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.

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. :-)

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 :-)

Sheesh, not even one email asking if a power outage has kept me from adding new entries (see previous entry). Oh well... The answer is no, power didn't go out here, but about 20 minutes away the power was out for almost 2 days in some areas the news reported.

Anyhow, I've been busy working on CSS Assistant. This extension is going to be so much more than originally planned. I'm very excited about this one since it is something I've been wanting to code for over a year but wasn't skilled enough that long ago to pull it off. I still have a few hurdles to get over though since there are some rather advanced things going on, however I do have Danilo Celic as a co-creator on this extension to help when needed. I'll be revealing details about CSS Assistant as it nears completion. I'd say it is only at its 1/2 way point now, so it will be awhile but well worth the wait!

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. :-)

I was just thinking that Meriam-Webster's site needed a browser toolbar like Google's to let me look up words when I noticed their very subtle text ad for it. I've installed the m-w.com toolbar, and it appears to be very handy.

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!

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. :-)

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.

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...

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. :-)

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!)

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.

Ok, so you may be wondering, how I came up with the idea for DWmommy. Truth be told, it wasn't my idea; it was Massimo Foti's idea. It's sort of a long story, and one I'd rather not explain tonight. To make it short, he suggested it basically because I'm often a nuetral party and someone people seek advice from. :-) One friend suggested I turn this site into a Dear Abby type thing for web-developers. Not a bad idea... if I only had the time for it!

My son is at grandma's and should be home soon. I miss him! I still have a lot of work to do before he gets here so I better get crackin'.

Hello there! I've just made this site publicly known on the Dreamweaver newsgroup moments ago. What have I done??? :-)

Lately people have had their undies in a bundle on the Dreamweaver newsgroup. I can understand some of the frustrations, but I think people spend way to much time worrying about the way that people post. If there is someone whose style you don't care for, add them to your block list. If you learn to use your newsreader wisely, you'll not be bothered by stupid things. Can't we all just get along? :-)

I'll comply and make my signature shorter, but the Team Macromedia line is 1st to go. If we're to be required to keep it than we should be allowed an extra line in our signatures, rather than the typical 6 that Matt Brown, Community Manager, suggests. Ok, enough about this... time to get more writing done!

I'm absolutely determined to keep each page of this site XHTML strict. In doing so, that means that a form tag cannot have a name attribute. Well that just messed me up! I'm not worried about older browsers at all, which means I can use document.getElementById(). Unfortunately due to my typlexia I was using getElementsById()(notice the extra s) and was having no luck so I moved to getElementsByName(). (Yes Elements is supposed to be plural there.) I didn't get very far at all after a couple hours so I finally posted on the Dreamweaver newsgroup. Massimo jumped in right away and got me back on the track of getElementById() (and that's when I realized my earlier typlexia). I was still stuck, and it took the guidance of Danilo to get the last bit finally working. More typlexia was part of the cause (as usual). Anyhow, thanks to the help of Massimo and guidance of Danilo, I now have the popup calendars working on the archive page. Now if I can just get the SQL working right on that page...