Scott Fegette

June 03, 2008

Pandora Desktop with Adobe AIR

My favorite music browsing/listening service, Pandora, just released a beta desktop client... and it's built using Adobe AIR. Sweet! Yet another example of how easily you can move from web to desktop using AIR. As Pandora was always Flash-based, it's not a surprising move (and the design/look/feel is pretty much just like the site so not a huge jump forward in functionality), but a welcome move nonetheless- I'm not a fan of listening from my browser and much prefer the OS X dock controls the AIR desktop client provides. You can read more about the desktop beta at the Pandora team blog, and download/install the desktop beta here.

Posted by sfegette at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

MAX 2008 Registration Opens

The annual Adobe MAX conference will be in our neighborhood this year - the Moscone Center/Marriott Hotel in San Francisco - from November 16-19th, and registration just opened today so you can reserve your seat ASAP. There's been a lot of work put in already towards making MAX 08 the event to remember in 2008, with a few late-breaking changes to note for this year's conference:

• A new 'Envision' track for movers and shakers evaluating the Adobe Platform roadmap
• 30% more hands-on lab sessions, including the new MEGA-LAB (holding 300!)
• 4 parallel 'unconferences' (2 for designers, 2 for developers)
• 250 sessions to choose from
• And of course, sneak peeks and surprises galore, as you'd expect.

I'll have plenty to show at MAX myself this year (Dreamweaver being a large part of that), and although the final session and track schedules haven't been announced yet, what I've seen of the content so far is absolutely mind-blowing. Hope to see you there!

Posted by sfegette at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)

May 22, 2008

Dreamweaver 'Next' at WebVisions 2008

I'll be presenting on web design best practices/standards (along with a sneak peek of the next version of Dreamweaver) today @1:15pm at the WebVisions conference in Portland, should you be attending. Swing by, get an early look at what we've been working on back in the Dreamlabs, along with a lot of thoughts as to WHY we've been doing what we've doing with Dreamweaver. Aside from my own plug, the WebVisions track/session schedule looks great, with a speaker list that reads like a virtual who's-who of web luminaries. Given I'm up against folks like Bryan Veloso, Dan Rubin, Roger Black and Aaron Gustafson during my session hour, I'm both excited at the quality and density of content at WebVisions this year- and simultaneously bummed at what I'll miss even in the hour I'm onstage.

Currently I'm in Dave McFarland's "JavaScript for Designers" session, which is starting off quite nicely (great slides, too), but will probably be lurking in the lounge area between sessions catching up on email and feeds. Tap me on the shoulder if you're here and say hey!

Posted by sfegette at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2008

WebAssist Menu Writer

I recently got a preview of WebAssist's new product, Menu Writer - which looks to be quite a fine Dreamweaver extension for creating and managing one of the most frequently used interface patterns- drop-down menus. Although there are a lot of menu solutions available, they've done a great job of distilling them down to a nice wizard-based approach that makes it very easy to create menu-based navigation for your projects. Some highlights I noticed:

• Menu Writer pulls in existing directory structures, so you can easily suck up existing heirarchies in your server environment and create comprehensive navigation for them.
• As is the case with all the WebAssist products, there are tons of great themes and presets, and you can easily create your own for quick reuse of common themes or site styles.
• You can place multiple menus on same page - no collisions - and easily re-enter the extension interface to edit your existing menus.
• Not only does it work seamlessly with their hit product CSS Sculptor, but it also lets you specify the code structure of your menus, so even gearheads have a nice way to tweak the code and reuse it with precision.

Very cool extension!
Now Menu Writer is obviously a commercial extension, but WebAssist has a special deal going thru May 27th (normally $99, but $74.99 for the first few weeks), so get it while it's hot. :)

Posted by sfegette at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2008

Back Online

MXNA wasn't the only thing down in recent weeks, many Adobe staffers with blogs on the venerable old weblogs.macromedia.com server also had their blogs and archives inaccessible during the same stretch (and for the same reasons), myself included. Good news- my blog is back online again and should be for the near future. I'm still weighing my long-term options for migrating off the old Macromedia weblog server, but it's nice to at least have the old, familiar site up and running again here in the interim. Old permalinks here could break for a few more hours, but that should be fixed in short order as well.

Fortunately this is resolved, as I'm going to have a LOT to talk about in just a few short weeks- which I strongly suspect will be of interest to you as well. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 01:33 PM | Comments (6)

March 18, 2008

Random News Items

I've been pretty hectic between travel and SxSW the last couple weeks, but a few cool items of note may have slipped past. Catching up now...

• Kuler just got an update today, with a feature I've been drooling over since I heard about it a few weeks back- color extraction! You can now upload an image, and have Kuler extract the dominant color theme from it. Simply awesome feature- saves me from my old "Posterize > sample colors to a swatch" workflow in Photoshop. Make sure and give the Kuler team your feedback, too.
• The Web Standards Project (WaSP) announced at SxSW last week that the Dreamweaver Task Force is being renamed and expanded to the Adobe Task Force, covering a wider range of our products. Don't fear, though- our historical cooperation with WaSP from the Dreamweaver team is alive and kicking as always, and will continue into the foreseeable future. I love those guys for keeping us honest over the years!
• Chris Charlton has been working overtime again and sneaked a peek at his upcoming DW extension for Drupal developers - the Dreamweaver Themer's Kit extension for Drupal. I swear that guy never sleeps, if you've been following his developer site xtnd.us you know exactly what I'm talking about. You can also check the Adobe Technologies group he manages out over at groups.drupal.org. Get some rest, Chris- we need you for the 4th quarter, man!

Anyway, since I didn't feel like posting yet another dissection of what went wrong in Sarah Lacy's interview of Facebook's Mark Zuckerburg last week (although I missed the beginning of the interview, I was drawn to the trainwreck ending like a moth to a flame), or general 'wish you were here' posts from SXSW, so I hope these tidbits are a little lighter on the fluff. If you want the blow-by-blow from last week in Austin, you can rewind my Twitter stream, after all.

Posted by sfegette at 04:35 PM | Comments (5)

March 04, 2008

Pros and Cons of Unobtrusive JavaScript?

Web developer Steve Stringer contacted me last week, and was interested in a point-counterpoint discussion on the merits of unobtrusive JavaScript (or lack thereof), and both myself and author Dave McFarland (Dreamweaver MX - The Missing Manual) took him up on it. You can read the results at Steve's StringFoo blog here - and by all means please jump into the comments if you have strong opinions one way or the other. (I'll refrain from further commentary here, as I pretty much summed my opinions up in the article, and would prefer to channel followup conversation to the article itself, too.)

Thanks for the opportunity, Steve!

Update: Sorry for the broken link, folks- fixed now. Thanks for the heads-up!

Posted by sfegette at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

Pros and Cons of Unobtrusive JavaScript?

Web developer Steve Stringer contacted me last week, and was interested in a point-counterpoint discussion on the merits of unobtrusive JavaScript (or lack thereof), and both myself and author Dave McFarland (Dreamweaver MX - The Missing Manual) took him up on it. You can read the results at Steve's StringFoo blog here - and by all means please jump into the comments if you have strong opinions one way or the other. (I'll refrain from further commentary here, as I pretty much summed my opinions up in the article, and would prefer to channel followup conversation to the article itself, too.)

Thanks for the opportunity, Steve!

Update: Sorry for the broken link, folks- fixed now. Thanks for the heads-up!

Posted by sfegette at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2008

Fox Sports Adds Spry Photo Galleries

Very cool- just got word that Fox Sports has implemented a very nice set of Spry-based photo galleries like this one:

You can check out the new FoxSports.com Photo Galleries here:

http://msn.foxsports.com/pgStory?workingCategoryId=0

Make sure to click around with the sliding panels to check out the variety of galleries they've already implemented- really makes for a great vewing experience, and an equally great example of Spry in action. Nice job.

Posted by sfegette at 01:40 PM | Comments (1)

February 06, 2008

WaSP Bike-Hugger BBQ at SXSW 08

Headed to SXSW '08 this year? I know I am, and I generally try to hit any/all WaSP-related events open to the public as I'm a bit obsessed with standards, personally speaking. Fortunately this year there's more than just the annual meeting, the Web Standards Project are also hosting a barbecue event right across from the main event hall.

Because there's so much going on in the world wide web today (IE8, HTML5), this year we're doing an additional event: the Bike Hugger Beer & BBQ. It's open to all SXSW interactive attendees, with free beer, free food and free (?) WaSP members present to discuss the state of the browser landscape.

This will be similar to the WaSP Cafés which, by the by, have been held in Tokyo, France and Spain over the last year, with 2008's first WaSP Café (held in Paris) having a grand total of 70 people attending!

The core topic for the WaSP discussion will be the IE8 versioning proposal, which clearly has been a hot topic since the very moment it was announced on A List Apart. All the WaSPs that will be at SXSW will be present, so we hope to see you there as well!

More details on the event can be found on the WaSP site, of course.

Only downer for me is that I won't be flying in until Saturday afternoon due to another speaking gig back in the Bay Area, but I'll be trying to go straight here from the airport. Hope to see you there!

Posted by sfegette at 11:59 AM | Comments (3)

November 30, 2007

24ways.org Launches (Again)

WaSP group lead Drew McLellan has launched his annual Yule calendar of tasty web development tips as of this evening - 24ways.org- and kicked it off with a brilliant tip for supporting transparent PNG files in IE 6. Bookmark the main 24ways.org homepage for a new tip each day until Christmas. I must admit, 24ways is becoming one of my favorite annual holiday web-haunts, much more fun (and useful) than your run of the mill Yule calendar. Kudos, Drew!

Posted by sfegette at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2007

MAX - Day Zero

It's the first 'pre-day' of MAX, with all-day sessions underway as I type this backstage in the main hall for the Day 1 keynote preparation. This MAX is going to be AMAZING- aside from being sold out (Ben Forta has been getting scalping requests for tickets, no less!), the speaker and session lineup this year is truly an order of magnitude beyond what MAX 2006 presented- and that was a great show itself.

I'll be giving two sessions of my own this year:

Responsible Web Design with Dreamweaver CS3

• Monday, 10/1 - 4:30-5:30 pm
• Wednesday, 10/3 - 9:30-10:30 am

This session is one I've been wanting to do for quite a while- talking specifically about web design best practices, how they can be leveraged within Dreamweaver, and generally speaking on elevating the craft of markup/CSS/JavaScript for designers. Even if you don't use Dreamweaver, this should be an interesting session as it's pulling together pretty much everything I've experienced frequenting web design and development conferences for the last year or so.

Building AIR Applications with Dreamweaver CS3

• Monday, 10/1, 3:15 - 4:15 pm
• Tuesday, 10/2, 2:45 - 3:45 pm

Although billed as an 'intermediate' session, this is really an overview of how AIR apps can be developed using Dreamweaver CS3. If you're an intermediate HTML/JS developer/designer, this will get you started with understanding the AIR runtime, how it relates to your projects, and how to get rolling quickly. For in-depth technical dives on the AIR JS API, I'd recommend also checking out Kevin Hoyt's session today, or one of the more general AIR/JavaScript sessions as well, just to round out the subject. An hour is a very compressed amount of time for this topic- but I'll do my best to fit as much as I can into the hour :)

I'll also be helping host the Dreamweaver 'Meet The Team' session, in which pretty much any topic is fair game. Show up and ask those questions you've been itching to ask! And of course, if you see me at the conference, in the hallways, in the hotel lobby- be sure to tap me on the shoulder and say hi.

Catch you on site!

Posted by sfegette at 10:00 AM | Comments (1)

August 29, 2007

An Event Apart San Francisco - Discount!

Interested in hitting An Event Apart San Francisco this October, but on a lean budget? You can trim a svelte $50 off the ticket price until September 7th (when the earlybird registration closes), and I strongly recommend ponying up and attending if you haven't been to an AEA conference yet. The An Event Apart conference series is one of my favorites - it hits most of the major metropolitan areas so you can usually find one close to you in a given year, and there's only one track/session schedule - so gone are worries of conflicting sessions or finding a good seat from room to room. Oh yeah - and the speakers are all stellar. Seriously.

If you're interested in getting that $50 discount, just use the promo code "AEAADOB" (sans quotes) during your registration. Enjoy!

Posted by sfegette at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2007

Desktop RSS with AIR and Spry

Notorious Aussie rebel Andrew Muller has written up a great article on building an AIR RSS viewer using Adobe's Spry framework for the plumbing. Although he's using Aptana in the article, Dreamweaver users have it just as easy (if not a bit easier) following the same steps, as obviously Spry's much more integrated with DW CS3 than any other dev tool at the moment. You just need to grab the Adobe AIR extension for Dreamweaver CS3, which you can pick up for free (in beta form) at Adobe Labs.

Minor modifications to use Andrew's article with DW CS3:

• Install the AIR Extension for DW CS3 via the Extension Manager.
• I suggest creating a unique site definition for each AIR app, to help keep assets managed well
• Build the RSS application in Spry using either Andrew's explicit instructions in code, or supplement that workflow with the visual Spry tools in Dreamweaver for a richer coding/GUI experience
• Preview the application using Dreamweaver's "Preview in Browser" toolbar menu > "Preview in Adobe AIR"
• Package the application using the "Package in Adobe AIR" command from Dreamweaver's Site menu.

Simple, quick and easy! And great little article to get your feet wet with AIR and Spry. Make sure to give Andrew some props if you like the walkthrough.

Posted by sfegette at 09:51 AM | Comments (1)

August 13, 2007

Source Control and Dreamweaver

... do you use them together? If so (or even if you just use source control regularly with other web design/development tools), please jump in with your thoughts and observations at this post by Lori Hylan-Cho on the Dreamweaver team weblog - "Source Control: Do You Use It?". Lori's trying to gather feedback on how you use version control/source control systems like Subversion, CVS, Perforce (and others) in web-based projects, whether application, site or both. If you haven't used a source control system in the past but are interested in possibly doing so in the future, your comments and suggestions are also welcomed. So if this interests you even remotely, please hit that link and join the conversation. Thanks!

Posted by sfegette at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

XRAY IE Beta Available

Again proving his boundless reserve of energy and innovation, John Allsopp has just announced an Internet Explorer beta of XRAY, his sweet little page instrospection bookmarklet I noted last week in it's initial Firefox-supported release. Just one more reason why you should run - not walk - to John's site and download this little gem postehaste. Just hit the first link above, drag the 'XRAY IE' link to your bookmarks toolbar in IE, then revel in your newfound page element wisdom.

Awesome stuff. Thanks again, John- XRAY kicks some major butt.

Posted by sfegette at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2007

Be a Dreamweaver Video Star

Wanna get your mug up on the big screen at MAX this year? Enthusiasm about the CS3 launch has you warm and fuzzy, but anxious and jittery? Well, we've just the outlet for you hardcores to let off some steam.

Between August 24th and 28th Adobe will be shooting on-camera interviews of Adobe software enthusiasts, talking about the software and work they love, for a video to be shown at the MAX conference in Chicago. If selected, you'd only be needed for one of those days (individual shoots will range between 1 to 2 hours maximum, FYI). If you want to be considered for this big-screen appearance you just have to drop a note to 'adobecast@yahoo.com' providing:

• Your occupation
• What Adobe products you use
• A recent photo or two of yourself
• Contact information

If you've got an interesting story to tell - especially if you're using Dreamweaver, of course (as I'm biased that way) - drop a note to the production email account and get yourself in the running. I'm really looking forward to seeing the final piece, as well as the blooper reels... ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)

Kuler API Now Available

Kuler, the Flex-based Adobe web app for exploring color space, has become quite the thriving nexus for colorists across the ether, allowing one to experiment quickly with color themes and share them with equal ease amongst the design community. Well, good news for mashup artists worldwide- you can now access a simple RESTful API to get Kuler color themes into your own application/mashup. Here's an example to get the wheels turning. Ready? You can get all the details over at Adobe Labs. Mash away!

Update: I was recently informed that the Kuler interface was actually built in Flash- not Flex. Apologies for the mixup!

Posted by sfegette at 03:14 PM | Comments (3)

My iTunes - Flash Widgets

Amidst all the new iMac/iLife/iWork iNews this week, I somehow missed this little tidbit (thanks to JD for the nod)- Apple's new 'My iTunes' site offers several downloadable/embeddable page widgets to share your iTunes prefs with the world- and said widgets are delivered in Flash format.

Widgets and code snippets like this aren't quite breaking news, but given all the chatter recently about what Apple ISN'T doing with Flash today (most notably the iPhone, of course), I found this a rather interesting example of some cool things Apple IS doing with Flash.

Posted by sfegette at 11:58 AM | Comments (3)

August 07, 2007

XRAY - Box Model Introspection

Does John Allsopp ever sleep? I swear, between developing Style Master, speaking at conferences, and general Microformats evangelism among his other pursuits that guy is so packed full of energy he makes me feel like a cardboard cutout of myself.

John and WestCIV's latest venture is XRAY- a small JS bookmarklet you can use to quickly introspect the box model for any element on a page. Whereas Firebug is the ten-ton-monster of site introspection, XRAY is light and easy to use (and just as handy)- just click the bookmarklet on any given page, and you're shown the entire CSS inheritance hierarchy for the clicked element, it's dimensions, etc. Beauty and simplicity in a small bookmarklet.

Right now XRAY is only supported in Safari 2/3 on OS X (with some caveats for Windows Safari), and all Mozilla-variant browsers on OS X and Windows (Firefox, Flock, Camino, etc). Howver, reportedly an IE version is also in the works. Any way you slice it, XRAY is a must-have utility for anyone doing serious browser-based work, and you should install it right now. Seriously. And make sure to give John some props/feedback while you're at it.

Still reading? What are you waiting for?

Posted by sfegette at 03:10 PM | Comments (2)

August 06, 2007

Twitter/AIR Tastiness

Twitter's popular these days, that's for sure. I'm hooked, at least - and have been for over a year now. And although there's many very cool third-party clients you can use to consume your tweets, two recently came to my attention that use Adobe technology to deliver your regular tweet fix - TwitterAIR and Spaz.AIR.

First, Aaron West's sweet TwitterAIR app gets the strong nod-and-wink for being the first AIR Twitter app I'd seen (and damn nicely done, too). Respect.

Secondly - but not least - Spaz.AIR uses both the AIR runtime as well as the free Spry framework from Adobe (along with some JQuery) to do it's magic. A double shot of Adobe technology in that little package, that's cool in and of itself.

Now to be perfectly honest- I primarily use the Iconfactory's Twitteriffic as it both integrates with my menu bar well, and Growl for system notification (mainly, I've been using it for so long it's just become part of my workflow), but were I to rethink it all - which I might - either Spaz or TwitterAIR would be my successors of choice. Boo ya!

Posted by sfegette at 05:01 PM | Comments (4)

July 23, 2007

Ajaxian: Time to Take Dreamweaver Seriously?

Ajaxian's Dion Almaer asks an interesting question of the Javascript/Ajax crowd - is it time to take Dreamweaver for Ajax seriously again? I think the question is really a broader one- is it time to take Dreamweaver seriously again - to which I respond with a booming "HELLS YES". Particularly in workflow ecosystems where a combined designer/developer workflow is crucial, I might add.

The comments in the Ajaxian article's thread are interesting- I was pleased to see there's certainly a contingent of folks within giving a thumbs-up to recent release(s) of DW, along with the expected 'WYSIWYG editing is for dolts' responses, the latter of which Dion's question may actually be a valid one for. My answer is simple- I'm a designer who likes code. I spend most of my time in DW's code view exclusively, and occasionally do quick mockups/proof-of-concept work with the WYSIWYG tools. DW CS3 is speedy and nimble for me (particularly when compared to the glacial performance of MX 2004 and perhaps DW 8), and I have no problems using it regularly as a code editor - again, with the occasional drift into the GUI-driven features if I'm doing quick tests/proofs.

Now I can't (and won't) argue with those who simply prefer completely stripped-down tools like Notepad or TextMate/BBEdit - I occasionally do as well (have been a BBEdit user longer than a Dreamweaver user), and understand the minimalist approach - but the extended features of DW (along with it's recent updates for code-centric folks) are way too much to discount wholesale just for percieved street cred on my part, or the spectre of old (and now- largely resolved) code trust issues in the visual editing features.

Anyway, I'd be interested in your comments, suggestions and opinions on this, too- as Dreamweaver is a app very near and dear to my own workflow I've also got strong (and yes- potentially biased) opinions upon it myself. Sound off below, why dontcha?

Posted by sfegette at 11:52 AM | Comments (12)

CSS Advisor/Cookbook Posts... in Eclipse

Using Flex Builder or Eclipse to do your hacking? Well now, thanks to Giorgio Natili and the flexdevelopers.it crew, you can now get updates from the CSS Advisor and Flex Cookbook directly within the Eclipse IDE. Just download the free RSSPanel Eclipse plug-in here, and get started. Handy- nice work!

Posted by sfegette at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2007

Jesse James Garrett at MAX 07

While preparing to return to work next week after my sabbatical (which now seems far too short!), I was very stoked to get a Twitter message from Ted Patrick that Adaptive Path's Jesse James Garrett will be hosting an inspirational session at Adobe MAX 2007 this year in Chicago! Besides being President (and a founding partner) of Adaptive Path, Jesse is best known for coining the term 'Ajax' and by doing so, helping to define a new era of browser and standards-based web experiences. I'm really looking forward to seeing what he has to say (and really hope my own speaking slots don't conflict with his).

If you haven't signed up for MAX 2007 Chicago yet (Sept. 30th - Oct 3rd), trust me- it's going to hit a whole new level of cool this year. Get all the details at the conference site, and hopefully I'll see you there!

(And I'll also be back in full force on Monday, so warm up your feedreaders. Lots to talk about.)

Posted by sfegette at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2007

Return of the Son of the CS3 Icons

Reactions to the Adobe CS3 'periodic table' product icons were mixed, with some strong negative opinions flying about. However, some folks not only got on well with the design system, but took it to the next level- check out this completely CS3-ized dock - links/reference courtesy of the Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Now I didn't mind the CS3 icons after an initial adjustment period, but this may be taking it a bit too far... I can't even guess at most of those applications in there. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 10:40 AM | Comments (2)

May 18, 2007

Adobe Exchange Updated

The Adobe web team just announced that the Exchange just launched it's first significant UI update in 4 years last night - in many respects a simple reversion from it's circa-2003 Flash-based interface to a lean, mean and quick-loading HTML front end. Functionality and features are mostly the same as before, but now some of the long-standing issues with the venerable Flash UI (lack of scroll wheel support, faster load times, ability to print views, et al) have been addressed, and without requiring you to completely relearn the application.

The Adobe web team's David Hatch talks a little more about the update in this forums thread, and notes that this is the first, interim release of several updates the web team will be making to the Exchange app based on extensive user research across the Adobe product communities they've been doing over the past few months. David's also noted some current issues with the updated Exchange UI - be sure to visit the thread and let the web team know what you think - and of course report bugs you run into so they can be addressed downstream.

(Note: comments are closed in this post, as discussion is being centralized in David's forum thread instead.)

Posted by sfegette at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2007

Map of Online Communities

Ever get lost navigating the treacherous and vast waters of online communities? This handy Map of Online Communities gives you the 411 in most awesome fashion (link courtesy of Kottke.org). Regions and countries are sized in approximation of their actual community/membership size.

I think I spend most of my time in the countries surrounding the Sea of Culture (which is sadly ironic in and of itself), but would really enjoy some wreck diving at the shipwreck of the SS Howard Dean (just east of Huffington Post island). Enjoy!

Posted by sfegette at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2007

ALA 2007 Web Design Survey

I often ponder, as I look out upon the crowds at conferences I attend, just how much the topology of web designers (and developers) as a market has changed in the 12 or so years I've been involved with it. But my colloquial opinion is just one view onto a rather large community. So I'm pleased to see that A List Apart is starting an annual survey of the web design market to get more aggregate data on the topic. I'm really looking forward to reading the results - and if you've already read this far, I'd strongly recommend taking the survey and representing your own experience and views.

Participate in ALA's 2007 Web Design Survey here, and if you're so inclined, discuss the survey and it's questions here to help shape the process in the future. A great idea who's time has certainly come.

Posted by sfegette at 08:14 AM | Comments (1)

April 20, 2007

35 Designers x 5 Questions

This has to be the most awesome web design article I've read in a while. Smashing Magazine interviews 35 designers with 5 questions, resulting in 175 awesome tips and tricks from leading voices in the web design community. Great source of inspiration, advice and know-how, strongly recommended.

Check out the article.

(Thanks to Don Crowley for the twitter-nod and link.)

Posted by sfegette at 02:43 PM | Comments (3)

April 11, 2007

Welcome, Jonathan!

Adobe Developer Programs group manager Jonathan Wall has finally kicked off his weblog on Blogspot- and I'm sure he'll have some great insight to share going forward. If you're curious about the future of Adobe developer programs - even if you're not - you'll want to add Jonathan to your blogroll. Drop by his weblog and say hello!

http://jonathanwall.blogspot.com/

Posted by sfegette at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2007

CS3 Launch at An Event Apart

I've been answering questions all day at An Event Apart about the new CS3 products, in anticipation of the launch event in an hour. Even better, I gave away (with the assistance of Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria and Jeffrey Zeldman) three advance copies of CS3 Web Premium to three lucky attendees - Lynn Morehouse, Robert Cherny and Erik Peterson. Congrats, guys! I hope you enjoy the new goodies once they get shipping.

It's been incredibly illuminating to talk to so many attendees that use various groupings of Adobe creative/web software, as An Event Apart is a really great mix of disciplines all centering on site design and development. I've talked to educators, government developers, indie web production shops, animators and video pros- just in the last hour alone. It'll take days to wade through all my notes and pass them along to the appropriate product teams, but they're all golden.

(And honestly, the track schedule at AEA Boston is so awesome I've been completely buried in soaking up the speakers' wisdom at every opportunity.)

Make sure and hit the launch event in about an hour for more details, and I can't wait to start blogging more about the cool new features. I won't be doing a 'feature a day' campaign as I did with the Studio 8 launch, but will do my best to start kicking down some dirt on the new features shortly. Keep posted!

Posted by sfegette at 11:29 AM | Comments (1)

CS3 - Yes Virginia, It's Now Official.

Rock and roll. I don't have to dodge your questions anymore. Today we announced the Adobe Creative Suite 3 release, including 6 suite groupings to fill your respective needs- Design and Web suites (in Standard and Premium editions), Production Premium (for video/film pros) and the hard-drive filling Master Collection, including pretty much everything you'll ever need from Adobe.

You can read more details here at the official site, and at 3:30 Eastern (12:30 PST) catch the webcast of the CS3 launch event here.

We'll be giving three copies of the CS3 Web Premium suite away to three lucky An Event Apart attendees today in Boston (where I'm current at, watching Cameron Moll speak), so make sure to come back from lunch promptly in case your name gets called. Lori Hylan-Cho, Lynn Grillo and myself will be around for the rest of the day too, if you have questions. So now that the cone of silence is lifted, come up, say hi, and let's talk!

Posted by sfegette at 06:29 AM | Comments (5)

March 26, 2007

Zeldman on Site Editorial @AEA Boston

Be brief, but clear. Focus on the appropriate message.

(sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Posted by sfegette at 08:26 AM | Comments (2)

March 21, 2007

MS Watch - Kudos for Adobe Labs

Joe Wilcox has some praise for Adobe Labs down at the bottom of his post on Microsoft Watch today:

The Apollo Alpha comes out through Adobe Labs, which is one of the best unsung assets of Adobe's Macromedia acquisition. Adobe is reaching a different developer community than before the acquisition. Over the last year, Adobe Labs has released some intriguing incubation projects, such as Flash Lite, Lightroom, Mars, Soundbooth and, now, Apollo.

Awesome- it's great to hear Labs get some props, as it's certainly got a warm spot in my own heart. As the project manager driving the initial October 2005 launch of Macromedia (now Adobe) Labs, that puts a big smile on my face. I handed the management reins over to my long-time cohort Dan Taborga back in early 2006 - I'm more of an entrepreneurial/short-term-attention-span type than a long-term program manager - but before doing so was overjoyed at how well the Labs concept was recieved by the Adobe management both before and after the acquisition. The Lightroom team was literally queued up to release their public alpha within days of the acquisition's close- I couldn't have asked for a better reception than that from our then-new Adobe management structure.

I personally feel that transparency in development processes is mandatory for products to really match their community's expectations, and to that end, I can't think of many projects that I've helped get off the ground in prior years that I'm prouder of than Adobe Labs. My baby's all grown up now.

Here's to many more years of public software development with tight community interaction. Cheers, Adobe Labs (and keep kicking butt with it, Dan)!

Posted by sfegette at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2007

Browser Wars- Episode II: Attack of the DOMs

Ever wondered what it would be like to get three of the key browser manufacturers together in a room to hash out the state of the Document Object Model between their respective products? Next Wednesday from 6-9:30pm (PST) at Yahoo! headquarters, you'll have the chance to witness it first hand (should you be in the area).

Douglas Crockford of Yahoo! (also of JSON reknown), will lead a discussion with browser experts Chris Wilson of the Microsoft IE team, Mozilla ecosystem development director Mike Shaver, and Opera's CTO Hakon Wium Lie. You can expect subjects such as downstream DOM Level 3 support, Acid2 compatibility, microformats and more to get microphone time, and it's bound to be an amazing discussion.

Registration is free:
http://browserwarii.eventbrite.com/
And for more information on the event, follow this link:
http://www.svwebbuilder.com/

This is worth juggling my own travel schedule for, so I'll likely see you there. Make sure and bang that link above and register early for the event, I suspect this one may fill up quickly. Awesome.

Posted by sfegette at 02:49 PM | Comments (2)

February 08, 2007

Web Directions North - Closing Day

It needs to be said - Jared Spool rocks. Hard. Mr. Spool just got offstage from delivering the closing keynote at Web Directions North and literally slayed the audience with his rapier-sharp sense of humor and unbelievably-deep sense for experience design. If you ever get the chance to see Jared speak, drop everything and just do it. You will get schooled, make no mistake about it- and enjoy every minute of it.

But the closing keynote was just one part of a fantastic day in Vancouver- I missed part of a great opening keynote on iterative application design by Kelly Goto due to catching up with Molly in the foyer (always a pleasure) discussing life, travels and her new role with Microsoft as contract standardista.

I also recorded two 'wild' (i.e. no mic setup) interviews today- which if the quality holds, I may podcast next week after a cleanup pass. Otherwise they may get transcribed and posted for your reading pleasure.

The first was with Derek Featherstone, and we talked for about 20 minutes on accessibility from a grassroots perspective. If you're not in a government or educational institution that requires compliance, it's easy to overlook designing for disabled viewers, and Derek had some great insight into both how you can approach accessible development as well as the recent state of the industry. I can't think of a better guy to help illustrate why - and how - you can start making your site projects as viewable and accessible as possible. Keep posted for details.

Jeremy Keith sat down with me for darn near an hour later in the afternoon (after we both caught Steffen Meschkat and Kaitlin Sherwood's mashup session, yet another stellar presentation). And this interview, I've gotta tell you, was a great one. We covered everything from Ajax frameworks, to visual tools, to scripting best practices, to web standards, you name it- Jeremy's a brilliant guy with a lot to say and had I not checked my watch we probably would have chatted straight through Jared's closing keynote. It's clear that I'm going to have to pare that recording down to a smaller size, but I'm not sure what to trim (except for a few sections in which we discussed some software under development and the expected NDA 'cone of silence').

I also ran into Tantek Çelik in the hallway and quickly talked microformats - I'm going to have to get back with him in San Francisco and spend more time on the topic as that's another area that we (as well as Jeremy) could have spent easily another hour or two upon.

Right now I'm cooling my heels before the Media Temple party (those guys are notorious for their closing-night blowouts), so I'd better get this posted and head on over. More soon, but after tomorrow's ski/snowboard excursion to Whistler. Lots of work, now it's time to play. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

Vancouver WDN - Day 1 Hijinks

Day 2 of the Web Directions North conference is kicking off in less than an hour, and sketchy network connections have relegated my liveblogging aspirations to after-the-fact catchups like this. But in retrospect, day 1 was well worth the recap, as it was jam-packed with great sessions and people.

Molly's keynote - CSI:Vancouver, Crimes Against Web Standards - had both Molly and ourselves participating in a group confessional and absolving ourselves of our past sins against web standards. My confession (much thanks to Mols for having me lead off the participatory part of the program, of course!) was for both writing several articles on table-based layouts back in the mid-90's during the Netscape 1.2 era, which - of course - featured the now-hated nested table design techniques. I also took confession for Dreamweaver's early transgressions in rather densely obfuscated code (a sin even Molly had to admit we've been doing our best to absolve for some time now!), as did Internet Explorer, GoLive and other maligned software vendors. It was - to be honest - a great excursion into the sordid history of web design and the many folks confessing their own sins (including Molly's own) made it a bit of a group bonding experience to boot.

Jeremy and Derek presented the next session I attended, "Web Apps - Ajax Kung-Fu Meets Accessibility Feng Shui", a fantastic overview built up from Jeremy's Hijaxian techniques for progressively-enhancing web experiences and applications, through Derek's discussion of how designing (and planning design) for assistive technologies and accessibility. The two really did a great job of tag-teaming this subject, one I expect I'll be posting more thoughts on going forward as I'm becoming a bit obsessed with the subject of late.

Session three on my dance card was the Microformats talk, with John Alsopp and Dan Cederholm building on Tantek's earlier (alas, during the Jeremy/Derek session- so I missed it) overview of Microformats. John talked the audience through the specifics of hCard and hCalendar as well as some of the draft specifications such as hReview, and showing examples of some of the commercial and public uses of Microformats, such as LinkedIn's newly-released support for hResume (awesome). Dan delivered the finishing blow with an amazing discussion of design principles for Microformats, styling a vCard with us (here's an example that John published a month or so ago) using his cutting-edge CSS kung-fu and showing some practical applications he's used in his wine review site, Cork'd, with both hCard and hReview. Great stuff.

The closing keynote session was delivered by Joe Clark in his razor-sharp style, and centered on designing for accessibility. Joe also dropped a bit of a bomb on the audience, announcing his open letter to Tim Berners-Lee to drop WCAG 2 (which prompted much discussion, including this nod from Derek on the WaSP site). Joe then walked us through a design project-in-process and their thought processes around it, a very interesting view of the methodology he uses when approaching projects indeed.

The evening wrapped up with the welcome reception hosted by Adobe, in which drinks flowed and finger foods were consumed, and much conversation and merriment ensued. It was great meeting Veerle and Geert after such close calls as SXSW 06 in the past, and doing what I usually do- talking to just about everyone I can.

Today's conference should be equally as jam-packed, but I'd better get my schwerve on as it starts in about 45 minutes. Coffee is required. More soon.

Posted by sfegette at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2007

Web Directions North - Day One

Today kicked off the Web Directions North conference in Vancouver, being the pre-conference (optional) workshop day. Kenneth Berger (Dreamweaver PM) and I attended Derek Featherstone's 'Accessibility 2.0' session, a full-day exploration into the state of developing accessible websites, and supporting assistive technologies. And boy, did I get a schooling. Derek really knows his stuff, despite the occasional flakiness of JAWS and some tough questions from the peanut gallery he lead us quite capably from the basics of accessible web design well into the complexities of building rich Ajax-based web apps that support assistive technologies.

I've struggled in the past with both justifying the extra development required to truly build accessible web apps to (former) clients, and one of the rather difficult bits of overhead involved with this is getting hold of assistive technology like the aforementioned JAWS to test sites with. Derek recommends - and I can't disagree it's a great approach - that as opposed to becoming an expert with assistive technology that it's more effective to contract help from real users to test your sites and applications. Another great pointer from Derek was the Firefox extension Fangs - which although is not a screenreader per se (nor a replacement for one), allows you to review a text-based representation of how a screenreader may interpret your page and looks to be very handy indeed for baseline checks of sites in development to flag and correct accessibility issues. Check it out, if you haven't already.

Hijax was covered liberally in regards to accessibility - which I won't go into in depth but if you're not familiar with the concept, is the Jeremy Keith-coined phrase used to describe best practices in developing progressively-enhanced and gracefully-degrading Javascript applications. I'm looking forward to Jeremy's session tomorrow (with Derek) to go deeper into the subject, as well as getting some time to chat with him on the subject for a possible podcast. It sounds like he may have as many questions for myself as I do for him, which should make for a lively conversation. I also plan to get more details about his upcoming book, Bulletproof Ajax - which is releasing next week, and looks to cover Hijaxian methodologies quite definitively (and I've got on preorder at Amazon as we speak).

Anyway- we're off to a great start at what looks to be a fantastic conference - Adobe will be sponsoring the evening welcome reception tomorrow after a full day of breakout sessions (in two tracks), but for now I've got pages and pages worth of notes from today's session and my hallway conversations to wade through and clean up. Great day- and I'm sure I'll have more to talk about tomorrow, too. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 05:49 PM | Comments (2)

Vancouver- Pre-WDN

I'm just shaking off last night's flight to Vancouver and preparing to hit the first day of workshops at Web Directions North. I'll be in Derek Featherstone's "Accessibility 2.0" workshop today, getting a schooling in the latest in building accessible sites and leveraging assistive technologies. Kenneth Berger (Dreamweaver PM) and I flew in last night, and were able to meet up with some of the usual suspects in the hotel bar last night- Molly Holzchlag (fresh off a nice stint of time off in the UK), design superhero Andy Clarke, CSS guru Stephanie Sullivan, not to mention the cool guys from co-sponsor Media Temple along with a bunch of conference attendees. If the off-hours conversations have been any indication of the depth and range this conference will cover, I can't wait to get started today.

Pull me aside and say hi if you catch me in the hallways- I'd love to hear what you're doing with Adobe software these days, and get some soundbites for the soon-to-be-resurrected podcasts. And please keep posted- I'll be updating with snippets from the conference as we go. This is gonna be a GREAT conference, too- even if we weren't all hitting the Whistler slopes afterwards. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2007

Web Directions North

I'm tying up loose ends in the office today, and making my way to Vancouver next week for the Web Directions North conference, which looks to be an absolute blast. I won't be presenting at this conference - sponsors do not take speaking roles at WDN and Adobe is a key sponsor - instead I'll be roaming the sessions, soaking up the wisdom, and talking with as many attendees and speakers as possible on the subject of where you want Adobe's design and web tools to head in the future. Oh- and I'll also be getting my share of quality time in on the Whistler slopes, a very fortuitous benefit of attending the conference in and of itself. :D

In particular, I'm really looking forward to seeing Jared Spool's session- if you've not caught the usability guru's speaking engagements before they're a not-to-miss opportunity. All the speakers at WDN are truly top-notch however, it looks to be a great conference. If you see me at the conference, pull me aside and give your thoughts about Adobe's products and such- I'll be recording podcast fodder throughout, but really just love meeting customers and fellow web developers/designers whenever I'm offered the chance to get out from under my rock/desk here in San Francisco. I'll do my best to 'blog highlights from the conference and shoot lots of pictures, too.

See you in Vancouver- and don't forget to bring warm socks. :)

Posted by sfegette at 01:54 PM | Comments (1)

January 16, 2007

An Event Apart Boston- Discount

One of the few events I'm getting out to this year is An Event Apart Boston on March 26-27 (after missing all the previous AEAs), featuring a great speaker lineup including Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, Cameron Moll, as well as Steve Krug- author of the popular tome on web usability 'Don't Make Me Think'. Oh yeah, and you can't forget that Eric Meyer chap as well. ;-) One hell of a lineup, you won't want to miss it. And being a 2-day/1-track event, you won't have to worry about choosing between kick-ass speakers, either. No collisions. :D

On the fence as funds are tight this year? No sweat- you can even save a few bills off the face value. As Adobe's a sponsor of the event, you can chop $50 off the registration fee at the official website by entering the discount code 'AEAADOB' (no quotes, of course).
(Of course, JD blogged this discount last week- but it certainly bears repeating.)

See you in MA in March- and you'll probably want to jump on that discount soon as early bird pricing (currently $795 - $745 after the discount) expires on February 26th, and jumps up another bill to $895 ($845 after the discount). Chop chop!

Posted by sfegette at 02:35 PM | Comments (2)

October 25, 2006

What's up at MAX?

One thing's for sure- the Thursday keynote will be a great one, it's the much-anticipated 'sneak peek' session of the event. I'll be presenting one of those sneak peeks- of particular interest to Dreamweaver aficionados. No more details, though- just make sure to show up tomorrow and get the 411 in person. ;-)

That's not to say that there haven't already been some great sneak peeks onstage, of course. Tuesday's keynote demonstrated slick integration between After Effects, Photoshop and Flash, Dreamweaver/Photoshop, and even a little look into the future of Fireworks (those annoying rumors of it's demise were HIGHLY overrated, I might add). If you haven't read Jen DeHaan's recap of the event, you'll want to do that right now.

Today's keynote focused on mobile and Breeze/Acrobat, and again- Jen DeHaan wins the 'most butt-kicking onsite reporting' award for putting together an exhaustive rundown of the various topics covered in the Wednesday session.

What have I been up to personally? Aside from darn near running my voice rough talking to everyone I met in the hallways and sessions, my first session on Flash Video went really well. So well, in fact, that the 'hallway cops' had to kick out all the folks who had taken up perches in the aisles and side walls in my room. Sorry 'bout that, folks- but you can still catch the repeat preso session tomorrow (Thursday) at 10:30 am - right after the sneaks keynote.

I also was MC for the Dreamweaver 'Meet the Team' birds-of-a-feather session last night (Tuesday), which was a lot of fun- and we got hit with a lot of great questions/comments and general conversations.

Oh yeah- did you notice that Flex Builder 2 for the Mac is now available on Labs? Get it while it's hot (and it's scorching hot, I might add).

Anyway, I guess my lack of posting is more related to the amount of fun and 'engaging experiences' here at the conferences, but I wanted to at least post this quick update to let you know what's going on from my POV here in Vegas. If you catch me in the hallways please come up and say hi!

Posted by sfegette at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2006

Vegas, baby!

It's a crazy Friday at the Adobe office- our last work day before the MAX conference kicks off. Everyone's nose-down trying to get last-minute tweaks into their presentations, demo files and the like. And I'm no different.

I'll be speaking at the MiniMAX 'unconference' on Sunday night- specifically on After Effects animation (with some assistance from both Adobe Illustrator and Flash Pro), then presenting at MAX proper on both Tuesday and Thursday on Flash Video- the session rather verbosely titled "Video & Web: The Simple Guide to Shooting, Editing, and Publishing Web Video". If you've caught my 'Producing Video for Flash' sessions at other cons/Breezos this year, this session is a wider variant you'll probably want to catch- more of an end-to-end exploration of taking a single greenscreen shot all the way through a pipeline from production, to After Effects (color correction/keying), to encoding, to interactive authoring in Flash 8. Whereas my Flashforward/online sessions were largely focused on best practices for producing video, this one will be more hands-on and less slides. A bit more tactical, if you will.

And finally, I'll be presenting a 5-minute demo in the much-anticipated Sneak Peek keynote session from 8:30-10am on Thursday, of particular interest to Dreamweaver loyalists. That's all I'm saying about that demo here- if you're interested, you'll just need to attend Thursday morning's session in the 'big room' and see it in person. Besides my own demo, there's a lot of other cool sneaks planned, you certainly won't want to miss it. :)

See you in Vegas!

Posted by sfegette at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2006

Too. Much. News.

Wow, there's been a lot of new developments to talk about over the last 24 hours or so- despite the fact that the MAX Las Vegas keynote isn't for another 5 days (where most big surprise announcements get unleashed, in my experience).

First up- the great news that Flash Player 9 for Linux is now available as a beta on Adobe Labs. Put on your tux and dig it- the Linux community has been waiting quite a while for this news, and it seems to be very stable and feature-rich for a beta version, and the feedback so far on Mike's weblog has been very positive. Find bugs? Log 'em here.

Next- Project Seven's Al Sparber tipped me (and many others) off that Internet Explorer 7 has been officially released for download (not available in Windows Update yet, however). Regressive content testing is now underway in earnest across the web design world- this event's been a long time coming. What do you think- is IE7 ready for prime time? Initial explorations seem pretty positive on my end, but it's still early yet.

And finally, Adobe announced the acquisition of Serious Magic this morning, a Folsom, CA-based producer of some seriously COOL video software. Being a bit of a camera/production wonk myself, I've been a fan of DVRack for quite some time- and as a whole, the Serious Magic suite of products should present some very interesting complements to the Adobe video product line in the future.

Now that's a good day in technology, if you ask me. My head's still spinning from just these last three announcements, and if history is any indication, I expect that after next week's MAX conference in Vegas, there will be even more to talk about. Good times.

Posted by sfegette at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2006

MAX Deadline Looms - are you in?

Yes, I know that JD, Ray and others have already blogged this today- but as the MAX registration site will be closing down sometime between Sunday and Monday, if you've been on the fence as to whether to attend the annual MAX conference - in Las Vegas this year - today's the time to make the call.

There's going to be a lot of cool stuff shown at the keynotes this year (and I say this with confidence as I'll be one of those showing a double-super-secret sneak peek myself), not to mention a stellar lineup of programs and speakers. If you're really interested in the cutting-edge of Adobe products like Apollo and Flex, I'm pretty certain this year's MAX is going to be a great one to attend.

If you are headed to Vegas for MAX (or decide to do so this week), make sure and flag me down at the conference and say hi. I'll be speaking on Flash Video both Tuesday and Thursday, FYI. Outside of speaking, my favorite part about MAX is meeting and talking with all the cool folks who attend - in particular putting faces to those disassociated names, forums nicknames and email addresses. Look forward to seeing you there, too!

Posted by sfegette at 01:49 PM | Comments (2)

September 29, 2006

Goodbye MXNA... hello AXNA?

Just a quick post, as I noticed the header of the RSS aggregator here at Adobe just changed it's graphical header from the old-familiar 'Macromedia XML News Aggregator' to 'Adobe XML News Aggregator'. Not sure of any larger context/changes behind the graphic switch (although had suspected it was coming for some time), but must admit finding myself a bit nostalgic at the moment... :)

Posted by sfegette at 04:08 PM | Comments (3)

Question 4 - What is CSS' ceiling?

The next question from Dallas' design panel is one from Neill Harmer:

"I keep hearing 'we can fix that with CSS'. Do you ever see CSS getting to a point like HTML - where we are asking it to do too much? Meaning - what is CSS' ceiling?"

Good question, and one I'll probably have a slightly different view on 6 months from now, and again in a year, and so on... ;-)

Answer: In some ways we're already hitting various ceilings within the current CSS specs, but it centers more to browser differences/limitations being the 'ceiling' (at least for me), and of course having the current working proposals in progress at the W3C nailed down so they CAN be implemented.

There are a lot of CSS3 features that I'm really interested in being able to use myself, specifically multicolumn layout and paged media (so you could even look at these being 'ceilings' for the time being), but it really depends on when these specs are finalized... and then implemented in the browser. That's usually the gating factor in my opinion, cross-browser compatibility. If you follow the forward-looking draft specs at the W3C there's plenty of cool features on the horizon we can't get to, which is more a case of wanting shiny new toys instead of being happy with where we're at right now. I guess you could call that a self-imposed ceiling of sorts?

There's a pretty good list of CSS limitations on wikipedia I like to refer to as well, which sums up some of the current thinking on this subject much better than I'd be able to in a single blog post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets#CSS_limitations

Honestly, this is a pretty open (and subjective) question that would have really benefitted from a panel discussion - so feel free to pop in your own opinions/thoughts in comments as well. I'd be really interested in seeing the limitations of CSS from others' eyes myself.

Posted by sfegette at 03:55 PM | Comments (6)

September 28, 2006

Question 3 - Usability Testing

Question 3 from last weekend's unanswered list is from Mike Lyman:

"What is the best software to use to A/B test a site w/changes to get better conversion?"

Great question. My answer's probably going to be a strange one- the best software is eyes, brains and fingers. To clarify that (which would seem necessary, eh?), I prefer to do direct usability tests of the site at different phases of the project - pre-testing before determining new designs, post-testing of new designs/layouts, and then very careful click/path analysis after launch to see if the 'real world' reaction follows suit. (I'm hoping you got a chance to see Jared Spool's session at the Jam Session- which probably answered this question far better than I could).

There are, of course, eyetracking software packages that can literally tell you where user attention goes in relation to a page design with stunning degrees of accuracy (Morae being my favorite - which may answer your question, but keep reading, please!), but I usually fall back to a warm body in a chair- specifically, the users of your site. Recruit a few site visitors (perhaps people who have responded through online contact forms, or expressed issues with the site already?), and then determine the real user paths you want to support with the design/layout/navigation, and create specific, goal-oriented test cases - then record the results. You might even want to consider the same tests with people who aren't familiar with your products and services and site, to really see what a fresh set of eyes and opinions can bring to your current design.

For example, if one goal of your redesign is to improve the conversion of inbound clicks to sales, a use case could be simply 'from the home page, find a product that lets you do (X), and then purchase it'. The paths and flows a real-world user will take may astound you, but are priceless in determining how link structure, site navigation and general design may be hindering the simplest of tasks.

This 'first round' of testing usually drives the requirements for the redesign. For example, if no one clicked on the 'store' link while performing the task example above, but instead shopped the products section of the site and added items to a cart from their catalog pages, you may want to examine the position and relevance of the store link entirely - or perhaps make the catalog itself more front-and-center in the design/navigation so less clicks are required to find and select a product for purchase.

A second round of testing with the new design/layout/site usually helps validate your design decisions. Did the user task behavior change appropriately to better support your goals? Or did it introduce new problems? This way you can start drawing direct correlations between cause and effect- how your design affects user interaction.

I realize this may be a bit of a dodge of your question- which software best supports this process - but honestly I have a minor lack of faith in heuristic software to find these navigational and design shortcomings, as they just don't mirror real humans clicking on real links, buttons and items on your site. Plus, the manual approach is far more fun. ;-)

Jakob Nielsen has some good (and recent) thoughts on user testing here, and of course I've adopted many of my own opinions and thoughts on UE testing from Jared Spool and the UIE team (attended my first seminar with Jared about 10 years ago, and the advice I got there has stuck with me to this day).

Hope this helps answer your question (specifically as this is not my forte, but something I've done a lot and really enjoy), if anyone has additional thoughts/critiques, please bang out a comment below.

Posted by sfegette at 01:13 PM | Comments (2)

September 25, 2006

Flickr-ing the Webmaster Jam Session

Coffee Cup's J Cornelius just posted his photostream from last weekend's event in Dallas (joining Giovanni Gallucci's photostream of the event here), and you can check it out here. You can also see ALL the photos tagged for the event here. And if all this Jam Session activity piques your interest (which it really should), visit the Webmaster Jam Session site and sign up to get pinged when the 2007 event(s) are announced, I guarantee this is one event you'll want to catch next time around.

Posted by sfegette at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2006

Webmaster Jam Session - Day Two

Very tired. Must fly home now. Quite content-sated, and smiling wide. Today kicked off with a web design panel fielding questions - hosted by Coffee Cup Software's CEO Nick Longo, and featuring (l to r) UE expert and Digital Web Magazine founder Nick Finck, myself, Nick Longo, design superhero Andy Budd (who can rock the mike with the best of 'em!), CSS rockstar Eric Meyer, Microsoft's Chris Wilson, accessibility guru Derek Featherstone and Bryan Veloso, master of all things Photoshop. TheAgencyBlog.com's Giovanni Gallucci gets the nod for this shot, and you can check out his entire event photostream here, too.

My session was from 2-3 pm, somewhat broadly titled 'Adobe Product Showcase', in which I demoed the Spry framework, and a little bit of Flex/Apollo/FAB goodness (note for the curious- if you caught the keynote or Danny/Christian's Apollo sessions at Flashforward Austin last week, you got a much deeper dive! I just covered the highlights here). Thanks to everyone who attended, and all the great questions during Q&A (as always, I ran about 10 minutes long). I really love speaking at these events, as I always feel like I learn more from the audience than any book, weblog or news source.

Keep an eye out for upcoming Jam Sessions- well worth attending. The sessions were great, the speakers were STELLAR (well, with the possible exception of myself), and the CoffeeCup Software folks did an amazing job of pulling it all together so brilliantly for a v1.0 event. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 07:30 PM | Comments (5)

September 22, 2006

Webmaster Jam Session - Day One

One word- sweet. The Dallas Webmaster Jam Session has been an awesome conference so far, I'm glad to hear this is the first of many more Jam Sessions to come. Eric Meyer's keynote kicked off the day with a great history (from a well-travelled point of view, I might add) of the long crawl CSS has taken from a well-intentioned spec, to a wide morass of varying browser support around the turn of the century, to the current state of cross-browser CSS with IE7 close on the horizon.

Derek Featherstone and Ethan Marcotte's session followed (unfortunately at the same time as Chris Wilson's IE 7 preso, which I'll have to gem up on afterwards), a great deep-dive on why standards are important, particularly from an accessibility perspective. Great slides, too (apparently Ethan was dressing 'em up just before the session, something I've been doing to my slides for tomorrow all day today!).

Ethan, Derek and I grabbed lunch after their session- and we caught up on all sorts of stuff- accessibility and Spry, why we're all so busy lately, Derek's Ironman training regimen (nice!). Nice to get a quiet conversation outside the big sessions, most definitely.

I'm currently in Bryan Veloso's session, which is a great grab bag of tips, tricks, suggestions, and techniques on the venerable-yet-still-superhuman Photoshop. This man knows his stuff cold. I'll be grabbing a quick coffee break before Jared Spool's session on usability - 'Good Content Must Suck' - which should be a mandatory session, IMHO. Craig Clevenger (formerly the editorial counterpart to my webmaster role at now-defunct Santa Barbara software company MetaCreations, before he became a rock-star author) and I attended one of Jared's workshops for UIE on web usability about 8 years ago to prep up for a major site redesign, and Mr. Spool doled out so much insight on the dirty truth of usability my head spun continuously for the next few years.

If today is any indication, you simply can't miss the next Webmaster Jam Session, wherever it's held. Fantastic speakers, great tracks and management, it's definitely going to be one of my favorite cons this year (and after attending 2 Flashforwards and SXSW, that's saying quite a lot). Kudos to all the guys at CoffeeCup Software (in particular, the organizational wizardry of J Cornelius) for such a kick-butt event so far!

Posted by sfegette at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

At the Webmaster Jam Session...

It's morning in Dallas, Texas, and the Webmaster Jam Session will kick off in about an hour with Eric Meyer's keynote, "A Decade of Style". I'll be speaking on Saturday on Adobe's web software, specifically the Spry framework, Flex 2 (on the Macintosh!), and a quick demo of Apollo, along the lines of what I showed a month or so ago in Tokyo. And of course, doing a whole lot of Q&A, as there's still a ton of questions in the wake of the Macromedia acquisition that get asked at these events.

The Jam Session really looks to be a great, focused event for web pros- I'm looking forward to hearing Derek Featherstone's sessions on accessibility- you may come to these events as a speaker, but personally I get even more out of them as an attendee.

Posted by sfegette at 06:42 AM | Comments (3)

May 21, 2006

TODCon - Last Day in Orlando

What a great conference- small and close-knit, you get as much from the attendees here in Orlando as you do from the sessions. I spoke today on Delivering Flash Video, the sequel to yesterday's 'Producing Video for the Web' session (thx for the recap, Kim!) which focused on best practices for video production in (non-linear editor of choice) and After Effects. Today I concentrated on the Flash Pro end of the workflow, bringing produced, final video files into the Flash environment via various encoding options and then going nuclear with interactivity: cue point-driven navigation and subtitling/localization systems, transparency tricks, and dynamically 'injecting' ads into your video streams. As always, I ran about 15 minutes over... I have serious issues with getting everything I want to talk about shoved into a fixed-time session. ;-)

I've got a recording of the birds-of-a-feather session Paul Gubbay and I held yesterday morning as a keynote of sorts, and have been transcribing it into notes this morning. It's fascinating to see what people bring to the conversation when you completely open the floor to questions.

Now admittedly I haven't been blogging this con much, but it's partially due to the fact that broadband in my room isn't working (dammit!) and my between-session time is consumed with hallway conversations. Kim Cavanaugh has been posting some great coverage from the show, however. Vicki Berry has been the main Flickr photojournalist at TODCon, too.

I'm tag-teaming with CMX and Humber College prankster Tom Green on another video session at 2pm EST (completely unscripted- it should be ...ahem ... interesting?), and then dashing for my flight. One thing's for certain- this weekend has FLOWN by. Great time.

Posted by sfegette at 09:40 AM | Comments (2)

May 20, 2006

TODCon check-in

Wow- have I really been offline for two days now? It's defintely because of the conversations here in Orlando, culminating this morning at the Birds of a Feather session that Paul Gubbay (director of engineering for Dreamweaver) and I held this morning to field any and all questions from the crowd. Despite the 8:30am start time (5:30am for my West Coast internal clock!), the room was filled up and lively. We got lots of great questions and feedback on a variety of subjects from Spry to Breeze licensing and hosting to Dreamweaver's development process, and I expect it'll take a little while for me to transcribe all the points from the recording I've made.

More later after my video session today, which is part one of a two-part series I'll conclude tomorrow. As with many of the other attendees dragging this morning from a LONG night of socializing and 'community building', right now I need a BIG cup of coffee.

Great conference. Although big events like MAX are great for sensory overload, there's something to be said for the close, intimate nature of cons like TODCon where you can actually get to know ALL the names and faces in the span of three short days... ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 07:46 AM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2006

Pimp my TODCon Video Sessions

Indeed- as Jesse notes, I'm going to be speaking at TODCon 2006 in sunny Orlando, Florida this May, on both Optimizing Video for the Web (focusing on the front-end production of video that's headed towards digital delivery), and Delivering Flash Video (focusing on the latter half of that workflow- all the various ways you can rip up FLV video inside a Flash project). Although both will be based on material I've covered in prior presos, outside of the topics I'm considering the details for these 'open source'- what do you want to hear about under those two 'bucket topics'? Armed with the knowledge that I'll be using Flash Pro 8 and After Effects 7 for these sessions, pimp 'em out, folks- I want to make sure and cover the topics you REALLY want to know about.

Expected changes are such, of course- I plan to cover more audio cleanup/processing in my first (Optimizing) session, for example- as well as an extended section on keying (i.e. green/bluescreen removal) to expand on all the questions I got after my FlashForward Seattle preso. But I'll save any further tweaks/additions for addressing feedback I recieve from you.

Regardless of my presentations, TODCon Orlando should be a great conference all the way around- I personally love going to TODCon because the speakers are always top-notch, the setting is far more 'intimate' than the bigger conferences, and they always pick a great location year to year. See you there!

Posted by sfegette at 10:44 AM | Comments (6)

March 13, 2006

SXSW Day 2/3 Update

So much going on here at the Austin convention center it's hard to keep up- so I didn't (heh). Instead, I figured I'd post my personal highlights over the last 2 days, give or take.

Sunday, 3/12/06

• Tagging 2.0 - a great discussion with some fantastic panelists including Thomas Vander Wal (who coined the term 'folksonomy'). I've given my perspectives before on this subject here, so won't rehash em in this post. Although it was a very captive audience (relatively no one in the room viewed tagging as a short-term trend), but the question of how tagging process and relevancy could be better enabled in systems came up numerous times- something that both interests me from a consistency perspective and scares me on a heuristical/algorithmical perspective. A head-scratcher I'll be mulling on for some time, actually. It was nice to hear some pushback on the questionable value of tag clouds (outside nice visuals), a visual representation I've never been overly fond of.
• Heather Armstrong and Jason Kottke (kottke.org) keynote- enjoyable and entertaining session, but I must admit I'm getting a bit bored with the 'blog as industry' syndrome of late. Inspirational bloggers/writers, both- but with all due respect to their situations and skill, I came away feeling like perhaps the blogging 'revolution' may have jumped the shark this year (given other panels that day sporting fluffy titles such as 'Bloggers in Love' and 'Revenge of the Blogs', you'll hopefully get a more balanced picture of my personal skepticisms here)... ;-)
• SXSW Web Awards - eminem.com scored three awards, but Technorati landed the big one (Best of Show). Unfortunately Tantek was out getting his picture taken so someone else accepted that award onstage - did he ever get his gift basket?
• Got to meet Jason Santa Maria and dole out props (one of my favorite designers of recent years- dig his aesthetics immensely), and take in some great feedback on Photoshop workflow from both Jason and the equally-hypertalented Toni Greaves.

Monday, 3/13/06 (today)

• Recorded a great interview with Dave Shea (yes, that Dave Shea) that I expect will be podcasted in coming days on the Developer Center (and knowing me, I'll rss-hijack the MP3 onto my own blog, too)
• Finally got to meet Robert Scoble in person. Yes, he's every bit as energetic as you've heard - the 'Scobleizer Bunny' monicker makes SO MUCH more sense after a meatspace encounter. Great guy.
• Talked Molly into a tentative interview later in the day - yes, another podcast recording, and sure hope we don't get ripped in the WaSP meetings this afternoon (I'll be attending along with Jen Taylor as delegates from Adobe's web product groups).
• Spent a lot of time thinking about how we (Adobe) can help out with the BarCamp conferences going forward- I really enjoyed the time I was able to spend over there, and so did most everyone else who attended. Check out the BarCampAustin flickr photostream here for the 411 on what you missed out on.
• Barbecue at the Iron Works. Egads, the tastiest BBQ I've had since I was stranded in Memphis, TN (Memphis' Rendezvous gets the nod for ribs in that town, but I'm giving the overall edge to the Iron Works).
• Having a good night's sleep last night makes all the difference. Today I'm just shaking from the chilly A/C, not caffeine overload. ;-)

More from the show later today, I'll be hitting the WaSP panel and meeting starting at 3:30 (roughly an hour from now) and it should be a lively discussion on both sessions. Right now I need to find a power outlet in a BIG way- over and out...

::static::

Posted by sfegette at 12:27 PM | Comments (3)

March 11, 2006

Cote on Corpoblogging

The day seems to be progressing quite well over at the BarCampAustin con (though I'm definitely putting in the hardcore sneaker mileage today between the two locations!) - I'm sitting now in Cote's BarCampAustin session on corpoblogging, which is a very interesting subject to me. At the moment, the discussion is centered on the high-level challenges of being an individual voice amidst a large corporation- great subject, and one I certainly have a few opinions on myself... ;-)

It can be a real challenge to balance the social responsibility of working for a company that supports a blogging culture alongside the need to be honest, direct and 'real' in one's communication. Personally- I decided several years ago to keep my business opinions on this 'official' weblog, and my personal scribblings/annotated del.icio.us links/digg stories/etc. posted on my personal weblog (found here), but there's a lot of varying opinions on what's best for all concerned. As I'd been blogging on my personal website for a couple years before Macromedia even opened the blogging gates, this was more a concern when starting my 'corpoblog' than in changing how I was already blogging on a personal level. Whereas I used to post a few snippets on my personal weblog about the workplace, once I decided to 'go corpo' the split must made the most sense, personally.

Although I sometimes feel incredibly schizophrenic separating my brainstreams and opinions this way, in meatspace I've always made an effort to keep my personal and professional lives as separate as possible, so my blogging habits are really more a mirror of my own reality. I don't often bore my close friends in the 'real world' with day-to-day work discussions, nor am I particularly a fan of opening up my personal life for discussion in the office. But opinions in the room here vary greatly on this topic, and by no means do I find my solution one that applies to other personalities and situations.

So... how do YOU manage your professional vs. personal interests and opinions as a 'public voice'? It certainly helps me in volumes that Adobe has maintained a quite open and supportive attitude towards public-facing staffers like myself - so I do feel personally inclined to return the favor by keeping my more caustic and generally work-unrelated banter posted away from their servers - but not having the (mis)fortune of working for less tolerant companies in the past, I'm really curious as to how others have juggled the conflicts of interests that arise as a 'corpoblogger'.

Do tell?

Posted by sfegette at 11:20 AM | Comments (2)

SXSW day 1, morning adventures

Fighting off a fuzzy head from very little sleep, I headed over to the BarCampAustin site at 7am today to slap together an audio solution for the three 'zones' of the room. It's always a challenge to wire up a room you haven't seen before, but a few spliced cables later, I think they're set up for the day! I'll be headed back over in the afternoon to check in and hang out, but had to cut and head over to the main SXSW site for the first set of panels at 10am.

Coffee has sunk in, and I'm now in my first SXSW panel - "Traditional Design and New Technology" - chaired by AIGA's Liz Danzico and featuring panelists like Mark Bolton (BBC), Toni Greaves (Razorfish), Khoi Vinh (New York Times Online), and the always-dangerous Jason Santa Maria (who recently supplied the logo/branding for social bookmark newcomer Ma.gnolia).

I've been out of the design world for quite a while on a personal level and find this panel very intriguing as a look into new media design from the perspective of 'traditional designers'. Having worked in conjunction with traditional design/marketing groups I know I've had to take a 'print design' and graft it onto a site/online experience more times than I care to count. In the instant-gratification world of web design & development, it's become all too common to multipurpose design like this to speed up delivery of online assets/experiences, but this 'shortcut' process doesn't necessarily realize the potential of the interactive/online medium.

Mark Bolton summed it up well for me- we're not necessarily engaging the emotional response and connection with a viewer by leveraging the potential of motion, audio and interactivity as core tenets of the design process as well as we should. It's really interesting to hear varying opinions on this subject- great first session.

That being said, I'm going offline to listen more closely to what's being said. Back a bit later...

Posted by sfegette at 08:32 AM | Comments (2)

March 10, 2006

BarCampAustin

On a day where the local San Francisco weather actually saw snow, I'm quite glad to be in 90+ degree Austin Texas for SXSW 2006. But today was not as much about SXSW as it was setting up for BarCampAustin, my favorite anti-conference, running in parallel Friday night (tonight) through Sunday. Although I'll be spending most of my time at SXSW, I've been spending good chunks of my Friday helping whurley set up for the event at the Thistle Cafe (6th and Lavaca, if you're in Austin), and expect to be going back and forth between the two quite a bit. Tonight kicks off the BarCampAustin pre-event party/meet-and-greet session, starting at 7pm.

Tomorrow the BarCamp 'anti-con' begins, with a wide variety of speakers all day in three(!) 'zones' of the club, each of which we're going to be hooking up tomorrow morning with projector stations, wireless mikes, and (hopefully) Breeze simulcasts of the speakers from each zone. If you're looking for a party to hit tonight in Austin make sure to swing by the Thistle Cafe after 7pm and say hello, given how much whurley's Blackberry was ringing today I sense it's going to come unglued. ;-)

More details and photos from the con(s) as the weekend progresses, of course...

Posted by sfegette at 03:50 PM | Comments (4)

March 08, 2006

Headed to SXSW Tomorrow

Can't wait to get to Austin, Texas tomorrow for South by Southwest Interactive- it's been YEARS since I've hit a SXSW (was a touring musician with a mop of waist-length hair the last time I was at SXSW, in fact). Along with the WaSP task force sessions and Web Awards (in which Adobe's own Jen Taylor will be presenting the "Best in Show" award, no less!), I'm really looking forward to soaking in the experience, talking to as many people as possible, and hitting as many sessions as I can squeeze into a day without exploding.

If you're going to be in Austin and want to meet up, either shoot me a message in the SXSW Directory application(for attendees only- requires login) or drop a comment here and I'll try to meet up with you onsite!
(be sure to include your email address if doing the latter - it won't be published in the public comments, FYI)

I'm not speaking/presenting this trip (refreshing!), and will probably be hanging out at the lounge/day stage cafe between 3-4pm on both Sunday and Monday for the Studio/Creative Suite presos, FYI (to answer questions/etc.). I'll have my recording gear on hand, so if you have any particularly pointed questions/comments/suggestions for Adobe - or in general - track me down and get your opinions recorded. I'm all ears.

See you in Austin!

Posted by sfegette at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2006

Ely Greenfield's new blog

In the blogrush around the Flex/Ajax Bridge project, the fact that Flex developer Ely Greenfield has just kicked off his new weblog may have slipped past you in the chaos. Ely's the evil genius behind the Flex/Ajax Bridge, and although he's threatened to kick off a blog before now focusing on Flex-related topics, today he closed the deal.

So- make sure to check out and bookmark Ely's blog 'Quietly Scheming' (great name!), and don't forget add it to your favorite clientside aggregator - that is, if you're not hopelessly addicted to MXNA like all the rest of us blog-trolling saps. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 06:51 PM | Comments (3)

February 27, 2006

Fast-forward to FlashForward

Wow- these last few weeks really have flown by! As with Peldi before me, I've been a bit remiss in posting lately but it's only due to a busy schedule. I'm currently packing my camera/laptop to walk over to Flashforward '06, which starts today in slightly-overcast Seattle. I'm speaking Wednesday afternoon on Optimizing Video for the Web (which will look at best practices for shooting/capturing/processing Flash Video across the gamut of production schedules), but will also be wandering the streets/halls with a video camera through much of the conference shooting pick-up interviews with attendees. I've got a set of questions I'm going to be asking folks- but don't let them deter you. If you see me setting up somewhere, come over and say hi!

Posted by sfegette at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2006

Lightroom Podcast - Submit your questions

Adobe's pro photography evangelist (and Lightroom demo meister) George Jardine is currently taking questions through today for a very, very cool new format for his Lightroom podcasts- leave a message with your question to the Lightroom team, and you could end up hearing your answer 'on the air'! Extracted from George's forums posting:

Want to have your voice heard? Do you have a burning question on Lightroom that you feel everyone must hear the answer to? Here's an opportunity to have your question heard, and answered by members of the Adobe Lightroom development team. I'm going to be creating a series of sort of voicemail-bag podcasts to bring answers to your questions to the public. This first podcast will focus on the raw processing controls in the Develop module, and how they compare with those in ACR. Remember, the more concise and on topic your question is... the more likely it is that we will choose to answer it during the podcast."

Questions on the Develop module are due by end of day today if you want them answered in this 'edition' of the podcast- and you can get all the details in George's posting in the Adobe Labs Lightroom forums, of course. Great idea!

(Note- comments disabled on this posting, please leave any feedback in the linked forums thread!)

Posted by sfegette at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2006

Like a what?

I've been Flicked yet again over at Community MX- losing out (along with Howard Stern, no less) for the slot as your next Adobe spokesperson in Chris Flick's weekly strip. Now I have no problem coming in second place to a Jedi Master, of course- but given my long history with Photoshop/Illustrator/After Effects I'm a far less an Adobe virgin than many would have expected... ;-)

(Classic, Chris!)

Posted by sfegette at 11:45 AM | Comments (1)

January 13, 2006

Flashforward '06 Early Bird Pricing

Interested in attending Flashforward 2006 in Seattle this year? Then the information below from our events team is right up your alley- early bird pricing discounts for the conference will end in 7 days! Read on for more details and a link to the Flashforward 2006 registration site:

"Register now for Flashforward 2006 by January 20 and get special early bird pricing. For the first time ever Flashforward will be held in Seattle, Washington and will feature tracks on After Effects, Video, Open Source, and more in addition to covering the newest release of Flash, Flash Professional 8 and the Flash platform. If you register before January 20 you can save $300 on a three day conference pass or almost $400 on a four day conference pass."

You can register for Flashforward 2006 at the following URL:
http://www.flashforwardconference.com/register

Posted by sfegette at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2006

Flash Lite 2 - Authoring Update available on Labs

It's official- the Flash Lite 2 Update for Flash Professional 8 preview release is now available for download on the Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Labs website. This updater will add Flash Lite 2-specific authoring features to your Flash Professional 8 installation so you can start getting busy right now. If you were watching before the holidays, the Flash Lite 2.0 mobile player itself was quietly added to the Macromedia.com online store, this adds the missing authoring piece to pull it all together. Have fun!

Posted by sfegette at 06:22 PM | Comments (2)

December 21, 2005

Holiday Notes

As many staffers have noted before me, the Adobe offices are going to be closed up next week- and I'll be starting my vacation this evening- headed up through Tahoe to Reno, sampling the snowfall (or rainfall?) liberally along the way. We've got lots of treats coming up next year - for instance, keep your eye on Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Labs in January for some not-so-secret new developments.

On a personal level, John Nack asked some great questions about his weblog's focus, which I'd like to welcome feedback on here as well. What topics, subjects or articles do YOU want to see on this blog over the next year? Studio tips? State-of-the-industry discussions? More podcasts on subjects of interest? Shoot me your comments, critiques and thoughts- and I'll get on it. Promise! I'll always keep posting tidbits of interest as they pop up, but I'm interested in hearing what you'd want to talk about, if given the option. Grab the mic! ;-)

All that being said- have a great holiday season, no matter how you choose to celebrate it!

__EOF__

Posted by sfegette at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2005

Adobe, Week Two.

Much like Christian before me, I still find it a bit strange to say I'm an Adobe employee, but it's getting more comfortable as the days progress. I've been using Adobe products (Photoshop and After Effects primarily) far longer than I've been using Macromedia products, however- so it's not really that much of a stretch on a personal level. But this week, the second of my 'official' Adobe employment, has been a really positive for a number of reasons.

• We're really getting back to business this week. Months and months of anticipation led up to the inevitability of last week's 'Day One' activities, largely a difficult one for all concerned- lots of good friends both staying and leaving the new Adobe family, and a lot of uncertainty as the details shook out for all to parse and work through.
• The cone of silence between MM and Adobe employees is finally shattered. I'm currently in the Adobe HQ in San Jose meeting tons of new friends and getting my brain saturated with all the possibilities of a combined product line.
• My role on the Developer Relations team will be moving more towards audio/video production and professionals going forward- a very exciting area for me to get back to, given the industry-leading A/V production software Adobe produces. More details as that shakes out, of course.
• Macromedia 'assimilation' was painless and quick- over the weekend we were handily moved to the Adobe servers (and my personal email address switched to an adobe.com domain- update your address books now!). Haven't had that easy of a switch since my mail was all analog. ;-)
• Communication, communication, communication - I feel as if every step of the acquisition was well-communicated and clearly defined. Kudos to the Adobe integration team(s) who really went the extra mile to make sure we all felt welcome from the first minute.

So... although I would expect the weblogs to be migrating to an Adobe.com address at some point in the near future, things are settling down again pretty quickly. If you've written me in the last week or so, I'll try to respond as quickly as possible but there's still a lot of logistical stuff to clear up- unsubscribing/resubscribing to mailing lists, updating internal docs and materials, sitting in quite a few 'get acquainted' meetings to meet all our new counterparts here in San Jose (and other Adobe offices), and start finding my way around my new (and far larger) employer.

But anyway you slice it, it's nice to be an Adobe staffer at long last- albeit with a bit of nostalgia for the Macromedia name that's treated me so well for the last 6 years or so. It's good to be on board.

Posted by sfegette at 02:56 PM | Comments (5)

December 08, 2005

Studio Upgrade Pricing Changes

FYI- if you've been holding off to upgrade to Studio 8, now would be the time, as the introductory/promotional upgrade pricing will expire shortly. More details from our Studio team follows:

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For those who may have missed this information due to the acquisition completion, we wanted to make sure our customers know about some changes in the upgrade pricing and policies for Studio 8.

Effective December 31, 2005, there will be pricing increases and policy changes for certain customers regarding Studio 8 upgrades. We encourage anyone thinking of purchasing Studio 8 upgrade to review the information below and take advantage of the existing pricing before December 31, 2005. After this date, adjusted pricing for upgrading to Studio 8 will be as follows:

• Any past commercial Studio customer can upgrade to Studio 8 for $399.
• Any past commercial customer who own both Dreamweaver (any version) and Flash (any version excluding Flash Basic) can upgrade to Studio 8 for $399.
• Any past commercial Dreamweaver customer can purchase the Studio 8 upgrade for $799.
• Any past commercial Flash customer (excluding Flash Basic) can purchase the Studio 8 upgrade for $599.
• Any past commercial Fireworks or FreeHand customer wishing purchase Studio 8 upgrade cannot do so, and must purchase a full new Studio 8 license at $999.

Pricing for brand new product licenses or point product upgrades will not be changing.