Yesterday was an epic day for packages. We got Christmas presents from two different family members as well as a box from Amazon for Mark (that is apparently for me for Christmas). Jaryth was beside himself opening the boxes and putting packages under the tree. But the best box, from my perspective, was the heavy box from Pearson. My book has come out! It has been a long time in the making of this book.

I’m starting to wonder if other web design sites DELETE the anachronistic and ultra-conservative design comments. It seems like whenever I write a post talking about a more modern style design, I ONLY get comments talking about how horrible it is because it’s new and different. Of course, they don’t say that’s the reason, but that’s what it really comes down to. Makes me depressed, as I really like looking at the new stuff, but when the only feedback I get is “eww, that sucks, the scroll bar makes the car move, it doesn’t scroll down the page” it’s hard to stay motivated.

I finished Chapter 19 last night. Very stoked. It’s moving along quite nicely. Chapter 20 is currently Offline Web Applications. But I think I need to re-order it to put Web Storage before it. The other thing writing this is doing is making me more and more interested in writing a new theme for this blog. I’ll make it HTML5, but I’m not sure if I’ll use my art for it or not.

If you didn’t know, I’m working on a book—Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 for Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours, and it’s been taking up a lot of my time. I just finished chapter 17—HTML5 Links. Whew! And I hope to have chapter 18 done by Saturday. It’s hard because this weekend was the first really sunny weekend we’ve had all year, and I had to sit inside for a good portion of it writing about HTML5 Drag and Drop.

My editor sent me a note about Apple’s new HTML 5 Showcase and my first reaction was to chat with her about it. But then my brain kicked in and I realized that she wanted me to write something about it. :-) I’m slow, but I do catch on eventually. I posted a note about writing this template and discussed the virtues of using HTML 5 or lack thereof. I still think HTML 5 is cool, but if you know your audience is using Internet Explorer, you need to head back to HTML 4/XHTML 1 -land if you want it to work.