We just put up a new showcase page on our site to show off some of the sites that our customers have built using our Dreamweaver extensions and PHP solutions. It always amazes me to see how talented and passionate our customers are and to see the unique things they are creating with our products. Come check it out for yourselves – there’s also a link on the showcase page for you to submit your own site for consideration.
Today was my first day here at the Adobe MAX show in Los Angeles, CA. I wanted to give you some highlights, thoughts, and reactions to some of the things I have seen today. First, and foremost, it seems like attendance at the show is pretty strong – that’s good news given the state of the worldwide economy.
The keynote today was pretty interesting. Other than the expected focus on the Flash platform, there were some actually very cool demos. The biggest was the public announcement that Adobe was able to get Flash apps running on the iPhone. There’s actually a few apps now available on the iPhone app store that run in Flash – although Flash in the browser still doesn’t seem to be supported. All of this is possible as it looks like the Flash team has been able to optimize the performance and memory usage of the Flash player on mobile devices.
Flash was not the only platform available on mobile devices as most of you have heard about new web based platforms from companies such as Nokia and Palm. Nokia’s Web Runtime (WRT) will now come installed on all new Nokia handsets and allows any developer to use their existing skills in HTML/JS/AJAX to build mobile widgets and apps. Nokia also has a very slick extension for Dreamweaver that you can download for free. The Nokia WRT Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver adds the features WRT widget developers need to develop with Dreamweaver.
One of the more interesting sessions I was able to attend today was about Adobe AIR 2. The release theme for this major version is to add more features that work with the desktop. The big things are the ability to run native code, support for TLS (next generation SSL), and the support for multi-touch and gestures. All of these features should make it much easier for developers to create even richer AIR apps.
So all in all it was quite a busy day… the venue is great and the weather is great. The show has gotten off to a good start so stay tuned for another update tomorrow.
Hi everyone,
It’s hard to believe that we’re now in the last quarter of the year with the holidays rapidly approaching. I hope everyone had a fun and productive summer – I know it’s been a whirlwind for our team but I couldn’t be happier with what we’ve been able to accomplish. There continues to be a lot of positive changes here at WebAssist and I wanted to give everyone a little more insight into where we’ve been and where we’re going.
We spent a lot of time in July and August conducting in-depth customer research with thousands of customers. We got great feedback on what you liked and didn’t like about us and what you would like to see in the future. I want to personally thank everyone who participated in the research and to let you know how much we appreciate the passion and energy that you all have for what we do. We may not always be able to do everything you want, but we will always listen with an open mind.
Our website is always evolving and we received a lot of great feedback that we implemented. You’ll notice that the main navigation does not have the large dropdown areas anymore so that it does not cover up the page content. We put a lot of important links in the footer of the website.
We added a store section so that you can easily purchase from a single location, search that is powered by Yahoo! BOSS, and live chat so that you get feedback without having to call or email. We also re-designed the Your Account section of the site to more clearly let you manage all of your orders, downloads, and serial numbers. All of these changes are aimed at making your experience on the site better and to make it easier for you to accomplish what you set out to do on the site.
Along with the website changes came some pretty exciting product launches as well. CSS Form Builder is a great way for you to create CSS based forms complete with validation. We also launched CSS Sculptor 3 which adds a great set of features to our most popular Dreamweaver extension. The other big development this past quarter was our introduction of the Extension Library subscription. There was consistent feedback from you telling us that you wanted all of our products but that the upfront cost made it difficult. We think we have solved those concerns by offering the Extension Library at a great price so you don’t have to worry about upfront cost or not having the latest and greatest product from us – you get it all as long as you are subscribed.
The initial response to the Extension Library has been great. However, there are a few FAQ’s that we’ve been seeing that I wanted to clear up for you:
Please feel free to contact us if you have any feedback, suggestions, or questions. Also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep in touch and get the latest breaking news about our products and services. We appreciate all of our support and we look forward to continuing to see how we can keep helping you build better websites, faster.
Best,
–Hieu
It’s that time of year again where I get to hang out with designers, developers, and partners at the annual Adobe MAX conference. As many of you know, it’s in Los Angeles, CA this year and I’m excited as I’m taking the train up there – I’ve never been on Amtrak before but I hear it’s very nice and it beats fighting through LA rush hour traffic. I’ll be at the show from Monday through Wednesday and will be posting regularly to our Twitter and Facebook accounts so be sure to follow us for updates and maybe we can meet up for a cold beverage if you’re attending the show.
Hi everyone,
I can’t believe that 2009 is now over half way over. It seems like just yesterday that I was writing to you to discuss our goals for the full year. As I look back over the past couple of quarters, I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished and am really looking forward to the exciting developments we have in store for you for the rest of the year.
One of the most exciting things that happened over the last quarter was our introduction of PowerCMS to our line of solutions. PowerCMS has become already become our fastest adopted solution as content management was a feature request that we have long heard here at WebAssist. For those who haven’t tried one of our solutions, they are pre-built PHP Scripts complete with functionality and design that get you up and running out-of-the-box. You can modify and customize our solutions with any editor or use our Dreamweaver extensions to make customization easier.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight our new lineup of suites. In the past, we had Web Designer Suite, Web Developer Suite, and Super Suite. What we have done now is to break those suites up into more targeted suites according to the type of customer you are and what you are trying to accomplish.
Not only does Super Suite give you the most value with the most features, Super Suite customers also get the best deals moving forward. We always give Super Suite customers special pricing to all new products, all new upgrades and we will be rolling out other incentives for investing in our most popular suite.
The past quarter has also seen WebAssist evolve in how we communicate with you and give you the best support and service that we can. We continue to focus on giving you the best information possible as soon as possible so please be sure to keep tabs on our blogs, forums, and follow @WebAssist on Twitter for real-time updates. We have also noticed a great surge in traffic and activity on our forums. Therefore, we are going to modify the way we do support by using the forums as the primary support channel. Our support team will actively monitor all forums along with members in our community. One of our support engineers will create a ticket for you on our current ticketing system only when the support issue requires private messaging or transfer of files. This change will allow our entire community to benefit from the vast amount of great information available on our forums – this information not only applies to our products but to web design and development in general. For more information about our upcoming support changes, please keep an eye on the support section of our website.
In closing, I want to thank you again for continuing to give us feedback and encouragement. Please keep all of the comments coming as we take your suggestions very seriously. We know that our success is directly tied to your success and we appreciate the opportunity to help you build better websites, faster.
Best,
-Hieu
Hieu Bui
President, WebAssist
It’s no secret that our users are a talented bunch of folks and we’d like to let the world know. We’re looking to showcase sites made with WebAssist products, so that others can see what’s possible and give a round of applause to those folks who are creating great sites.
If you’re interested in submitting your site for the showcase, email your name, WebAssist product used, and site URL to showcase@webassist.com. We’re all looking forward to seeing what you’ve been cooking!
Hi everyone,
We have just completed the first quarter of 2009 and I’m proud of what we have been able to accomplish in just three short months. One of the biggest developments has been the launch of the latest version of our website. The new site gives you a much easier way to find the information you are looking for both from a sales and support perspective. One of the most frequent compliments of the new site is the intuitive menu navigation system. Through this menu approach, we had the ability to restructure our support resources the way you requested it, product by product. In addition to the navigational changes, the biggest update has been with our implementation of AJAX based tabs and sliding panels. This technology enables us to present the large amount of supporting content such as Getting Started Guides, Solutions Recipes, FAQs, General Tech Notes and Related Articles all from one convenient page.
New Integration Points:
In addition to our new website, we have continued to invest in delivering new products across all three of our lines: software, solutions, and training. By delivering three different products types that work together, you have the ability to choose any combination of tools, pre-built applications and step by step instructions to help you build sites, faster. We have found that by building solutions with our tools and documenting the steps that cover important web techniques you have a greater choice in how to get your sites to market.
We released two new solutions in Q1: User Registration Solution Pack and PowerStore. PowerStore is a great solution to get an online store up and running quickly and it was built using a variety of our software found in Super Suite. With the User Registration Solution Pack you can add a fully functioning user registration system with administrative capabilities. We also launched the first SEO Starter Kit that focuses on working with Keywords – one of the most important concepts in search engine optimization. Keep an eye out for more interactive training content focused on Search Engine Optimization.
Product Updates:
We have launched dot releases of quite a few of our software products to address issues found through support as well as those introduced by updates to Dreamweaver CS4. Free updates were released for, but not limited to: eCart, Site Import, SecurityAssist, iRite, SiteScribe, Pro Maps for Google and Digital File Pro.
In January, we released a new extension in partnership with Jeffery Zeldman: Web Standards Advisor. Web Standards Advisor goes far beyond what you can do in Dreamweaver by allowing you to validate HTML, CSS and Microformats in one smooth operation. It also takes you a step farther by summarizing the results and suggesting appropriate recommendations to help you achieve web standards compliancy.
Free Content:
We have also been focusing on providing more rich content to help you be successful on the web. We have launched a new set of free semi-technical training resources to help share some of the knowledge we have obtained over the years. There are have been quite a few Roadmaps created that you can download for free covering topics from Web hosting to site planning to CSS. We are also continuing to launch more templates on SuCasa and have a robust library that will continue to come out over the next months.
As we head into the second quarter of 2009, we are mindful of the continued stress the global economy has put on everyone and we will continue to focus on making sure the products we produce deliver a return on investment that makes them appealing to you. There will be both free and commercial products made available that will continue to build out our portfolio of products that will help you build better websites faster. We are also focused on continuing to improve our communication and feedback loop with you so please remember to check out our company blog, community forums, and twitter profile to keep in touch with our growing community of designers and developers. We are constantly looking to improve our company and the value we provide to you so please give us feedback by sending us a suggestion using our contact form or emailing sales@webassist.com.
Best,
–Hieu
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Hieu Bui
President, WebAssist
Michael Lekse, WebAssist’s VP of Sales and Marketing, and I took a few days to explore Photoshop World, held last week in Boston. We’ve had a very good response to our first piece of Photoshop-specific training and we were both looking forward to learn more about this community. Photoshop World is a high-class professional-grade show built on the shoulders of the 80,000 strong National Association of Photoshop Professionals organization by Kelby Media. A football theme pervaded the atmosphere and many a touchdown was scored, from the high-energy, informative keynote to the individual, jam-packed sessions.
Much buzz surrounded the new drawing tablet introduced by Wacom, the Intuos 4. When I was writing the Fireworks Bible series, I used a Wacom tablet—which, by comparison, is like saying when I was a toddler, I peeled out on a tricycle. The Intuos 4 is a sleek, high-productivity engine complete with iPod-like touch ring for zooming in and out or resizing brush size or density. You can program the touch ring or any of the other 6 – 8 express keys (the number varies with the size of the tablet) on an application by application basis; the defaults are well-chosen to get you started quickly. If you’re a tablet user, you’ve gotta check this out.
Conferences, for the most part, are about meeting folks with similar interests and exchanging ideas and knowledge. One of the people Michael and I spent some quality time talking with was Raphael Concepcion, better known as RC. RC is an expert in many of the Creative Suite tools and gave a great session for Photoshop user demystifying Dreamweaver. RC is also one of the hosts of Layers TV, which does a really good job of covering the Creative Suite spectrum and definitely worthwhile to tune in.
This is a reposting of the newsletter we sent on January 21st 2009:
Hi everyone,
I hope 2009 finds you developing, creating and in a good position to achieve your goals for the year. I want to take this opportunity to recap the past year and share with you some of my thoughts as we head off into this New Year. Even though the global economy is experiencing quite a bit of volatility, I am happy to report that WebAssist is still continuing to grow and innovate thanks to your support.
To begin, I’d like to formally introduce myself to you in my role as President of WebAssist. While I have only been in this role since the early part of 2008, I am also one of the original founders of the company and have been deeply involved since the beginning. I’m very excited at this opportunity to continue to serve the large, growing, and passionate community of designers and developers that we have built together over the years.
We’ve been working tirelessly over this past year and when I look back, I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish. We consolidated our corporate headquarters into a new beautiful location in San Diego. We launched quite a few new products; PalettePicker, iRite, SiteScribe, CSS Menu Writer, Surveyor, Dynamic Web Charts in addition to releasing updated versions of our popular CSS Sculptor and SiteAssist plug-ins. We also introduced a new type of product called solution packs – pages with pre-built functionality you can use out of the box. We used Adobe Flex to develop a new community for designers called SuCasa and we’re happy to see the momentum continuing to build. We’ve also been working very hard over the past few months to make all of our plug-ins compatible with Dreamweaver CS4 and I’m happy to say that we’re almost ready to cross the finish line.
As I look forward into this coming year, we are prepared to continue investing across all of our initiatives. We will create new software with more robust features as well as insuring continuity and seamless integration throughout our product offering. We will focus on creating more solution packs (built using our software) and continue to deliver world class training products on the topics that are important and relevant to you. I am also pleased to announce that a new version of our website will be coming soon. It will include an updated look and feel as well as much cleaner navigation so it will be even easier for you to find what you are looking for on the site.
2009 will be our 10th year as a company and we want to dedicate it to you, our loyal customer. We here at WebAssist would like to thank each and every one of you for being a part of who we are today. Your continued feedback and interaction are critical as we strive to fulfill our mission of providing you with software, solutions, and training that help you build better websites, faster.
Best,
–Hieu
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Hieu Bui
President, WebAssist
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