Adobe's Heidi Voltmer wants me (and you) to have some cool stickers.

Trying to keep up with the doings at last week's MAX event at this remove was a proverbial drink from the firehose. Lots of good stuff came out of there, and i'm still sorting through it all. The first thing i've managed to wrap my head around is the update to Adobe's AJAX library.

Spry 1.6 has been released on Adobe Labs where you can download the updater for Dreamweaver CS3. (If you're new to Spry, here's a good introduction.)

Donald Booth has posted comments on the goals of the update at the Spry Team blog.

Scott Fegette rounds up links to articles on best practices with Spry and also points to another AJAX library with for Dreamweaver support: Complete UI from Nitobi Software.

This week, we get more help with Spry, Fireworks Jam Sessions, a Dreamweaver tutorial for the cottage industry set, Adobe certification for students, eSeminars from Adobe, and the return (and rev) of an old friend. If you're a tech writer, that is.

Alan Musselman points out some useful resources for developers trying to wrap their heads around Spry. One is an Adobe Developer Center article from earlier in the year on using Spry to build a photo album, and the other is a data sample/demo on Adobe Labs.

Alan is the product manager for Adobe Fireworks, and he holds a live open session on Fireworks CS3 every Thursday at 1 PM Central. For Connect recordings of past sessions, go to Alan's blog and scroll down to Jam Sessions.

VineyarDesigns.com has posted a free getting-started tutorial for Dreamweaver CS3. Of more long-term value for some users may be the VineyarDesigns.com site itself, which offers business strategies and resources for work-at-home moms. Hmm. i'll have to show this to my wife. On second thought, that conversation probably ends about the time i get to the phrase "…your spare time…." Via Jen deHaan.

If you are involved in teaching (or if you are currently a student of) web development, you might be interested in Adobe Certified Associate Objectives. There are tracks in Web Communication, Rich Media Communication, and Visual Communication. (Full disclosure: i consulted on these objectives and took a couple of editorial passes at them–feedback welcome.)

With the advent of autumn, Adobe's free online eSeminars and online events kick into high gear. In particular, check out the series dedicated to CS3, which includes titles like

• Search Engine Optimization for Flash Sites
• Advanced Dreamweaver Design Case Study with Delaware.Net
• Dreamweaver for Traditional Graphic Designers
• Dreamweaver CSS Boot Camp (for beginners)

Other sessions address Flash, Flex, Spry. There are also eSeminars dedicated to Acrobat workflow, digital imaging, and the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

Registration is free, but each session can only take a limited number of participants, so this is a ya-snooze-ya-lose kinda thing.

Hmmm. Adobe Technical Communication Suite? Oh, right. This week Adobe revealed "What Ever Happened to RoboHelp?" Nice. Who'd have thought?

This week, a Fireworks article for a lot of us, a Fireworks article for a few of us, a product shootout between Adobe and… Adobe? And, at last: Some insight on SEO.

At the Adobe Developer Center, Charles Nadeau shows us how to create user interface mockups with Fireworks. It includes an introduction to the new Pages feature in Fireworks CS3.

Also, Mayur Mundada describes the Export to Common Library extension, "which helps you migrate your legacy Fireworks libraries to the Fireworks CS3 Common Library."

Freelance Switch posts a review of Adobe Creative Suite 3 that looks at whether you should upgrade, and if so, which bundle you should pick. Dodges the difficulty of such a broad topic by zooming in on the key features that warrant the upgrade.

i'm don't spend much of my efforts on search engine optimization, since i'm not convinced that the snake oil has been shook out yet, but i plan to put some miles on the Website Grader. You give it a URL and some other basic info, and it spits back a score. It also provides insight into how the scores are determined. i like that transparency.

Heck. It might even get me to take SEO off my to-don't list. Let me know if you have other resources on SEO that you think are reliable.

This week: the Adobe CS3 Video Workshop, Spry accordions, flow, and Google-fu. Have a great weekend!

Coming from the e-learning side of the industry, i have a great appreciation for the (relatively) new Adobe CS3 Video Workshop tutorials. One this week's additions is about Creating a Master-detail Page Relationship in Dreamweaver (running time 5:55). Via Jen Dehaan.

i'm an old dog. i do not like to learn new tricks. In particular, AJAX sticks in my craw, since it seems like a complicated solution for a problem i already a solution for. As it turns out, however, i have picked the wrong industry in which to stagnate, so i was very pleased when i started poking around the Spry framework that ships with Dreamweaver CS3. This week, by way of New Trick training, i've been working my way through some of the Spry-related content at Community MX. Here's a free article on the Spry accordion widget by Stephanie Sullivan.

From the YMMV Department: Not particularly Dreamweaver-related, but this article on Getting Into Flow really hits on a pain point of mine, since i'm a consultant who manages his own time and offices from home.

How to restrict Google search results to a particular date range (for instance, when you want to find very new pages). Via John Dowdell.