Last week I started the process of moving 3 sites to a new hosting company including this one, my business site (webfocusdesign.com) and a client site. My business site was registered at Network Solutions and I also switched registrar for that one and, of course, they made the whole process take forever... I'm glad to be rid of them completely now.

While the thew new Name Servers (DNS) propagate, reaching me via email may be difficult and messages may bounce. If you need to reach me urgently use my ISP email which is "stephberg (at) videotron (dot) ca".

The main reason I moved the sites was because my prior host was unable to solve the many database connectivity issues I was having with this blog. They had me move it to MySQL from Access which was definitely a good thing but the timeout errors did not stop and at some point last week they got worse than ever (I get an email everytime there is any kind of error with the blog). So, I'd had it and decided to move and I now pay a lot less than before for more features and better service.

Also and most importantly, you now should see little to no ColdFusion errors when visiting this site and navigating the blog.

This blog is now running on MySQL instead of Access so there should be a lot less timout errors. There are a few things I still need to tweak to get all the blog entries to show up as the MySQL migration tool did not convert everything from Access perfectly but everything should get back to normal soon.

Anyway, enough of the criticism for now. I really didn't mean for my first comments on CS3 to be critical but this suites packaging issue has been bothering many people and I wanted to address it.

I'll soon post more about the new apps in CS3 themselves and explain why I think this is one of the best upgrades ever for many of the applications. As for Fireworks specifically, a lot of groundwork has been done in terms of integration that will pay off in the future, but the Fireworks team has managed to deliver very compelling new functionality as well. More on that later.

Also, you have probably noticed that the look of pixellog has gone back to normal. As I expected, going from the default BlogCFC template to the pixelyzed.com look has been far easier than doing the same with BlogFusion had been.  I really have to give kudos to Ray Camden for the incredible work he has done on BlogCFC since the 3.x version. I also updated the software from version 5.6 to 5.7 yesterday and the process was quite easy. I'm very happy I have switched back.

In the next few weeks you may encounter errors when accessing pixellog as I work on moving it from an Access database to MySQL. I've struggled quite a bit with this so far but I'm working with my hosting company to resolve what are probably my errors. I'm usually good with the technical side of Web design but this MySQL thing has not been easy for me so far...

So, see you later to dicuss Fireworks CS3 and other CS3 apps!

Tonight I finally published my article titled "Why Choose Fireworks" which I talked about here before as well as on Scott Fegette's blog.

It's been a long time coming but I think it's particularly timely in these post acquisition days when there's so much speculation and downright misinformation being spread about Fireworks. As I explain in the article, I realized after reading many blog entries and forum posts that many people didn't get what Fireworks was at all that misconceptions about its true capabilities were widespread. Many poeple really have no idea where exactly Fireworks stands in the competitive graphic apps market.

Hopefuly this article will shed some light on Fireworks' real capabilities for people who know little about it and are looking for a Web friendly graphic design appplication. It might even open the eyes of those who have been using it for some time but who for some reason are not really aware of its true power.

Enjoy!