Part 1: From GEnie to accomplished author and web designer

You got your online start with GEnie (General Electric Customer Service) in 1990 as a SYSOP (Systems Operator). How did you get to that point and join the online world prior to the Internet invasion of the mid-90s?
You know, I never had even the most remote intentions of working with computers. Teaching, writing, making music, these are the things that most interest me. But I became quite ill in my early 20s and was largely homebound for a few years.

I was somewhat isolated and my family gave me a Commodore 64 computer. A friend gave me 300-baud external modem. I had seen a list of BBSes in a local computer magazine, and I called a few. Then, I joined Commodore/Amiga's online community called Q-Link and saw live chat for the first time. It was awesome to me to see people from all parts of the world in real-time conversations. What especially appealed to me was the global aspect of it, and the fact that despite my personal circumstances, I could find a social outlet. I was seriously hooked!

A friend of mine turned me on to GEnie and I somehow ended up a SysOp there, as well as running a few BBSes in the early 90s. What a blast! I miss those simpler online days.

There are so many newsletters and e-zines covering web design available today, how does WebReview manage to distinguish itself and remain so successful among its competitors?
WebReview.com understands that people working on the Web need to solve problems, and they need to do it now. While a reader might represent a single-person shop, our largest readership consists of people who work in teams. So not only do they need practical solutions, but they need them in the context of teamwork. We strive to address these goals, and I feel we're doing a great job at that.

Of course, there's always a danger in trying to be too many things to too many people, but I think we've narrowed it down enough to cover four solid areas of Web work: Web authors, designers, developers, and strategists. We hone in on those roles and provide timely and accurate information. We're also a weekly, which gives us an advantage over monthly pubs in that we're more timely, and an advantage over daily pubs in that we can take a little more care with our editorial

Webreview.com is part of CMP Media, Inc., which has many websites and newsletters. Many large websites offer free newsletters, tutorials and more without bombarding users with ads or asking for anything in return. How do businesses like CMP Media, Inc. produce revenue to maintain these efforts?
Well, that's a big question. Being part of a major technology company, we do have access to resources. But as with any publication, we have to show growth. We are currently an ad-driven site, and we are looking into some other potential revenue streams to improve our revenue options. We, like any ad-driven publication, rely on revenue to survive.

How did you expand your own growth further to authoring books, teaching classes and designing websites?
GEnie began to build an Internet gateway, and I was involved in helping out with that. I was also starting to explore the Internet. Mind you, this was pre-Web. We were using things like Gopher, Veronica, Archie, FTP, and newsgroups. When the Web emerged as an alternative to Gopher, I began working with HTML. It wasn't very long before Mosaic hit the scene and the Web became visual. Having an academic background in communications and at the time studying media design, the Web immediately appealed to me, so I began a Web design company in 1994.

By 1995 I was working with Desert.Net as the design director there as well as running communities on the Microsoft Network. I loved every busy minute of it!

One day, out of the blue, I got a book offer from Prima Publishing. At first I truly thought it was some person playing a practical joke. I mean, I was a fairly inexperienced writer and here was a book offer in email in 1995. But it was very real. I jumped on it. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Tell us about your new book.
My most recent book is Special Edition Using XHTML. I think this book is the perfect choice for the Web designer interested in learning how to author and design documents properly as well as expand his or her horizons beyond the Web and into the alternative device/wireless world. Newcomers can certainly learn a great deal from it, as can very advanced developers, but it's really geared as an intermediate book to get folks already familiar with HTML up to speed with XHTML and prepared for the future.

This book would have been the 7th edition of my "Special Edition Using HTML," but XHTML 1.0 came along, so what I did is take the most relevant material from the sixth edition of SE Using HTML, update it to reflect the changes that have affected markup, and add new material to round out the book's goals.

What is the focus of Que's "Special Edition" edition series?
The Special Edition Using Series provides high-quality, beginning to intermediate level books on a wide range of computer topics. The main thrust of these books is that they focus on real-world rather than purely technical topics. It's not just why a given technology or software program works, but how it works, and how you can make it work for you.

There are so many XHTML-related books out there now. What makes your book unique or different from other books on XHTML?
In particular, I think there are two things that will attract people to my book. First is the real-world context. I spend a lot of time speaking from serious experience with certain parts of the technology. I'm also a teacher, so my style tends to be very good for folks who are interested in making a book a learning experience rather than a reference or more standards-oriented book.

I also believe that if a person is truly interested in a topic, that person will read more than one book. I can't count how many HTML books I have, and there are a few I use regularly when I need a specific type of insight or approach.

The book is very comprehensive in that it looks not only at XHTML as a means to marking up web documents, but also discusses web design issues, and related technologies. There is a general overview of XML, chapters on SMIL, SVG, XHTML Basic and future implementations of XHTML, such as modularization. It's a very holistic approach to the subject, as it currently exists.

Can you expand on "modularization?"
Modularization of XHTML is the breakdown of markup into discrete chunks of familiar portions. Examples are forms, tables, frames, images or text. Through the use of a custom Document Type Definition (DTD) or XML schema, only the modules necessary for a given application are used. So, if you want to create a project for wireless delivery to a pager, you will only include those modules necessary to accomplish the job. This streamlines and focuses the markup.

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