Acknowledgments
P
hone book sized technical books are about as close as I can come to the effort of birth,
being a male. To me it feels similar—ten months of effort, lack of sleep, irritability,
strange food cravings, and a huge feeling of relief and pride at the end. Yet it simply
can’t compare, thus my wife Sylvia really deserves any accolade I might receive for bringing
our daughter Olivia to the world during the chaos of this massive book project. I promise
no more all new books for a while, just revisions!
There are plenty of other people who have supported me during this long process. First
and foremost is Christie Sorenson. Christie, it has been a pleasure to work with you for
these many years helping to bring some of my, or more appropriately, our ideas to life. I
hope you are as proud of this particular effort as I am, and I look forward to continuing our
collaborations for years to come.
A number of employees at PINT really stepped up like they usually do. Rob McFarlane,
Gabe Abadilla, and Andrew Simpkins pulled out the stops on illustrations. Will Leingang
jumped in at the end with some assistance on some demos during the eleventh hour. Miné
Okano’s early assistance was much appreciated. The fine efforts that Miné and the other
managers at PINT, including Cory Ducker, Jimmy Tam, David Sanchez, Kim Smith, Chris
Baldwin, Matt Plotner, Olivia Chen Knol, Heather Jurek, Michele Bedard, Marv Ahlstrom,
Dave Sargent, and Dawn Vitale, really help keep a lid on the growing company. Of course
Joe Lima, Alan Pister, Mike Andrews, and Chris Neppes receive a special call out for their
long time support at p80—2007 really has been a big year, and I am glad you guys kept the
faith. The three dozen other unmentioned people who work at the two firms will have to be
satisfied with the free drinks at the book release party, since we have only so much space
here to mention those who keep everything humming and allow me to write books.
Ric Smith of the OpenAjax Alliance did a fine job on technical edit, and I was surprised
to find how similar our efforts were, although in different arenas.
As expected, the folks at McGraw-Hill were a pleasure to work with. The cast of
characters changes from book to book but is always a joy to work with. Wendy Rinaldi and
Mandy Canales tried to keep me on track, which frankly is a next to impossible task. The
production folks, both onshore and off, did a commendable job pulling it all together. Megg
Morin wasn’t involved in this particular project, but given my long history with McGraw-Hill,
she deserves mention for guiding me through everything to this point—and yes, the
XHTML/CSS book is on the way!
Special mention to my outside editorial strike force of one should go to Daisy Bhonsle,
who provided excellent assistance far beyond my expectations. Her eagle eye for details is