Three Saturdays ago, my father had a heart attack. Last Saturday, we rushed our baby daughter to the emergency room. In-between, my wife had to undergo scary and uncomfortable medical tests.

Everybody is fine, even my dad (truth in advertising: aspirin really can save your life) but my once-brown goatee has gone shock-white.

Everybody is fine, so take a deep breath and savor the unusually high pollen count.

Something else took place in these same tense two weeks: I finished my book. Designing With Web Standards, 2nd Edition (DWWS 2e) left my hands last night and will reach shelves this summer.

When I agreed to write DWWS 2e, I mistook the job for a quick spruce-up. After all, what I’d said in the first edition about the benefits of standards-based design was still true: accessibility and semantics make your content easier to find and faster and cheaper to distribute. And the browser most people used when I wrote the first edition hadn’t changed in five years, so how tough a rewrite could I be facing? I figured I was looking at an updated screenshot or two, a changed URL, and maybe a couple of sticky notes.

About four months into the grueling (but also magically riveting) process, I realized that what I was doing was writing a book.

A lot of 2e will be familiar to the book’s fans, but a lot is new. And new is work. New is infinite wash-loads of work. Messy, exhausting. At some point in the infinite rinsing and lathering I was told the book had to be finished by last night. And so it has been.

I wouldn’t have made it alone. Erin and Ethan were right in there, carrying me.

I finished. I finished while grappling with sudden existential crises involving the people I love most. But then, my mother died while I was finishing my first book. Books kill.

This is me being cheerful after completing a rather strong second edition.

2e! 2e! My father and daughter and wife are well. My book is good. My song is sung.

Filed under: Publishing, Standards, Zeldman, family, glamorous, work, writing

11 Responses to “All in”

1. Pig Pen - Web Standards Compliant Web Design Blog » Blog Archive » Designing With Web Standards 2nd Edition said on 25 May 2006 at 5:37 pm:

   [...] Designing With Web Standards 2nd Edition – Jeffrey Zeldman has just sent off the final work and we’ll have to keep an eye out for this must read. [...]

2. Yud | Web Design and Marketing » Jeffrey Zeldman’s new book said on 25 May 2006 at 5:42 pm:

   [...] 5 years after the publishing of “Designing with web standards”, Jeffrey Zeldman has just finished his new book: “Designing with web standards 2 Edition“. On shelves this summer. [...]

3. SyntheticRabbit: Blog > 2nd Edition of Designing With Web Standards said on 25 May 2006 at 10:31 pm:

   [...] Zeldman has written a second edition of Designing With Web Standards, and it will be coming out this summer. When this book came out (in 2003?), it helped change the face of the web. It opened many people’s eyes to web standards. Althought it hasn’t been that long since the book came out, 3 years is a lifetime on the web. I’m looking forward to reading this (especially since I never actually read the 1st edition)! [...]

4. 2E! at Davide Bocci in… said on 27 May 2006 at 4:28 am:

   [...] Qualche intoppo famigliare, qualche giorno di stress oltre i limiti, qualche corsa di troppo. Ora, per fortuna, sembra tutto ok per Jeffrey e famiglia. Nel frattempo è uscito “Designing With Web Standards, 2nd Edition“. Wow! [...]

5. onehero » Blog Archive » Sundries 20060527 said on 27 May 2006 at 5:36 pm:

   [...] Designing With Web Standards 2E is finished. The first edition is one of the few technical books I’ve read cover to cover, if not the only one. [...]

6. (pre)determined » Blog Archive » DWWS 2E said on 30 May 2006 at 7:14 pm:

   [...] Jeff Zeldman mentioned that he has just finished working on Designing With Web Standards 2nd Edition which is cool, cant wait to see what new stuff he’s incorporated in to the new book. Course I haven’t finished reading the first edition yet. [...]

7. Tripix.net » El 100 para Zeldman: ha terminado la segunda edición de Designing With Web Standards said on 1 June 2006 at 4:41 pm:

   [...] Me entero por qweos.net de que Zeldman ha terminado la segunda edición de su poco conocida obra Designing With Web Standards. Por lo que entiendo que dice en su blog se trata de una revisión con bastantes novedades y un buen lavado de cara. Haya cambiado poco o mucho… lo acabaremos comprando en Amazon (¡Ya se puede reservar!) cuando se publique y en alguna otra librería (porqué no en topbooks xD) cuando lo editen en español. [...]

8. Growinglogic » Blog Archive » Weekly Roundup said on 2 June 2006 at 10:20 pm:

   [...] Zeldman wraps up DWWS 2E [...]

9. TenderLover » Blog Archive » [好書]Zeldman的Designing with Web Standards 2/e said on 14 June 2006 at 2:46 am:

   [...] http://www.zeldman.com/2006/05/25/all-in/ [...]

10. Los textos de qweos.net» Blog Archive » Designing With Web Standards, 2nd Edition said on 10 May 2008 at 10:34 pm:

    [...] hace algunos meses, Jeffrey Zeldman, tras unas semanas de malas noticias, por fin ha acabado la segunda edición de su libro Designing With Web Standards, esperemos que lo nuevo sea tan prometedor como [...]

11. May 2006 // Archives // ShaunInman.com said on 12 October 2009 at 4:12 pm:

    [...] 2E! Jeffrey wraps the second edition of the extremely influential Designing with Web Standards amidst numerous family crises. All’s well.   [...]

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