I’m extremely happy to announce that I’ve been asked to speak at CSS Day, a one-day event in June that explores CSS in advanced detail, in the company of an array of amazing speakers: Lea Verou, Eric Meyer, Bert Bos, Tab Atkins, Divya Manian, Stephen Hay, and Daniel Glazman. Wow.

I’ll be discussing the intricacies and secrets of the Animations and Transitions modules, while each of the other speakers will also cover a single topic in great detail. It promises to be a really good day. Tickets cost €250 (plus 21 percent tax).

The day before CSS Day there are also two workshops: Eric Meyer will explain the basics of each of the modules to be explained the following day, in case you’re worried about not being able to follow some of the talks, while I’ll be teaching Responsive Web Design techniques and approaches. Tickets for each workshop cost €300 (plus tax).

And just a reminder that I’ll be speaking at Future of Web Design in London in May, where I’ll also be giving a one-day workshop on CSS3 the day before. If you book now you get the workshop plus two days of conference for only £595 (plus tax).

I am delighted and very proud to announce my new book, The Modern Web. It’s about the modern open web technologies — HTML5, CSS3, SVG, JavaScript, DOM APIs, et al — that are required to build websites and applications in the new multi-device era. Basically, it’s about the Web Platform, but my publishers didn’t think the word “platform” was sexy enough so I had to drop it.

It’s not quite finished yet — I’m still in a final round of edits — but is planned for release in April. I’ll be further promoting it nearer that time (of course), but if you’re interested in pre-ordering you can get good prices from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Or, if you prefer, you can pre-order “The Modern Web” directly from No Starch Press and get a 30 percent discount and a free eBook copy. It’s a great deal.

I’m equally delighted to announce that I’ll be speaking at Future of Web Design in London, in May of this year, along with a great line-up of excellent speakers. I’ll also be giving a one-day CSS3 Masterclass before the conference. Tickets are on sale now, and if you book before 1^st March you’ll get £100 off the total price. Another great deal.

I’m very proud to have been asked to present at the first Future of Web Design in Prague, Czech Republic, later this month. I’ll be giving a one-day workshop, called CSS3 Master Class, then presenting a talk with the title CSS3 Layouts for the Multi-screen World in the Design track the following day.

If you fancy seeing a great line-up of local and international speakers in the beautiful city of Prague you can get a 10% discount by using the code SPEAKER10 when you register; that’s almost €50 off a one-day ticket, €90 off a two-day ticket, and over €100 off the full workshop and conference ticket. That should help convince your boss to pay for it. Hope to see some of you there.

For about as long as I’ve been working as a professional web dev, A List Apart has been the number one resource for design, development, and related topics, with articles that have genuinely defined the way we work, by authors who have risen to pre-eminence in our industry. And now, me too.

I’m really proud and delighted to have my very first article on ALA: Learning to Love the Boring Bits of CSS, a look at some of the more prosaic new CSS features. It’s had a good reception so far, and hopefully that will continue as I’d love to write for them again.

I’m also looking for more speaking opportunities, so if you know of any conferences looking for speakers, do point me in their direction.

The latest issue of .net Magazine has a cover feature on the future of CSS layouts, written by me. It’s a snapshot of the current status of the many CSS modules related to layout, updating the article of the same title I wrote for netmagazine.com in August 2011.

I’ve sent in a proposal to talk about CSS layouts at this year’s CSS Dev Conf, and would really appreciate a vote for my talk to be selected. The numbers of the talks are anonymised and randomised for each visitor, but mine is in the Cutting Edge sessions page, and is called A Trivial Shift: The CSS Layout Revolution. If you could vote for that, and for me as a speaker on the last page, I would be extremely grateful. I feel bad for asking, to be honest, but it looks like a great conference and I’d love to speak there.

Oh, also, a tutorial I wrote for a recent issue of .net has now been made available online: Chain CSS animations together with JavaScript.

I’ve decided it’s time for a change professionally, so I’m moving on from Top10.com at the end of the week. It was a tough decision to make because there’s a lot of really cool and exciting things coming up in their future, but my problem is that between my salaried work and my extra-curricular work, my spare time is far more occupied than I’d like it to be. I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the two has to be chosen, and working for myself comes out ahead.

In the short term I’m going take a few weeks off, and then start writing my second book (I haven’t actually signed the contract for it yet, but it’s been given the go-ahead by my publisher). I’m also working as technical editor for Chris Mills’ book, so the plan is for the money from this and other writing to support me for a bit. I’m talking at more events this year, and the extra time I get will allow me to focus on getting better at that.

Longer term I’m in very early stage planning to put together a co-operative with some friends where we can put our considerable experience to use making interesting and exciting things. That’s about as defined as we are at the moment.

Depending on how long the co-op takes to get off the ground I may be doing some freelance work later in the year, and I’m always open to hearing offers about talks, writing and consultancy, so feel free to get in touch with me about that or any other opportunity you think I might be interested in. Or just get in touch for a chat, as it’s going to be pretty lonely working by myself for the next few months!

I wish the best of luck to everyone at Top10.com, and I’m very excited and apprehensive about being unemployed for the first time since I left school!