Design in Flight is a beautiful site that is complimented by a well-designed PDF version for download. Though it is 100 percent digital, this site feels like print.

Now that’s customer service. Last week I wrote “ALA With Nothing to Say.” Today, they came back with their 201st issue and a complete web redesign. My bio page and article still remain on the site.

Thanks ALA for coming back. Sorry that I voiced my concern for your silence one week too soon.

There was a time when I used to eagerly anticipate Fridays.

Not because Fridays marked the end of the workweek, but because A List Apart would release a new online article about web design, standards, accessibly, or server-side scripting.

These days, however, it appears ALA has lost its voice.

Its most recent article was published in May 2005 and marked its 200th Issue. We haven’t heard from the site since.

Perhaps Zeldman and crew are too busy working on other projects, or perhaps the need for a community-authored publication has dwindled.

I hope not.

Though I think its great that more and more people are sharing their creations and knowledge via the web; we need more sites like A List Apart to aggregate and feature the best content and ideas.

I once had the good fortune of having an article of mine published on A List Apart. Inspired by what I had learned from others, I felt compelled to come up with an original idea or solution that I could share as a token of appreciation.

Sadly, ALA’s Contribute page is closed for business, reading “A List Apart is not accepting new articles at this time. Watch this space.”

ALA, we’re watching. We need the inspiration you delivered us for 200 issues. Though I frequently visit the personal sites of many of your authors, your ability to aggregate and share their best ideas made my Friday.

I hope you come up with something to say, for I’d love to hear from you again.

On Friday, the Indianapolis Star did a little story on me and my “No Repeat Lunch Week” routine. The story included a URL to my website in the forth of eight paragraphs (told you it was short).

Some of my coworkers thought my site would receive a huge spike in traffic for having it’s URL mentioned in the city paper; others didn’t care.

The result? I received only a minor spike in traffic. It was more than average, but not even close to my busiest day this year, which happened to be three days earlier for no apparent reason.

A measly 18 visitors came directly from www.indystar.com by clicking on the link in the online version of the story. Two strangers sent me emails — one to recommend a food site and the other rambled about doves for some unknown reason.

During lunch today, we came up with three reasons why my site received little traffic.

Neither the story nor I interest the readers of the Indianapolis Star

Few people read sidebars in Section E, beneath the fold

URLs don’t translate well from print to web

My guess is all three are likely reasons.

Though I can definitely guess at least three people read my website (I can hear you breathing), I’m sure more read the Star.

Which leads me to believe few people read a URL, remember it, and type it in the next time they sit down at a computer.

In contrast, when I published “Keeping Navigation Current With PHP” on a little website called A List Apart, traffic to my site quadrupled the first two weeks and eventually leveled off to nearly three times the amount of traffic I received a few months prior.

Besides Microsoft products, there are two other companies that help me live in my web development world: Adobe and Macromedia. Today, Adobe announced it is buying Macromedia for $3.4 billion.

Both companies have great products; most of which are bundled into software suites. Neither suite offers everything I need. I prefer Macromedia’s Dreamweaver over Adobe’s GoLive; Adobe’s PhotoShop and Illustrator over Macromedia’s FireWorks; and specialized products like Flash and InDesign have no competing products.

It will be interesting to see how the combined company handles competing software products. Will they merge them into a single product; choose the best one and drop the other; or continue to develop them both? Only time will tell.