Adobe Contribute CS4 refused to connect to our web server this morning, insisting that “Contribute cannot verify your connection information.” This despite having copied & pasted the path and password, and seeing that when I chose to browse to the correct path on the server, Contribute was able to successfully navigate to the correct directory, which it could only do if all permissions were set correctly…

The solution was to delete all previous connection settings for other web sites, as detailed at Caspian IT.

Honestly, does Adobe get anything right these days? We got Contribute CS4 as part of a bundle upgrade, but it’s not significantly different from version 4, which only preceded it by a few months, but it wasn’t a free upgrade.

What you’re seeing is a Finder window (full of yellow-labelled files) which has split a Photoshop window in two: the Photoshop window’s titlebar is behind the Finder window, while the Photoshop document’s contents are in front of the Finder window.

This persists if you move either window, creating the illusion that the Finder window is slicing the Photoshop document apart.

Weird.

Does it do this under Windows XP or Vista, or is this a Mac OS X-only “feature”?

Today, I haven’t been working much in Adobe products, so the list is short. Today’s entry should have been added to yesterday’s list, but there were many, and it slipped my mind:

• Cannot rename layers in the Adobe Flash CS4 timeline by double-clicking the name. First time this has happened. It highlights the text field for an instant, then reverts to being a label. I can only change the names by choosing Modify > Timeline > Layer Properties... or by right-clicking on the layer name and choosing Properties...

What kills me is that I used to like Adobe software even more than Apple’s software. Microsoft makes better Mac software these days.

• Double-clicking two JPEG files at the Finder launched Photoshop CS4. But it never opened the files. I had to go back, find them again, and double-click them again. Thanks, Adobe.
• Flash CS4 should not have been released. It crashed nearly a dozen times today, usually in response to something like
• opening an existing file (under 1 MB)
• selecting all on the stage
• pasting a text box from another file
• Flash CS4 won’t let you delete an object on the stage. Not right away, at least: select it, hit the Delete key on your keyboard. Watch the object stubbornly refuse to cease existing. See the Edit menu highlight in acknowledgment that your keyboard is working. Notice the layer is unlocked (double-check that the item is, in fact, highlighted. It is.). Try this three or four times then, inexplicably, it will work. Curse Adobe for wasting more of your precious time.
• The Flash Library palette is an abomination that only looks like a standard palette: despite saving a workspace, it will always open wherever it damn well pleases.

Thanks, Adobe. I wasn’t busy trying to get any work done today.

They must’ve changed what menu items are hidden by default, because I would’ve noticed if the Revert command or the View/Proof Setup commands were gone under CS3. They’re certainly not available until you choose “Show All Menu Items” from the bottom of the File and View menus, respectively.

Some warning would’ve been nice. Or a universal preference (’Would you like idiot Photoshop or regular Photoshop?). Despite going over the Preferences dialog carefully — and it hasn’t changed radically since Photoshop 3 (no, I don’t mean CS3, I mean Photoshop 3.0), I could find no such setting.

At any rate, here’s the solution, if you don’t fancy re-enabling them all by hand:

• Remove “Show all Menu Items” From Photoshop CS4 at Chris Koerner.

Like Koerner, I find myself wondering why this wasn’t done properly:

• Application-wide preference?
• Question during installation or first-run?
• Take a peek at CS3’s prefs file to see if I’ve used “advanced” settings?
• Take note of the fact that I’ve purchased Photoshop, not “fingerpainting for dummies”?
• Notice that I’ve selected “Show All Menu Items” five times — in the last three minutes?

This is not shit that shareware authors get wrong very often; they’d have a mutiny on their hands.

For what it’s worth, I’m not even among those who hated the CS4 installers (on individual workstations, mind you). No, they don’t follow either platform’s standards, but they actually installed everything the first time, and they weren’t that hard to figure out. I do fully appreciate and endorse John Welch’s position on everything Adobe, though: Adobe’s software used to be a sheer pleasure to use. Now I merely tolerate it. And that’s when it’s working reasonably well.

Here’s hoping Apple gets an update out soon; the 50D’s been out for a couple of weeks now. For now, it’s not listed on Apple’s Raw support page.

Update: Adobe Photoshop CS3 (10.0.1, from 2007) opens the 50D’s files without issue, and I’ve only got Adobe’s Camera RAW plug-in version 4.6.0.30.

At least Aperture shows thumbnails, and lets me export the images so I can work on them in Photoshop.

After suffering through the Flash-based Adobe store (kill me now), I give them my credit card number, and wait for the transaction to be processed.

I get a nice screen telling me that

We are currently reviewing your order.

You will receive an email within the next three hours confirming your order if you placed your order within North America business hours.

Wow. Do they have Adobe Gnomes who manually review each order to determine the customer’s worthiness?

Okay, calm down. It’s just Adobe letting you know who’s in charge. They’re a little passive-aggressive; it’s only natural given all the Adobe Love on the net these days.

Then the email arrives. Three hours becomes “within the next business day”, which would be FOUR DAYS FROM NOW (it’s the Friday before the Labour Day weekend).

You will receive an email within the next business day confirming the status of your order.

It’s ecommerce, people; we’re not rigging an election here.

Maybe they should work on Adobe’s Software Installer team.

I upgraded from Adobe Contribute 4 to Adobe Contribute CS3 yesterday. Not, you know, because I wanted to; but because out of the blue, when trying to administer a Dreamweaver-based web site with Adobe Contribute 4, like always, it suddenly told me I needed a newer version of Contribute. Then it would quit.

I fiddled with it for a bit, then decided to just give in and upgrade. It’s not that much money.

1. I download it (it’s over 300 MB!): success.
2. I install it: success.
3. It asks for the serial number. I give it the serial number: success.
4. It asks for the serial number of the version I’m upgrading from. I give it the serial number: rejection. WHAT?!? I’ve copied the serial number from the email Adobe sent me in 2006, when I bought version 4…
5. I copy the serial number from version 3, bought from Macromedia (in 2003, if memory serves): rejection. This is ridiculous.
6. I call Adobe, and 10 minutes later they walk me through a procedure that gets it to work.

This is the same thing I went through with Photoshop CS3, and twice with Dreamweaver CS3.

It used to be that you could rely on an installer to find your previous version on your hard drive, and it could figure everything out from there. Not any more.

It used to be that you could COPY AND PASTE the serial numbers from their own email and expect that to be recognized (it worked when I needed it originally, after all). Not any more.

Will Adobe ever figure this shit out? Seems unlikely.

Apple appears to be making room on the iPhone for flash memory, which means an end to Apple’s standoff with Adobe that’s kept iPhones from easily viewing a plethora of Internet videos…

You know, confusing hardware (flash memory) with software (Adobe Flash) like this is the kind of mistake one might expect minimum-waged electronics sales staff to make — not someone writing tech columns for Dow Jones Newswires that get picked up by money.cnn.com…

(Via Daring Fireball, of course.)