Even better, when I hadn’t seen any mention of a forth-coming upgrade on PictureCode’s web site after Aperture 3 let me know it would have to run Noise Ninja under 32-bit mode, I emailed them to ask about their plans.

Not only did Bill Smith, their senior programmer, get right back to me, letting me know a release was imminent — he attached a beta version of the plug-in.

How cool is that?

(Via Official Google Mac Blog.)

AvidCodecsLE.pkg, AvidCodecsLE.zip

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”?

At the time, I was frustrated by features that were — and, I believe, remain — missing:

1. There’s no way to see an overview of all Milestones across projects
2. There’s no way for a project manager to see all to-dos assigned to everyone across projects

While these limitations were frustrating, other solutions seemed to offer a way around them, imperfect though they seemed even at the beginning…We tried:

• OmniPlan, OmniFocus and OmniFocus for iPhone (from the Omni Group)
• Things and Things for iPhone (from Cultured Code)

all of which are capable and sophisticated. Things, in particular, was a joy to use. Ultimately, we grew tired of work-arounds designed to imitate true multi-project management (e.g. shoe-horning multiple projects into a single OmniPlan document) and, ultimately couldn’t make them work in a collaborative environment (exporting data to share it is a one-way trip, and adds an unnecessary step).

Silos of project information that aren’t easily shared and updated by the various people involved ultimately proved counter-productive for us, small as we are.

The other broad issue we had with Basecamp was customers pushing back. This ranged from exasperation to hostility:

• “Don’t make me learn more software; I don’t have the time.”
• “Can’t I just email you?”
• “Can I change my password to ‘1234′?”

These aren’t flaws in our customers; they’re busy, they understand email, and they want things to be simple. No one said anything negative about Basecamp; it was that they didn’t want to learn or use anything new. It’s human nature.

But something interesting has happened: Facebook.

Widespread participation in social networks like Facebook and Twitter is melting away resistance to web-based (non-email) communication.

Which brings us back to Basecamp.

We’re doing it differently this time around. We won’t be bringing clients into it unless they ask to be. But we expect more of them to ask to use it.

For now, then, it will be mostly an internal tool. It will be an interesting couple of years. Especially if and when desktop tools like OmniPlan finally get their multi-project, collaborative acts together. The question is whether they can implement these features at all without essentially turning themselves into Basecamp, at least in part.

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.

The latest version has a long list of bug fixes — more than I would’ve guessed possible — but the one I was looking for was the first one listed in the Fixes section of the release notes: Workspaces are now saved properly.

This seems like a minor thing, but when you regularly switch between two offices with different external display setups, it’s a serious inconvenience. Well done!

[Before BBEdit, I used Rick Giles' HMTL Editor, whose markup colour scheme I still find myself using; old habits, I guess...]