via Geekdad
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Happy Birthday Photoshop!
February 10th, 2010More Hating on Fireworks, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love Photoshop I mean Illustrator I mean, o, crap.
October 7th, 2009So one of my most favoritest designers in the whole wide world, Mr Jon Hicks, wrote a big assed article about Fireworks recently. It was fantastic to see, as my frustrations with Photoshop and Illustrator have come to a boiling point. At my office, we’ve been considering giving Fireworks a try, so this was a great heads up. Additionally, for those of you who read the comments on our Adobe responds to Fireworks post, you’ll know alot of FW faithfuls have been extra pissed at this new release. I think Jon captures not only the Fireworks crowd’s frustration but that of the Photoshop and Illustrator ones as well, here:
The problem is, after submitting the 20th crash report of the day, I’ve lost faith that anyone ever sees them or acts upon them. Overall, it feels like Fireworks is at the point of no return – no hope of it ever being fixed or improved, only that it will get more bloated, buggy, non-native and expensive.
Now I’ve been reassured time and again that Adobe is listening. I don’t think “Listening” is the problem; the problem is focus and politics. See before the Macromedia/Adobe merger, you could legitimately point at Adobe and say, “hey, make a graphics editor specifically for screen graphics”, since neither Photoshop nor Illustrator were “meant” for it. Once Fireworks entered the mix though, they had an answer. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be taking development of it seriously, pissing off those who want to see it flourish, and those who want to see it replaced by something better by not getting rid of it (like, a Photoshop / Illustrator hybrid).
Adobe seems more concerned developing next generation technology like Flash Catalyst which is cool ‘n all, but doesn’t get the job most designers are doing everyday done much faster or more reliably. I want to give Fireworks the ‘ol college try, but if it’s as unstable as everyone says, that’s pretty disheartening. Meanwhile, Photoshop is getting more and more bloated while not adding much to the screen design side of things, and Illustrator still can’t render a single bloody pixel. Adobe needs to reconsider what their workhorse solution is for screen graphics for professional designers, or more people are going to start taking the competition seriously.
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Adobe Flash CS5 will be able to output native iPhone apps
October 5th, 2009Via the entire Twitterverse, Adobe announced today that the coming version of Flash will be able to create native iPhone apps. This seems to mean a couple of things:
- Adobe is admitting to the world how important the iPhone is to the future of mobile, and that they’re desperate to be an important player, even if it’s on Apple’s terms. Desperate doesn’t mean it’s a dumb move, just blatant.
- There’s going to be a HUGE influx of tiny one-off games into the app store. This is a great way for flash game developers to make some extra cash off the work they’ve already done, but the amount of crap the app store will be inundated with will be unprecedented (and that’s saying alot, considering what’s already there). I foresee an architectural redesign of the app store and possibly the submission process to happen around the same time CS5 is released.
- If users can’t tell the difference between a Flash iPhone app and a “pure” one, Flash could easily become the predominant development platform for the iPhone. Even I can understand flash, Objective-C is a decidedly harrier beast. There’s alot standing in the way of this however. Will Flash be able to access everything the SDK can? Will you be able to use all the phone’s capabilities or have to recreate certain things? Will there be a performance hit, or worse, will it suck battery life? If any of these things are true, you might see people advertise there apps as being “not created in Flash” or some such. Maybe Apple will segregate them into their own portion of the app store (I doubt it, but anything’s possible).
Anyway, this is an exciting development and certainly shakes up the space a bit. Looking forward to seeing how it plays out.. and making some one-off silly Flash iPhone games.
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The Future of Adobe Updater
July 20th, 2009We all know Adobe Updater. And the pain that it often brings. But there is good news–maybe. New on the Eric Wilde’s blog over at Adobe is a post about what’s coming up in the next version of Adobe Updater, presumably in the next CS release, CS5.
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HomeSite Users Evicted
July 10th, 2009
Some depressing news for HomeSite fans: HomeSite development has been discontinued with Adobe directing users to use it’s Dreamweaver product. From the article:
After careful consideration, Adobe discontinued development of Macromedia® HomeSite® software effective May 26, 2009. Field and channel sales of the product ended on May 26 and sales across all channels, including the online Adobe Store, ended June 18, 2009. Existing customers are encouraged to consider the development environment of Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4 software.
The expected crying and carrying on eulogies are available at the Adobe user forums and the creator of HomeSite, Nick Bradbury, has some parting words up on his blog as well.
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Adobe can’t activate legacy software, but they CAN send you new software for free
July 5th, 2009via Consumerist:
After an iBook-death forced her to migrate to another computer, Lisa found that she couldn’t activate her legally-purchased copy of Macromedia StudioMX 2004. Adobe insisted that the software was too old to be reactivated. Too old? It’s software!
Go to Consumerist to read the thrilling conclusion to Lisa’s tale!
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Adobe Is A Bunch of Slackers
June 30th, 2009We came across a post on Daring Fireball about how Adobe has taken to shutting down it’s North America operations for a week to save some dough. I propose that they can all take a week off when we stop getting gripes in here at Dear Adobe. 
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Flash problems? Don’t use it, duh.
June 26th, 2009John Welch of bynkii.com has a fun rant about Flash plugins and what some Adobe staff has recomended people do to handle the frequent browser crashes and slowness. Prepare to be appalled and entertained all at once.
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Adobe responds to Fireworks gripes
June 22nd, 2009
Bruce Bowman, product manager for Adobe Fireworks, kindly approached us about responding to some of the top Fireworks gripes – of course we’d love to share his thoughts with the Fireworks community, so here they are.
Fireworks Responses
1. Lose the fucking bloat already. #125
18. please don’t ruin fireworks with your bloat, it’s nearly perfect. #1653
Adobe: A lot of people voted for these two, but unfortunately, we’re not sure what exactly is meant by “bloat” and it is unlikely that everyone who voted for this one thinks that bloat means the same thing. Fireworks CS4 was the 9th release since the product debuted 10 years ago. Along the way, new features have been added with each release, and it has gotten bigger, in terms of the amount of code in the application, its footprint on disk and its footprint in RAM. Is this what you all meant by bloat? Or is it something else? We do work on keeping it lean, and did some good stuff in Fireworks CS4 – we significantly improved vector rendering performance, reduced install time, application launch and re-launch time, and the next release has even more of this coming. If we missed your point, then please tell us what bloat means to you. (This form is also for reporting problems/issues. We may not reply, but we do read every one of them.)
2. Change Fireworks so that font families work correctly. And let me type keyboard letters to search the font list when it’s open. #96
18.) 14. Please allow me to select a typeface in Fireworks by typing the name of that typeface. #1515
Adobe: We totally agree with this one, and also want Fireworks to be consistent with the other Adobe applications that have this feature. Its a high priority item on our to-do list.
3. Make it so that you can double click on gradient chips to set their colour. #426
Adobe: We agree 100%. We love this feature in Illustrator, Flash, etc. Thanks for bringing this up – it is now in our list of possible features for an upcoming version.
4. standardized type tool across all apps – and include table (and bulleted lists) support in that type layout engine. i mean–fireworks is a web design tool and can’t layout tabular data easily? #1038
Adobe: We don’t have a great answer for this, other than, you’re right, both of these would be really nice to have in Fireworks. For the second part of this, while not “ideal”, we do have an extension that installs a “Lorem Ipsum” panel, which has options to add normal bulleted lists inside a selected text block. Its not everything you want, but might be useful, so we are including it here. What are the features in the other products that you like the most and want to see in Fireworks? Use the form to tell us.
5. Please give Fireworks better text handling so I don’t have to use all two zillion megs of RAM running Photoshop just to make a simple webpage. #97
Adobe: Fireworks CS4 has a new text engine, the same text engine that is found in Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Adobe products. You should see improved performance and increased functionality in CS4. Make sure you update Fireworks CS4 to version 10.0.3 using the updater. You can get the update with Adobe Update. Or, if you’re an Adobe Update hater you can get it from here
I wanna add that alot of people aren’t thrilled with the Photoshop text engine – especially web designers who wanna match how browsers render type. – Adam, Dear Adobe
6. God I love Fireworks. Please, please, please don’t think that we don’t want fireworks with Photoshop out there. We do. #254
12. Fireworks rocks. DO NOT KILL IT LIKE YOU DID FREEHAND. #907
15. Don’t even think about getting rid of Fireworks #1891
16. Please love Fireworks. #1446
17. fireworks is awesome. thanks for keeping it alive. m4cr0m3d14 4eva! #1644
24. Do not kill Fireworks for Photoshop! Don’t do it. Please don’t do it. #103
Adobe: Thanks! When we add all of these similar entries on Dear Adobe, this by far is the number one “Gripe.” We love Fireworks too! When we design new versions of Fireworks and Photoshop, we know that each program is for a different type of designer. Sure there are some overlaps, but we’ve designed Fireworks to be streamlined for screen graphics production and tons of other uses that have come up in the last decade.
7. Please have an option of turning off the fade-in menus. #436
Adobe: We’re not certain, but are guessing that you’re referring to Windows Vista’s fade-in menus… If so, then this setting is controlled by Vista. Open Control Panel > Performance Information and Tools, and in the list on the left, choose Adjust Visual Effects and uncheck Fade or slide menus into view. You can tell Vista to Adjust for best performance while you’re here if you like. To get maximum UI responsiveness, go to the Appearance and Personalization control panel, choose Change Theme and select Windows Classic. Your UI will look more like old school Windows NT, but will be crisp and responsive and leave more RAM for other running programs. There is a cool little utility at http://tweakvista.com that allows you to get to some settings that otherwise are not accessible through the Windows Vista UI.
8. How about implementing wheel scrolling for the Fireworks panels? Clicking and dragging is a drag. #80
23. Why can’t I use my scroll wheel in the layers palette in Fireworks!!?? #1554
25. Please enable scrolling in Fireworks palettes already! #2300
Adobe: In Fireworks CS4, we added the ability to scroll using the mouse wheel in most of our panels, although in some you must have a selection before you can scroll, while in still others, you cannot use the mouse wheel to scroll (Shapes, Styles). This is still a work in progress, though we feel like we made this work for the most important panels first. Another nice workflow improvement in this area that we find not a lot of people have discovered is that there are new Contextual menus in the Pages, States and Layers panel, so there’s no longer a need to access menu items from the panel menu in the top right icon of the panel. Just Right/Control-click on e.g., a layer in the Layers panel, and choose the menu item that you want.
9. When can you improve the usability of Fireworks? Especially on Mac! #79
Adobe: This is too vague to be helpful, so we’re going to turn it around on you – what are your top 5 usability issues that you’d most like to see fixed? Fireworks CS4 made some significant improvements in usability, but we know there is still room for improvement and could use your input to help us prioritize. Use our feature request form. This form can also be used to report problems/issues. (We cannot reply to all of these submitted reports, but we do read every one of them.)
10. Who wants to draw a box with fuzzy edges? Not me. Why does fireworks do this? #609
11. Stop anti-aliasing edges in Fireworks randomly. There should never be a “half pixel” on a straight edge. #1815
Adobe: Check out this tech note and let us know if it doesn’t address the issue. We’re definitely working on several improvements in this area for the next release.
13. Fix Fireworks for Mac. You have cost me countless hours of work in crashes. #422
Adobe: We get the Crash Reports and have been fixing those issues as they come in. We also recently released the Fireworks CS4 10.0.3 Updater. This updater fixes most of the top issues, and improves stability.
Why did you make the text editor in Fireworks to be such a load of gash? In fact, why are so many things in the suite such a load of gash? #356
Adobe:
Ouch! (we had to go to Urban Dictionary to figure out what that meant…) The Fireworks CS4 10.0.3 Updater improved stability and fixed many of the top reported issues. Also check http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/ for other Adobe suite product updates. If you have the latest versions of the applications, and are still having problems, let us know. (Again, we do not reply to these submitted reports, but we do read and consider every one of them.)
20. Give me access to the same tools, effects, etc. in Fireworks as are available in Photoshop. Or please revive ImageReady. #1337
Adobe:
If you take a good look at Fireworks over the last 3 releases, you’ll see a trend – the application is improving in the look and feel and consistency with the other CS4 applications. In CS4 we did a lot of work to preserve design fidelity when moving data between Photoshop and Fireworks. Its now much easier to go from Fireworks to Photoshop, use those tools and effects, then return to Fireworks. If you have specific examples of a Photoshop tool or effect that needs to be in Fireworks, tell us about it, and how you would use it.
21. Can Fireworks CS4 not crash as much as its beta on release? I know it’s a beta, so it’s supposed to crash, but it’s not like you’ve never released unfinished code before. #357
Adobe:
We always warn and advise against using pre-release and beta software for production work. If you’re worried about the beta/pre-release builds crashing too much, then you’ve probably ignored our warnings. If you’re still having problems with the final CS4 release, make sure that you’ve updated to the latest version. And if you’re still having problems once you’re using the latest version, please let us know.
22. how often does one really put a stroke on a piece of type? the type colour option should default to fill. #4334
Adobe:
By default, new text objects have the same color fill and attributes as the last type object that was created.
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The Worst Idea Ever
March 12th, 2009I’m a photoshop guy. To say I have an intimate relationship with Photoshop is like saying John Gruber likes Macs. My obsessiveness about Photoshop verges on unhealthy. For the past nine years, few days (okay, weekdays) have gone by where I haven’t worked in it, let alone spent hours working with it. I use photoshop, I teach photoshop, I criticize photoshop.
So to be made to use another program for months on end feels odd to me. When I have to edit a photo or some other task that absolutely requires it’s bitmappy embrace, I feel a calming relief. Suffice to say for the last 4 months or so, 90% of my workday has been spent in Illustrator, and lately inDesign. Being so familiar with one member of the Adobe family but few of the others isn’t as rare a trait as I’m lead to believe. I think most people have that “upside down T” level of knowledge when it comes to software – expertise in one or two things, vague familiarity with others. This was my experience, super pirate ninja with Photoshop, familiar enough with Dreamweaver (ick), kinda okay at animating in Flash, and I’ve flirted with some of the others at one time or another (I rocked pretty hard at Premiere about 5 versions back).
Nowadays I’m no expert at Illustrator and certainly not inDesign, but I’ve got my footing. I can move pretty fast in Illustrator and really do realize it’s benefits – and it’s shortcomings. I’ll save my full experience with Ai for another time, but I want to talk about The Worst Idea Ever, which really isn’t so bad, but I’m sure there’s reasons it’s not so good.
Why does Adobe have 14,000 different applications? Yes, Flash and inDesign are about as different as graphic programs can get, but, what about Photoshop and Illustrator? Erik and I were talking about how yes, in CS4, Adobe created a unified interface, and despite all the moaning (here’s looking at you, DA submitters, love ya lots), it’s probably for the better. But functionally, there’s things that inDesign can do (Paragraph Styles) that Illustrator and Photoshop can’t, and that doesn’t make sense to me. Should you be able to use Actionscript 3.0 in Acrobat? Probably not, but there’s alot of missing overlap.
So here it is. The Worst Idea Ever. Combine ‘em all. All of them. The obvious ones – Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash. The less obvious ones – Air, Contribute, onLocation (I don’t even know what that is). Let’s put aside financial disincentives, what are the technical limitations at this point. I make Illustrator chug and I’m not even drawing anything, what would a 100gb hybrid app do to my wee little quad processor mac? What I want is to open a .adobe file in my Adobe.app, click a “Mode” dropdown, select Photoshop, and get my photoshop windows. Edit all my layers with bitmappy precision. Then, when I need to edit something in vector, I don’t use the pathetic excuse for vector tools in Photoshop mode, I switch to Illustrator mode, and all my bitmappy layers suddenly work as Illustrator objects. Would this be extremely difficult technically? You betcha. But let’s keep going.
I switch to Flash mode and I get a timeline to edit everything. I’m not switching apps here – everything is a single file, and I get to edit that file 14,000 different ways – then export it for any end purpose. I take my .adobe file which I’ve just made into a complex Actionscript 3.0 site, switch to inDesign mode, and make a book out of it. Why not?
I’m not the first one to think of this. I don’t think of ideas first, I’m not that bright. I’m sure every junior engineer inside Adobe has thought of this. And for the record, as much contact as I’ve had with individuals who work for Adobe, I have no idea what they’re thinking about the future. But why not is all I’m asking dear Dear Adobe readers, all two of you. Why the hell not?
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