We 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. 
John 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.
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.
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.
I’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?
John Nack has a post up on his blog asking for people to participate in a survey regarding how to manage highly complex PSDs. Some of the ideas he’s put forward include Layer Sorting, Symbols, Linked Files and Type Styles.
Read more and post your own ideas on his blog post here and be sure to take the super-short survey here.
via Subtraction.
Right after CS4 was released, we noticed alot of the same gripe flooding in: why can’t we upgrade a single application from an older version of Creative Suite? I counted 30+ for Photoshop alone and many others filed under General Bitching:
How about allowing us to upgrade portions of a collection instead of the whole thing. I want to only upgrade PHOTOSHOP every year and a half.
How about letting us upgrade Photoshop from a Suite Series without having to upgrade the whole frickin thing???
Why would you allow some to upgrade photoshop from elements when they paid $99 but someone who paid $1700 for creative suite has to upgrade the whole lot?
Originally we thought that this was possible, so after some digging online we decided to go straight to the source for some confirmation from product managers at Adobe. Today we got our response:
Yes, unfortunately this one is true. We are looking to see what solutions we can possibly provide to work around this issue.
If we hear any more on this, we’ll be sure to let everyone know. In the meantime, let’s do an informal poll: if you own an older version of Creative Suite, what apps would you upgrade?
People using InDesign in Leopard will be pleased to know that there is now a fix for that pesky issue where InDesign cannot be hidden or unhidden. Simply upgrade OS X to 10.5.6, the latest version that was released on December 15th. The free software update should correct the issue for both CS3 and CS4 versions of InDesign.
A heads up is in order when upgrading to 10.5.6 though; there have been a couple reported problems.
Last but not least, many thanks to Michael Ninness (Senior Product Manager, InDesign) for writing in with this tip.
Robert Christensen, product manager for Adobe AIR, dropped us a line to let us know he’s responded to nearly all of the gripes listed for AIR in the replies. That’s alot responses folks! All applications should be so lucky. 
Here’s the full list of AIR gripes: http://dearadobe.com/top_rated_apps.php?a=AR. Just click on the Gripe ID numbers to see Rob’s responses.
First After Effects, then InDesign and now Photoshop, perhaps the best known Adobe product ever. Zorana Gee, Photoshop Product Manager has assembled some good responses to the top Photoshop gripes here on Dear Adobe. Gee also took some time to respond to some general gripes so you might want to get a sandwich, there’s a whole lotta response coming up. 
1.) Better font browser in Photoshop, please? #224
Adobe: Good idea - will look into ways of how we can better manage and display fonts. The challenge here is with performance as the more information we give, the more time it takes to initialize.
2.) please either make the vector tools in Photoshop work like completely like Illustrator, or just leave them out. Their half-assedness is aggravating. #511
Adobe: PS is a pixel-based application so inherently it will do things different and face different challenges than a vector-based application like Illustrator.
3.) Enable auto-recover for Photoshop, so when it inevitably crashes for the 9th time today I can get back to the corporate schlock I was working on. #28
Adobe: Good idea.
4.) Please make photoshop give my ram back when I quit #354
Adobe: PS does give all RAM back upon quitting; however, some Adobe processes do keep some of the resources running. I agree that this shouldn’t be happening.
5.) Let me change the opacity on multiple layers at once! #51
Adobe: The way you can do this is to create a layer group and then adjust Opacity on that group.
6.) Can you please save the history in my PSD files so I can come back to a project later and use the history brush? #627
Adobe: Currently the history log can be saved in the file as metadata and/or as a text file (general preferences). This is a text representation of what you did - as it appears in history/actions panel. I imagine this request is to record individual brush strokes which would result in a very huge file - hundreds of numbers representing the location of each tool at that time. The history brush paints in pixels from a previous history state - for that particular document. If you wanted to paint in exact pixels from that state - there are certainly easy ways to do this in PS (clone, save composite as a pattern). To save the history snapshot in the file is a great idea.
7.) “Photoshop cannot save this file because it is open.” Thank you, thank you, thank you. #350
Adobe: I’m not sure what this means.
8.) I want the Photoshop launch time to be faster #850, 136
Adobe: I agree. This should be our priority in moving forward. Performance is always a focus for us - not just in launch times. We continually evaluate the product and weigh the benefits of improvements and new features with respect to launch time and general performance enhancements to offer an improved overall experience in Photoshop.
9.) You are the ones who invented OpenType - so why doesn’t your application Photoshop support OpenType glyphs??? #948
Adobe: PS does support OT glyphs and OT features. Are there specific glyphs that are problematic?
10.) Dotted lines in Photoshop would be swell. #430. 316, 405
Adobe: I agree! The only way to do so is through styles for shapes (dotted lines) and also by creating a pattern for brushes.
11.) let me open up animated gifs. why did you REMOVE a feature?! #120, #959, #674
Adobe: We never had this in PS; however, we did lose this when we stopped shipping IR with PS. You can still use IR build with your current PS version. The ability to do this directly in PS would be a big win.
12.) Do you ever listen to your tech support team? How about gathering the top problems that people call in about and FIXING them? Or even posting FAQs based on the help calls. #947
Adobe: We work very closely with our tech support team and all issues get recorded and high-volume issues definitely get through to the team. For high volume problems or areas that need specific customer attention, we create tech notes for on adobe.com/support where technical workarounds and details are provided. We always address top concerns and bugs but don’t always get to resolve them in the next release. As Kevin Connor mentioned in a prior blog, we take these top requests our customers give us very seriously and always leave time in our development schedule to address the ones that we can (see JDI days). Certainly public sites and forums such as this one helps us shape and prioritize this list.
13.) In Photoshop, after using the text tool (and hitting enter) I hit ‘v’ to choose my cursor, but no, instead you change the typeface of the active layer to Verdana. Thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted. #188
Adobe: This should be fixed in CS4.
14.) Please let me customize the Photoshop tools palette. As a photographer, I will never ever use the Pen tool, but I want Healing Brush and Patch Tool on top. #949
Adobe: For PS CS4 we have added a new utility that allows you to create your own customizable panel containing tools, menu items, notes, scripts and widgets. This is available on adobelabs.com. More information can be found on John Nack’s blog: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/introducing_ado_1.html
Of course this isn’t the end all and we will continue to make PS more customizable where it makes sense and allow users to only expose areas of the application that they want.
Adobe: This is a good idea and it’s true, our ability to place grids/guides needs much improvement in addition to making them layer-based.
Adobe: In CS4 we’ve enabled Open GL drawing which allows us to have smoother renders of type, curves and lines - this can be seen at all zoom levels.
1.) You know what would be nice? Finally standardizing the interface between ALL of your applications. #19, #101
Adobe: With every release we make huge efforts to streamline our apps and offer consistent UI and workflows (i.e. CS4 and the application frame bar with all shared tools amongst suite apps). Suite applications started as individual products and were created at different times; therefore can’t be accomplished in one release.
2.) can Photoshop and Illustrator (and InDesign, etc.) please just work the same? Same guides, same text tools, etc. #36
Adobe: We continue to integrate our applications and improve to make workflows, tools, etc. more consistent where it makes sense. Each application serves a different set of customers and defining the right one to mimic wouldn’t work for everyone.
3.) give the same keyboard shortcuts to the same functions no matter what app. if you say you’re going for consistency, then be fucking consistent. #294, #93
Adobe: Again, would be great but which application would we mimic? We do allow all our keyboard shortcuts to be customizable; however, we could probably make presets that allow users to set a suite-wide change as they feel is appropriate.
4.) Please stop keeping the PC and Mac versions separate. One combined version, one license. How hard is that? #950
Adobe: For an 18+ year old product, merging 2 separate binaries is extremely “hard”. We do recognize that more customers are working cross-platform now and with our newer applications (i.e. Lightroom) we do create a single binary. However, in terms of licensing and serialization, Adobe is working on a plan to improve this process for our customers.
5.) Why the hell do I need both “Adobe Help Viewer 1.0″ and “Adobe Help Viewer 1.1″? This is the laziest excuse for terrible programming imaginable. At least make an effort to hide your incompetence. #637
Adobe: You don’t need both. In CS4, we don’t use Adobe Help Viewer at all and all Help can be found online. If you still have this viewer on your system you may need it for other apps (i.e. Elements).
We’ve been emailing with Kevin Connor, V.P. Product Management of Professional Digital Imaging at Adobe and he shared with us a glimpse into how Adobe’s developers are working on improving their software. Kevin writes:
A number of product teams are starting to incorporate “just do it” days into their development cycle. The idea is that the entire engineering team will take a break from their normal feature work and pick off some small product enhancements that can be implemented in a day or less. We’ve always tried to squeeze in these things where we can, but scheduling some formal days to focus on these smaller user requests will hopefully give us some extra momentum in getting them done. Dear Adobe can be one of several sources of inspiration for what things to tackle on these days.
Personally, I think this is really exciting. Looking at the gripes submitted to Dear Adobe, this is mostly what people want. They’re not pining for crazy new features, but want a program that works logically, smoothly and consistently. Here’s hoping to see the benefits of these “just do it” days soon!
UPDATE (11-12-2008):
In a follow up email, Kevin also offers some ideas about what might be fixed in these ‘just do it’ days:
Generally, they’d be things that would never make it into our top-level marketing materials, but things that existing users would notice and appreciate—minor enhancements to how existing features function, rather than entirely new features. Of course, what can really be implemented in a day is also a function of how things are coded in the first place.
He goes on to provide some examples of some things that were changed in CS4 that would probably be well suited to one of their ‘just do it’ days:
Though we didn’t schedule formal “just do it” days for the CS4 development cycle, there are a number of changes in that release that would be typical of what we might tackle this way. Some examples include:
- Changed the default color of the Stroke layer effect to black (formerly red). Ideally we would have liked to make this sticky so that it would remember your last setting, but that actually would have taken more than a day’s work to change all of the logic, and we couldn’t spare that time.
- We made a bunch of shortcut-key changes. These included freeing up the Cmd-~ shortcut so that it would be available on the Mac for application switching, and adding single-key shortcuts for moving among frames in video clips.
- The new “Bird’s Eye View” feature wasn’t exactly a user request, but it falls into the category of something an engineer was able to implement serendipitously based on some other work he was doing. It wasn’t part of our original product plan. Basically, it allows you to hold down a shortcut key to instantly zoom out to see your full image, navigate to the portion you want to see, and then release the shortcut to instantly zoom back in.
- Save for Web now has improved options for exporting metadata (while maintaining copyright info), and also can convert to sRGB directly within the dialog.