Adobe CS3 : Install Headache

I've just spent a good part of the last 24 hours installing Adobe CS3 Web Premium.  Sure I didn't spend the whole time on the install.  But I was doing something towards it for most of my waking hours.  I have never had so much trouble installing the web studio before.  Perhaps the most disappointing part was that I couldn't use my serial number with the trial software I installed last month.  Consequently I had to uninstall every application before trying to install the suite (each application took 20 minutes to uninstall).  This was a real headache as I don't have a DVD drive and the suite only comes on DVD.  This is clearly mentioned in the system requirements so I can't grumble here.  But it wasn't an unreasonable assumption that I could use my serial number to activate the trial software.  In the end I had to transfer the 2GB of install onto a Flash drive and install from there (I wasted quite a bit of time exploring other options before I found this solution; which required the purchase of a 2GB+ Flash drive).

I made one big mistake while uninstalling the Flash trial; I didn't uninstall the Flash player and plugin because I needed them for Flex. When I ran the installer I couldn't install Flash because it said I already had Flash (because I hadn't uninstalled the player and plugin).  In the end it took another 20 minutes to uninstall the two remaining Flash components before I could re-run the installer.

The final small obstacle was that I couldn't activate the software without disabling my firewall.  This wasn't a big thing (though I didn't feel comfortable about needing to disable my firewall). 

My question at the end of all this is why does it need to be so difficult (and I know from searching that my experience is mild compared to some).  Most of the issues seem to come from an attempt to make the different applications interact more seamlessly.  Most of the install (and uninstall) time is spent dealing with "shared components".   But I'd give that up in a second if I was given some options about how I want to install and use the software.  I rarely need my applications to work hand in hand.  What I want is for them to start quickly, run efficiently and take care of the job at hand with as little fuss as possible so I can move onto to the next part of the workflow.  I'm sure I'm not speaking for everyone.  But at the same time I'm sure I'm not the only user who feels this way.

Contribute CS3 - Blogging Problems

I'm particularly interested in the blogging features of Contribute CS3 and as mentioned in an earlier post I've been focussing my tests on these features. I had no trouble creating a connection to my Blogger account or making a new post. But it has proved to be impossible to actually edit an existing post. I can easily find and select the post. But actually trying to open it for editing gives me a wild sequence of alert dialogs. I firstly get a "failed to open document" alert followed by a "Save changes to untitled-1?". This cycle repeats and often leads to Contribute crashing.

Naturally I went searching for some documentation or work around for this problem on the product support site; with no luck. So I tried the Adobe Support Forums searching first and then when that failed posting. The post has been there for the last three days with no response. Which lead me to start looking around the forums. What I found were a group of lost souls unable to find some desperately needed help. I eventually did find a thread where an Adobe person offered some support after three weeks of frustrated posting (mostly about their frustration).

So what we find is a great feature that seems to have quite a few bugs that Adobe seems keen to ignore. I'd love to get this feature working as it would greatly simplify my life. So how about some help here Adobe. Even acknowledging the problem would be better than the current silence.

Blogging From Contribute CS3

I'm currently trialing Adobe CS3 prior to upgrading from Macromedia Studio 8. In particular I was keen to try out the blogging options in Contribute CS3. Which is exactly where I'm writing this post. This functionality was released a few months ago. But I prefer to manage upgrades as new suites are released. I'd also tried this from work but have never been able to create the connection. Now I know that the problem is probably proxy related as I had no problem making this connection from home. What's nice about posting from Contribute is that you are writing directly into your page with all the pages available styles. So you get a real feel for how the final post will appear. The Blogger editor is very sensitive to whitespace and so you can end up with some unexpectedly large spaces in your post.

One potential limitation is Bloggers use of labels instead of Tags. There is a drop down in Contribute listing all existing Labels and you select the ones you want to use. But there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for adding new Labels. Which means I'll probably need to edit this again in Blogger to add Contribute as a Label. But perhaps I'm just missing the option. It is very much a first try.