Adobe has posted a Windows cleanup script (alongside the equivalent Mac version) that removes vestiges of the Photoshop CS3 beta as well as other Adobe pre-release software. If you’re having trouble installing Photoshop CS3 or other new Adobe apps, this script may help. You may also want to consult the tech notes on removing the PS beta on Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X.
The download page warns of nuclear holocaust, rivers of blood, etc. resulting from the use of the script. I think the team is just being extremely conservative and cautious, but I believe there is a chance that the script will remove serial number info for Acrobat 8 (meaning you’ll need to re-enter your serial/reactivate).
One specific point: A number of people have asked whether it’s strictly necessary to deactivate the beta prior to uninstalling it and installing the shipping version. Deactivation is accomplished via the Help menu, so it’s obviously a problem if you’ve already uninstalled the app. The good news is that although deactivating is a good idea, it doesn’t seem to be necessary prior to installing the shipping version.
All this stuff can be pretty tweaky and system-specific, so please let us know if you run into problems. Chances are I don’t know the answers myself, but I can route info back to the right people as necessary.
Recommended. The CS3 cleanup script is awesome. I’ve used it to remove CS3 betas on both Windows and OSX. It works much faster than going through the standard uninstallation process. Just make sure you deactivate your products and backup the serials before running the script.
Nightmare on elm street for me, tried every which way to get the CS3 upgrade to work, no joy i’m afraid!
I’ve posted support and on the forums. Roll on monday, when support opens again.
Just got my CS3 package in the mail (Design Premium is my flavor). Reading the above posts, wow, it is like Yin & Yang. All Good or All Bad. Hoping for the former. Uninstalling the beta as I type which sort of feels like stripping bare in Times Square before putting on new clothes. I have to say that the idea of being without CS3, even for a moment, is not comforting. Hope like heck this uninstall/install works… otherwise this Photoshoper has no clothes…
It seems there are a lot of users finding it impossible to install Photoshop CS3. The user to user forums are full of nightmare scenarios. (See just one thread at http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc3b755/21
I think Adobe needs to do something pronto or a lot of people will do what some are already doing and skip the upgrade.
Being in UK I am still waiting for my (overpriced) upgrade.
John
In contrast to my earlier comment, I thought it beneficial to provide an update.
I finally got CS3 to install last night, I decided to vanilla install XP sp2 from scratch using a ghost copy.
I then ran the installer from the same physical disk but different partition and I got 2 errors, CS3 and shared components failed to install. I was just about to throw the towel in, having cleanned my pc back to nothing but base XP sp2 install and then I thought why not put the whole 460mb package on the root of C: drive.
I ran the installer and uncompressed the file, which created the installer and executed. The options screen popup (at last!!) and I chose the default install location and few minutes later, CS3 was installed and running.
I then spent the next couple of hours updating XP with 80+ security patches, IE7 and all my other applications.
This may seem a bit drastic, but I can only conclude that this problem had nothing to do with CS3beta but rather a conflict with one or some of XP’s security updates / patches.
Also, there must be something inherently wrong with the CS3 installer scripts, perhaps absolute rather dynamic file addressing as it just would not work if I put the installer on a different drive.
I’ve burnt nigh on 20 hours on this upgrade and finally have it running.
Focusing on the positives, my pc is running a lot quicker and has less bloatware than before, however getting a PC to be stable takes a lot of time and effort, which I now have to contend with. In fact, IE 7 is already crashing more than it did previsouly!
Looking on the bright side, I finally have access to my CS3beta PSDs with LR working in harmony.
I do hope others can solve the problem in a less drastic manner. For me, I felt it better to work from a know XP build to isolate the many variables.
Nothing worked for me. Spent 5-6 hours of my life trying to install CS3 on WinXP. I consider myself an advanced PC user. Tried everything suggested…twice. Sent an email to Adobe requesting a refund. My recommendation is to skip the upgrade at this point if you already have CS2. Wait a few months until Adobe can get CS3 to commercial quality — courtesy of even more free, public testing. (I can only hope that somebody in Adobe’s Quality/Validation team gets fired for letting this turd ship. They are ruining Adobe’s good name.)
hmmm – stupidly didn’t read the ReadMe and trashed my CS3 Photoshop Beta the good old fashioned Mac way. Whoops! Then I couldn’t install it with my spanking new CS3 Web Premium upgrade…
Luckily running the CleanUp Script seemed to uninstall all the phantoms left (iwthout rivers of blood etc) and have managed to install CS3 onto my MacBook Pro. However when I ran Acrobat 8 it asked me for my serial number again – no problemo I thought? Although now for some reason that Serial number (the one I got with the upgrade) don’t work no more … weird.
Works OK for everything else? Photoslop, Flush, Direweaver and Dullistrator … whey not poxy Acrobat eh?
Answers on a postcard … if anyone knows why or is it just being obtuse!?
John, your blog is great, but the CS3 PhotoShop install program for those of us with an installed Beta of CS3 PS was a nightmare. It took me over six hours to figure it out from notes on the Forums and Tech Support Notes. You guys need to look at this problem as it is a very bad situation for a company as skilled as Adobe. I almost sent the software back I was so frustrated, and I have been a PS user since version 3.5 and using computers for 30 years. – Gerry
[I’m sorry to hear that, Gerry. I know it’s of small consolation, if any, but know that everyone here has suffered these same problems & worse (e.g. I lost 20+ blog drafts at one point) via the whole process of aligning our installer technologies. –J.]
I’ve just requested my refund. Tried all suggested fixes from KB401488 and KB401401, short of reinstalling Windows Vista.
A bit off-topic from this post, but I have a request: any chance you guys can fix CS3’s panel UI on Mac OS X and move the close/minimize buttons back to the left where they should be?
[That’s not planned. I’ve been a Mac user since man learned to walk upright, and yet I didn’t notice the placement of the buttons until an excitable forum denizen called them an “atrocity.” (That guy should watch the news more.) I’m all for addressing things that are functional problems, but the widget placement strikes me as a religious thing, not a functional one. Adobe is striving to create UI conventions that work across apps and across platforms. –J.]
No, Adobe is seeking to create a new, altogether unnecessary and confusing UI of its own. The OS has conventions of its own, and there is nothing wrong with those conventions that people become accustomed to (even if Apple does have trouble sticking to its own GUI guidelines). Adobe really should concentrate on what it does best, and leave the ‘chrome’ aspects of the UI to the OS and user preference.
After all, what, exactly, is wrong with having open/close buttons that follow the OSX convention on the Mac and the Windows convention Windows? Really? Isn’t there enough meaningful stuff that has to be done?
I know this is falling on stony ground, but there you go.
(And apologies for dragging this even further OT)
Nigel,
You make a decent point, and I felt the same way, at first. But then I realized that I almost NEVER use the close, min, max widgets in OSX on a palette. Usually I just double click on the palette’s tab to “scroll” it up or pop it open. Adobe is clearly trying veru hard to make these apps work across platforms and for the experience to be almost completely the same for the user regardless of platform. They also do an admirable job making the created files to be 100% compatible across platforms. Compare to the MS Office suite where the compatibility is simply dreadful – only the most basic document will work without some sort of a problem across platforms.
Greg,
I see your point … to an extent.
But, realistically, how many people are going to reap the benefit of a standard UI on both platforms (i.e. use PS on Mac & Win) vs. those that will see no benefit (at best) or confusion/ugliness (at worst)?
[So, to clarify, it would be less confusing to have the panels look different than to look the same? –J.]
The point of following OS conventions is that is what people on either platform are used to. Even the minority that use both platforms. So to claim that a third UI, the Adobe UI, clarifies things is a nonsense.
Regarding the problems with Office, is this really related to the UI, or to file incompatabilities, which is another thing altogether?
Nigel,
Understand that I largely agree with you. But, I think that the widgets on the panels are a minor UI feature. If the document window UI controls were different THAT would cause confusion and be something to be up in arms about. I did not intend to suggest that the UI had anything to do, directly, with file compatability. The point, poorly made, was that Adobe is trying hard to make everything about the apps to be seamless across platforms—including exceptional compatibility of the created files themselves. MS claims compatability, but fails to closely adhere to UI guidelines on platforms AND to achieve decent compatability with their own proprietary formats (for crying out loud). I am not happy that Adobe chose to adopt a single UI on the apps (and that it happens to resemble Windows rather than OS X) but I will take that and the obvious advantages of the UI being almost identical across the Creative Suite and the complete file compatability.
As for how many people use the suite across platforms? I bet it is more than you think. There must be tens of thousands of freelancers who might use one platform at home and another when working on-site somewhere. That is a “bread on the table” sort of issue for them. Quite different from the culture shock of, say, Powerpoint on the Mac and on Windows. It is almost a different app in that case. Some people will likely take issue with the Windows-ish look of the widgets on the panels and think that Adobe is turning away from Mac users. I can speak from personal experience that that is not true – there are many serious Mac users in Adobe all the way to the upper levels.
[That’s true, Greg. As for “Adobe is turning away from the Mac,” I’ve concluded that Adobe’s actions are largely irrelevant in this regard. The Mac is in some regards a way for 40-year-old white guys to feel like victims. It’s a way for people to cling together in a little oppressed club. (I know; I’ve been a Mac user forever and used to think that way.)
So, you don’t hear the people who used to beat up Adobe for discontinuing the Mac version of Premiere now saying, “Hey, Adobe is increasing its Mac presence!” Rather, you hear at best, “Oh,” or better yet, “What about FrameMaker! Death to Adobe!” If 1/10th of those people had bought FM on the Mac, we wouldn’t be discussing it; of course, they’d just dig up something else. It’s too gratifying being aggrieved.
The reality is that unlike MSFT and Apple, Adobe doesn’t have a vested interest in one-platform-only solutions. In fact, the company’s competitive strategy is to make solutions capable of running as broadly as possible–hence Flash, Apollo, AMP, DNG, etc. Do you want to trust someone who’s trying to sell you and OS and often hardware to make an OS- and hardware-agnostic solution? I wouldn’t, but as always, that’s just my opinion. –J.]
My point is that, for most people, it makes no difference whether they look the same or different on OSX and Windows. If they only use one OS, they have no yardstick, and probably don’t care what it looks like on the other platform anyway.
[I disagree that most people don’t care. Adobe products are industry standards. They sell well in part because you can count on other people using them, producing compatible files, using techniques that work on Mac and Windows. To some extent this bugs the heck out of the OS vendors, in that it blurs the lines in their offerings. Customers, however, know that they can sit down at any machine and get busy. The more OS-specific differences, the harder that becomes to preserve (witness negative comments in this thread about the MS Office UI). –J.]
What they will care about, if anything, is that the panels ‘feel right’, and that comes down to how the UI fits in with other aspects of the OS UI experience.
[That’s very important, sure. If I pull up an app that feels like a clumsy, nasty port, it really affects my perception of its quality and refinement. I had that experience trying out Shake–nominally an Apple product, but clearly the result of an acquisition of a Linux app. I had a similar reaction to Color at NAB–another acquisition that hasn’t been fully Macified.
At some point, though, we get into counting angels dancing on the head of a pin. Did the left-hand close/minimize widgets really make a big difference to you in CS2? Is their placement so hard to handle in CS3? The discussion starts to smack of Mac partisans imposing a litmus test, judging the ideological purity of an app and its makers. –J.]
You’re more likely to have the marketing data on how many of your users use both platforms, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s less than 50%.
[I believe it’s higher than that, actually, but it’s been a while since I looked. It’s certainly true that a majority of Mac users use more than just the Mac. So, if you’re concerned about Mac users being productive, you shouldn’t push for Adobe to start deviating from cross-platform consistency. –J.]
Therefore, for the majority, the only confusion comes from deviating from the ‘standard’ OS UI, not from having different UI for different platforms.
Does that make sense?
[I understand and appreciate your argument. I’d submit that Adobe would be damned if we did and damned if we didn’t emphasize differences between the platforms. And I’d suggest that controversy over the style and placement of tiny close boxes on Photoshop palettes is a philosophical issue, not practical one. –J.]
Greg
I agree that, in the big scheme of things, the widgets on panels are pretty tiny. My comments are more directed at the wish within Adobe to ‘rewrite’ the UI that users are used to, not only from the OS but also past versions of the applications.
Is it up to Adobe to foist a new UI on us? Well, from the perspective that it’s their ball, and they can take it away if they want to, then yes, I suppose they can do what they damn well like.
On the other hand, is it a positive thing? That’s open to debate, but here’s probably not the best place.
Today the widgets, tomorrow the document?
Given that Adobe has decided to ‘unify’ the UI (and although it’s more Win than Mac, with the buttons on the right, it’s actually alien to a Win user also), who’s to say that dumb acquiescence in panels now won’t lead to more far-reaching changes in CS4?
CS3 isn’t the first time that Adobe have moved away from a OS-goverened UI. After Effects has a ‘non-OS UI’ at least of v7 (I can’t remember v5, which I used on Windows anyway). I can’t say I love it, but heck, what can you do?
Of course, but the obvious advantages of cross-application similarity (which is important) and cross-platform file compatabilty (which is critical) are unrelated to the way widgets appear on each platform.
And I’d like to state that I’ve never said that Adobe is “turning away from Mac users”. My point all along is not that Adobe is setting a UI that is ‘more Win than Mac’ but that it is arbitrarily defing a new UI that is (a) unnecessary and (b) divergent from both Win and Mac.
But, like I said, it’s their ball…
I agree with everything you say there, John. But none of it is relevant to the question of within-OS consistency. I work with people using PS on Windows. All that matters to me is that the files are compatable and that their UI is good for them to do a good job. Wheher or not it’s identical to mine down to the panel widget level is, quite frankly, irrelevant.
As to OS differences, I would say that if the content of the panels and dialogues was different, that would be a problem. But the widgets/chrome? No, I really don’t see it.
At the end of the day, the Adobe rewrite of the I is not a showstopper at this stage. But It’s not necessary either.
Ahhh, yes, Color [sic!]. That still has the ‘alien’ interface of a bought-in product. I reckon the only work Apple have done with if is a few ‘Send to Color’/”Send to whatever’ menu additions.
Not only is it alien, it is, quite frankly, uglier than Shake.
But two wrongs don’t make a right.
[No. But I can’t help but notice the lack of Mac partisans bashing Apple about Color, Shake, and so on. Apple gets the benefit of the doubt; Adobe, not so much. (That’s so established, though, that it’s hardly worthy of comment. What’s weird is that I care.) –J.]
John,
[wow, this thread has some legs 🙂 ]
My final word on this is that Adobe took the hard road, and the correct road, in my opinion. The CS3 apps largely follow decent UI principles and are not radically alien from any platform’s UI and are (as I have pointed out) awesome examples of consistency from machine to machine. As a Pro, that is far more important to me than any “angels on a pin” issues the UI Purist in me might find. When one gets down to working, its about creating. Heck, the CS apps even have that great mode where the OS UI is completely gone (Lightroom, too). I am a Mac fanatic and I love that mode. No distractions, no fussiness. I can concentrate, and see only what I am focused on.
I don’t know if you hear it very often – but I’ll say it: Adobe rocks! (written while wearing my Kuler.com t-shirt that I got at ADIM last week!)
Have a great weekend, John. Keep up the great work!
[Thanks, Greg. 🙂 –J.]
While some people take it as a religion, I simply consider it as a usability thing. When I’m on Windows, I know to always go to the upper right of a window to close it. When I’m on Mac OS X, I know it’s the upper left. When I’m in America, I know that the steering wheel on a car is always on the left. If Honda started selling cars in the U.S. with steering wheels on the right, most people would bug out. Same thing with using a computer. It doesn’t matter how often each of us use those window controls, or whether we consider Adobe to have its own little universe of UI that’s independent from everything else.
Mac OS X window controls are on the left, Windows controls are on the right. Period. Every previous version of Adobe’s software followed these rules – why did the company suddenly decide to stop in CS3?
[I’ve tried to articulate the rationale above: consistency of experience across platforms. Ultimately, I can’t believe the placement of these widgets causes a functional impact on customers’ ability to use the apps.
What I *can* believe is that in the eyes of some percentage of the Mac user community, this very small decision creates the impression that Adobe doesn’t really care about Macs, etc. I disagree with that assessment, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, and that’s a shame. (Of course, as I’ve said, I’ve grown somewhat cynical on this point, concluding that anything that doesn’t come from Apple is automatically suspect in the eyes of some, and therefore that trying to please this group is a thankless, losing battle.) –J.]
Firstly, I’m not a “Mac partisan”. I’m a usability/consistency partisan, if not an anal retentive with OCD.
[If you can demonstrate to me any way in which the placement of the palette widgets is an actual *usability* problem, we can talk more about it as such. Until then I’m unconvinced. –J.]
Secondly, I’m less impressed with not only Color and Shake, but also the whole Apple pro range with resepct to its UI and guideline non-conformance. But this is an Adobe blog, so I thought we were concentrating on Adobe products.
But don’t run away with the view that any criticism in regard to deviations form OS conventions applies only to Adobe. I’ve never said that Adobe doesn’t care about Macs (if your comment was aimed at me).
[Not specifically. I have a lot of charred tissue on this subjectl; check out the bloodletting about Soundbooth & PPC, for instance. So when I see what looks like an ideological litmus test, I lump it in with a lot of other unwinnable battles. Broadly speaking, what Mac users don’t grasp is that there are real people working rather hard to make great Mac software, and that taking them to the woodshed at every opportunity is counter-productive. Sorry to lump you in with that mob. –J.]
What is questionable is its adherence to OS conventions on both platforms, which is probably marginally worse.
>trying to please this group is a thankless, losing battle
Let me put it from a user’s perspective…
I have found that in the past, as well as now, if you’re happy with the way an application functions you smile happily to yourself and keep working. But if other people aren’t happy, and complain, a listening company may take their thoughts on board and suddenly change things to suit the vocal. Suddenly, your way of working changes when/if you upgrade.
Case in point: MS Office. Offive 97 was a reasonable enough suite. I liked the MDI, but many didn’t, so MS abandonned it in favour of an SDI so the compainers could now ALT+TAB between documents. The consequence of this was that, if you work on multiple documents at a time, the taskbar becomes unusably crowded. But, hey, what can you do?
I’m not sure what customer feedback was gathered before Adobe decided to develop its ‘third way’. BUt perhaps some people complained, and those of us who were happy with the situation were carrying on oblivious.
Just a question: are we supposed to tell Adobe about the things we DO like, as well as the things we don’t or would like added? That way our voices get heard the next time the Adobe brains trust gets together. Or perhaps being a contended user is also a thankless, losing battle.
On the other hand, I may just be the guy who ordered the cheeseburger. Although it would appear that I’m not alone.
>trying to please this group is a thankless, losing battle
Or perhaps we should just stick to posting ‘ADOBE ROCKS!’ here? Pass the bubblegum…
[That’s nice. Yeah, it’s clearly my unwillingness to engage with different/contrary ideas and opinions that leads me to maintain this blog at all hours of the day. Right… –J.]
Sorry, that was a cheap shot.
There’s not doubt about your willingness to engage with different ideas, but we’re not going to change anything one way or another, so there’s ultimately little point.
It’s been a nice debate, but I’m wasting your time. Thanks for being the lone personal contact though.
[I didn’t mean it as a cheap shot. I didn’t think that your suggestion that I welcome only rah-rah boosterism was helpful or fair, though. –J.]
Where controls are placed is a topic of usability in an facet of life John. You suddenly put most Americans in a car with the steering wheel on the right, *it’s going to affect how they use the car.* They won’t be able to drive nearly as well on either side of the road, and they’ll make poor judgements *because their standard environment has been changed.*
The same goes for window controls. Users get used to clicking on one area of a title bar to close the window, and another area to click on and drag it. You move those controls and you’ve turned that entire workflow upside down.
[I’m sorry, David, but I just can’t buy that. I’ve used Macs for more than 20 years; I use Photoshop every day; and I didn’t even notice the left-right placement of the widgets until someone mentioned them following the public beta. I read more than 20,000 emails over two years during our beta program, and at no point did anyone mention the widget placement (and this is a Mac-heavy crew that dissected just about every detail of the new UI).
None of this is to say that the placement is irrelevant. Clearly it matters to you, and that’s good to know. But I just can’t go along with you in equating this to switching the side of the road on which people drive. –J.]
Even your own reasoning for making this decision to move the Mac OS X controls proves that you guys are at least trying to create a *standard user experience*, but this decision clearly shows that you’ve chosen the Windows UI as the standard upon which you’re designing.
[See, I think that’s what’s underlying these complaints: Perception that somehow Windows is getting a leg up on the Mac, and that Adobe is the agent of that happening. Would it help if I told you about Windows people complaining about the Mac-like conventions of Adobe apps (which, after all, largely started life on the Mac)? –J.]
Otherwise, those controls wouldn’t have moved. Please note that I’m not here trying to argue which window paradigm is the better other. It’s an irrelevant argument, especially when considering the root of the problem with this decision.
You have effectively made it easier for Windows users to hop on a Mac and still use Adobe products. While that’s great for them,
[and not bad for the Mac, either, I’d suggest; don’t you want switchers? –J.]
you’ve also completely uprooted the experience for Mac users, *forcing us to learn a new way of doing things* when *only* using *your apps*. Every other Mac app places those controls in the upper left, just like every American car has a steering wheel on the left. Mac users live in an environment where they click in the upper left to close a window, and drag anywhere else on a window’s titlebar to select or move it. Just like typing pressing cmd/ctrl-w to close windows becomes second nature to many users, these conventions also become natural to the computing side of our subconscious. Forcing us to break out of that workflow because you’re trying to create some Adobe Standard(TM) is wrong.
[Putting some checkboxes 200 pixels to the right of where they used to be breaks workflows? That’s not something I can believe. (Incidentally, this degree of conservatism makes it hard to consider any significant overhauls/enhancements to the UI.) –J.]
Imagine if Dell decided to change the layout of the keyboards they ship with their computers to something new, or even an older system like Dvorak. They could claim that it’s a better way to type, or a cheaper manufacturing process, or whatever – but they have still completely destroyed the experience of inputting text on a computer.
[I can imagine the fur really flying, just as it would really fly if Adobe changed something of functional significance. We haven’t, though, and this is a tempest in a teapot. –J.]
Hey, I’ve just had a (tiny) thought: would it be possible to have a prefs option to select OS UI vs. Adobe UI. So users can decide for themselves?
[Anything is possible. To justify taking resources away from another request in order to make this happen, however, I’d need to see a demonstration of how this actually impacts productivity.
By the way, here’s the irony in all this: I’m no fan of the widgets being on the right hand side, but for a different reason: I want them in a place where they’re not as likely to be clicked when I go to operate a palette’s flyout menu. Ultimately, of course, it’s not up to me, and I’ve expended effort justifying the UI team’s decision because I do think there’s a strong case to be made for cross-platform consistency.
Ultimately, on this point, I saw no functional impact & didn’t hear about one from users (and I’m not inadvertantly clicking the close/minimize boxes when I go near the flyout), so I didn’t think it was worth making a fuss. (Believe me, I saved those credits for changing some things that really did need to be changed, per user testing and feedback. As a PM you’ve only got so many bullets in your influence gun.) –J.]
does any one know how to change the install location of cs3 premium?
i first installed from a hard drive, now I’ve put the installer on a DVD ( to save hd space ) and it wont let me reinstall or update!! I’ve uninstalled like adobe said but it always just asks for the original media location… i don’t want to copy it back every time i change.
Thanks for the link to this script, this finally enabled me to install CS3 on my Macbook (IU had a prior version of PS CS3 beta installed and got the dreaded shared component error). Is it only me or does anybody else find John’s blog even more useful than Adobe.com?
😉
[Heh; for whatever reason(s), it’s hard for that site to move quickly, so I try my best to fill the gaps. Glad to hear that the script sorted things out. –J.]
Sorry for going off topic and dragging this back to the mud… but I just had to comment.
Tried working on CS3 on a friend’s machine – I wanted to see if the intel native apps were worth spending on.
There were three things that slowed me down (*and irritated me *):
1. The placement (and look) of the minimise and close widgets. Top right is never, ever, where I go to adjust (open close etc) a window. The continual stop and move to the opposite corner makes me lose focus on what I want to do.
2. The disappearance of the show/hide options arrow (from time immemorial) and its replacement by a bunch of lines (?) in a different position. Why did that happen?
[Are you referring to the little flyout menu on each palette? Yeah, don’t get me started on that one. At least it’s not as tiny as the UI guy kept trying to make it. –J.]
3. The inconsistent keyboard commands (try cmd-r in illustrator and flash for instance) across the suite – though this has always been true and always been a nuisance. But… but if Adobe really was trying to create a consistent user interface wouldn’t consistency in things like that play a role? All long time users have adjusted to new commands and this was a golden opportunity to standardise – and someone blew it.
[Hang on. “Somebody” didn’t “blow it.” We made big strides in making the apps more consistent in this cycle. If we aligned all the keyboard shortcuts, people would flip out about broken workflows and what not. You can change the shortcuts as you’d like, and many of the apps ship with alternate presets. If you want to accentuate the negative, though, you’ll always be able to find a way. –J.]
I work on both a Mac and Windows XP (though for many reasons, I prefer a Mac – of which UI is a significant one). On the Mac (or XP or Linux) I try and not think about menus and such and concentrate on my work – and unfortunately the appearance of the new palette windows is forcing me to think before acting – and in an unpleasantly intrusive sort of way. I am sure if I use it long enough I can get used to it… but at the moment I am not sure I want to try.
Because it is not just about “200 pixels”: it is about where I expect it to be – after 20 years of using a Mac and five on OS X.
Yes I am an *old* curmudgeon, but that was my experience.
I know none of this is your fault and I want to thank you for listening.
Ashok
p.s Is there someone on the CS3 team whom I can write to as a disappointed prospect?
p.p.s Not too long ago, the lead developer on Illustrator 11 recommended that Illustrator users switch to Windows.
[That’s not the case. Around four years ago, one of the Illustrator product managers suggested that people could get better performance on Windows than on Mac. It wasn’t a very helpful thing to say, and he rapidly backpedaled. He was later sacked. –J.]
Hi John,
I wonder if you could provide some insight on the reasons behind the change in printing behavior in Photoshop CS3 Windows. Not the new “Print” dialog, but the new “Per Document” default behavior, in which CS3 reverts all printer settings to default after an image is closed.
This change has made printing from Photoshop CS3 an absolute pain in the butt for many users (see the Photoshop Windows user to user forum). I know I’m not alone in wondering why this change was made.
Thanks,
Rick
[Rick, I don’t know the details offhand, but let me see what I can find out. –J.]
http://www.tristantom.com/blog/2007/05/photshop-cs3-installation-woes.html
[Our installer sucks beyond belief. I’m sorry for–and quite embarassed by–all the chaos it has called. Unfortunately I don’t know what else to tell you. –J.]
I’ll give you a real reason why the palette close button should be on the left: it avoids accidental clicks intended for the palette options button.
Same thing goes for the “collapsable palette” mode. The close should be on the left (on the outside). Think about drawers on your real-life desk; where’s the drawer knob, on the inside or the outside of the drawer?
Now I’m having another problem, after re-installing CS3, Bridge will not launch!:
http://www.tristantom.com/index.php?link=19&cat=6
[I’ll investigate. –J.]
Yes, an entire day wasted. I finally got my order of CS3 Master Collection from my retailer. Got it home, went to install, and NO setup.exe files anywhere on any of the disks. I call Adobe tech support, and three hours on the phone – being switched from one tech to the other and being hung up on during one of the transfers between departments, they finally say they are going to send me new disk. I need to phone back to ensure that they are going to send me ALL the disks and they confirm they will – 3 to 5 business days- which brings us to next week. Of course, during this nightmare, I uninstalled all my prior Adobe products and will be without tools for productivity for this length of time. I guess I can reinstall my previous version of CS and of course, reactivate the friggin software and then delete again and run their hell hole scripts again to rid of their crap to reinstall CS3 once the disks arrive.
I try to install with .msi and of course, all applications need setup.exe to install, exept Acrobat. That one tells me that my NEW serial number is invalid. I am fuming, call Adobe AGAIN and they tell me that the serial number is indeed invalid. WTF? They say they can issue me a new serial number, but I need to fax them a copy of my proof of purchase. Whatever. I plead with them to just let me email a scanned copy. They finally say okay after being on hold for another 20 minutes. I scan my receipt of purchase and emailed them this. It will take 24-48 hours for this new serial number to come my way as they have to confirm I legitamately purchased the software.
Way to go Adobe.
You didn’t think to call your retailer to ask them to exchange it if you thought you had a faulty copy?
My Adobe premiere pro cs3 hang when i edit with matrox rtx2 sd card. But have no any problem work without matrox rtx2 sd card. Why ? please help me immediate.
My Adobe premiere pro cs3 hang when i edit with matrox rtx2 sd card. But have no any problem work without matrox rtx2 sd card. Why ? please help me immediate