Flash Install Issues

I downloaded the Flash CS3 trial last week, I couldn't wait for the real software to be shipped to me. So when I finally got the full version, (for PC) it came on a DVD. The PC that I have at work doesn't have a CD. So I burned the contents of the DVD onto a CD and tried running the installation. It wouldn't work. Every time I launched the installer, I got a progress bar and then it would disappear and nothing else would happen.

So I called Adobe - I've never had a problem with an installation before - and the support person told me to boot in safe mode and try to uninstall the trial version. Every time I tried that, my machine crashed. Piece of crap. He then pointed me to a script that's available on the support site that eliminates any CS3 trial software. http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs3clean.html

At first, the link above gave me a not found error. The next day, I found and ran the script and then tried the installer again. No luck. So I figured I'd try to run the installer from the trial and then just input the serial number. I tried that and it still didn't work.

After a few reboots, I ran the clean script again. This time, it ran much slower and gave more detailed information about what it was removing. Once again, I launched the installer from the trial download and this time it finally worked.

Wacky.

Getting used to AS 3.0

So I downloaded the trial version of Flash CS3 (finally, thanks to Adobe. The new welcome screen allows you to create a couple of different document types, one is Flash Document AS 2.0 and the other is Flash Document AS 3.0. The difference between AS 2 & 3 is huge, so I'm tearing all over the web to look for good resources.

Senocular has an article called Getting Started with ActionScript 3.0 in Adobe Flash CS3. One of the changes, for example, is the fact that you can no longer put scripts on objects, i.e. buttons, movie clips. All of the scripts you write have to be in the timeline only!?!

Event handling is so different now. In AS 2.0 you could easily write an onClipEvent script for a MovieClip or an on (release) event on a button to get things going. No longer. The method is completely different.

There are other big changes too, so check out the article.

Active Content Conflagaration

I downloaded and installed Flash CS3 today. It took nearly 2 hours to do both. The installation (on a Dell with WinXP, sadly) took what seemed like forever. The install included the Flash Video Encoder and a few other things. I noticed that Bridge gets installed too, even though the installer doesn't tell you that.

There's a lot to squawk about with this new release and in coming posts I'll talk specifically about them. There are still features that I wish Flash did have, but again that's another post.

As we Flashers know what a pain in the butt it has been to publish our movies with the Active Content template that was released shortly after Microsoft changed the way Internet Explorer intercepted active media elements - for security reasons. CS3 addresses this issue:

By default, the Publish command creates a Flash SWF file, an HTML document that inserts your Flash content in a browser window, and a JavaScript file labeled AC_OETags.js that lets your SWF file play automatically in active content-compliant browsers. The Publish command also creates and copies detection files for Macromedia Flash 4 from Adobe and later. If you change publish settings, Flash saves the changes with the document. After you create a publish profile, export it to use in other documents, or for others working on the same project to use.

Although this is a solution, you'll still need to put that .js file everywhere you have SWF's on your server. So it's a solution, but the real problem is with IE, or so it seems.

CS3 30-Day Trial Available!

http://www.adobe.com/special/try_buy/trial_availability.html