Trainers Talk Tech

Imagine you just dropped $599 on the CS5 upgrade, and you cannot wait to try out the new Adobe software. You have a bunch of things you were working on in Flash CS4, but CS5 is new and you want to start using it right away. You load up your old files, work on them for, oh, 24 or 30 hours, all the while saving as CS5 format. You are done for the week, enjoy your weekend, open up Flash CS5 on Monday to continue working and you get this message.

"Cannot open .fla file. Flash can not parse this document."

Wait...really?

You try again, because you know you saved the file. Religiously.

"Cannot open .fla file. Flash can not parse this document."

Yes friends, our new buddy Flash CS5 feels like a beta. This is a known bug. This is happening to me. Right now. I am not happy.

Also, I discovered that the radio button component works differently in CS4 and CS5. I don't know how, but when I program my multiple choice questions and all works in CS5, I get funky errors in CS4. Re-open in CS5 (without changing a single line of AS) and it works fine. I have no other details, because I've had bigger fish to fry with Flash today.

Luckily, in my scenario above, I was testing enough in CS4 and CS5 to save 70% of my work. Here is my workaround:

1) Open your CS4 file in CS5.
2) Work on it, but click Save As CS4 file when you are done.
3) Continue to use Flash CS5 in this lame way until Adobe fixes it

Yes friends, you are saving your CS4 files as CS4 files to work on them with flash. I haven't had any issues with files created in CS5 originally, so if you are working in CS5, don't downgrade to CS4 and then back up because you will encounter this bug. Now I have a new problem...my client hasn't upgraded to CS5...when they do, they will have the same problems unless Adobe gets this fixed fast.

While researching a solution to this mess, I discovered that there is a new Flash patch 11.0.1. Yay! However, it did nothing to fix my current files. Boo!

Maybe this is what I get for being an early adopter. However, I feel like Adobe blew it again with 1) No public Beta and 2) Pushing out CS upgrades before they are ready. How hard must it be to get 7+ products updated and released all at the same time? It's got to be near impossible but yet they cram them all out at the same time anyway. CS3 and CS4 felt that way, and now CS5 is the same. I feel like I am beta testing for Adobe, and I am paying them for the privilege.

I love Adobe products...six months after they are released when all the bugs are fixed. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on Adobe. I won't get suckered into a release day upgrade again.

6/15/10: UPDATE: A very nice Adobe rep who saw this post (or my FB post, or maybe it was my Twitter post...) contacted me and offered to figure out what was going on with my file. Today, I got the file back and it seems to work fine. There was an empty frame on layer 1 of one of the symbols in my library. I sent a note back requesting more information about how to prevent it from happening again, how to fix it when it happens etc, and am waiting for a response. So far, its pretty impressive that Adobe is taking such an active role in squashing this bug. I'm downgrading from angry to annoyed.

Heads up! The Adobe CS5 Suite is shipping! I have downloaded the trial versions of the CS5 suite for my Mac (reviews coming soon), and am going to be upgrading my client machine to the newly released eLearning Suite 2! (NOTE: It will be released mid-June. I got a little too excited!) Yes, during this last round of upgrades, they created another eLearning Suite and an upgrade to Captivate.

The eLearning Suite 2 contains:

• Captivate 5
• Flash CS5
• Photoshop CS5 Extended
• Dreamweaver CS5
• Presenter 7
• Soundbooth CS5
• Acrobat 9

Interesting that Soundbooth isn't included in the Web suite now, and that Presenter is still version 7. I have a love/hate thing with PowerPoint and eLearning (don't get me started), but I recently created an interactive PDF with Presenter that my client loved so I can't totally hate it.

It's interesting that Adobe didn't upgrade Presenter this round. Makes me wonder if they are going to drop the tool, or more likely, integrate Captivate tools into PPT. Makes you think though...

However, something that I cannot wait to try, is Captivate 5 ON THE MAC. Yes, this is the first iteration of Captivate that runs on a Mac! I really like Captivate and what it can do for certain eLearning projects, and now that it runs on the Mac, it makes me very happy. I'll let you know my opinions of the new Captivate 5 on both the PC and the Mac this month.

Thanks to Adobe for releasing upgrades to products I love to use! Now, if we can just figure out a way to get Apple and Adobe to play nice, my world will be a better place!

There have been reports leaking to the web that hint of an April release date for the Adobe CS5 suite of software. Although Adobe goes out of their way to keep these release dates a secret, reports keep coming out. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've had lots of buggy situations with Flash CS4 and with Dreamweaver CS4 on my Mac, so I'm hoping that in addition to those new features which are coming, Adobe has taken the time to clean up the code a bit.

And, because I cannot wait, here are some CS5 Videos and a dedicated CS5 website that should keep you enticed:

Flash CS5 : Export to iPhone
Flash CS5 : New Features

Photoshop CS5 : Sneak Peek
Photoshop CS5 : Patch Match
Photoshop CS5 : Spot Healing

GREAT CS5 Site: http://cs5.org/