Adobe Fireworks Team

Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard has been in the market for almost 2 months now, so it is time for a follow-up on our compatibility. The good news is that we haven't found anything yet that should prevent you from using Fireworks CS4 with Snow Leopard. There are three known issues that we'll discuss in this post.

First, if you haven't already, you should update to the latest version of Fireworks CS4 by using our 10.0.3 Updater. It is available via the Adobe Update Manager and on http://www.adobe.com/support/fireworks/downloads_updaters.html.

Crash on Quit issue
There's only one issue that we're seeing reported broadly and consistently, and that is that Fireworks CS4 may crash when you select File > Quit or Command-Q. Thanks to crash reports submitted by users, we have an idea of how common this is, and also, what the problem is. This crash only happens on some Snow Leopard installations where Fireworks CS4 is running.

If you are one of the people experiencing this issue, then we want to reassure you that it is not a harmful crash. Our engineers have found the offending code, and determined that all unsaved documents can be safely saved before the code that causes the crash executes.

The code that is causing this crash has been in the product since we first released Fireworks CS3, and did not cause crashes until it was executed on (some, but not all) Snow Leopard installations. It is conceivable that if you're using Fireworks CS3 on Snow Leopard that you may also experience this crash, although we have not been able to cause that to happen in our tests.

We'll continue to monitor these crash reports to determine if we can find a workaround, and to understand how common the crash is for our customers [edit: as Snow Leopard continues to proliferate]. At this time, we have no planned update release to fix this since it is harmless and causes no data loss. We regret any inconvenience this causes.

"Fireworks cannot run......" error message on launch
If you are one of the few people that are experiencing this problem, search your system using Spotlight for a file named "Song.dfont". If you have this font, then temporarily remove it from the "/Library/Fonts/" folder and launch Fireworks CS4. If the problem goes away, then your font may have become corrupted.

Hang when selecting the Text tool
This issue is happening less frequently than the crash on quit issue above, but also seems new and unique to customers using Fireworks CS4 on Snow Leopard. On some Snow Leopard installations, customers may experience a hang (a spinning beachball cursor that goes forever) when selecting the Text tool and manipulating text. Fortunately we have determined that this is caused by a corrupted GlobalResources file, and we have a simple fix for this issue. Follow these steps to resolve the problem:

• Quit all running applications. A restart is not a bad idea, but may not be necessary.


• Navigate to "/Applications/Adobe Fireworks CS4/Required/" folder.


• Rename the file, "GlobalResources" to something like "GlobalResources_original".


• Now download a new version of this file and place it in the same location.


• You should now be able to use Fireworks CS4 without experiencing this problem.

CAUTION: This solution needs to be used ONLY when you are experiencing the beachball cursor hangs when selecting the text tool. The other issue of crash on exit will not be solved by this file replacement technique.

A TechNote about this issue can be found at: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/519/cpsid_51981.html

If you are experiencing other problems using Fireworks CS4 on Snow Leopard, please let us know. Be sure to submit any Crash Reports because we look at everyone of these and they're very valuable in helping us find the issues and to understand how common an issue is. Also, please report your issue using our online Bug and Feature Request form.

Thanks!
Bruce

Bruce Bowman
Fireworks product manager
twitter: @brucebowman

We received some feedback on text tool hanging when used inside Fireworks CS4 version. Any extensions which are manipulating text objects are also reporting such a hang or an error message.

The team has investigated the issue and the resolution steps are mentioned below:

• Quit all the applications that are running.
• Navigate to “/Applications/Adobe Fireworks CS4/Required/” folder.
• Rename the file, “GlobalResources” to something like “GlobalResources_original”.
• Now copy the file from this link at the same location. (essentially we are replacing the old globalresources file with the one I have attached with this mail above)
• Launch Fireworks CS4 and select the text tool to type something on canvas.

The file to be replaced is hosted here http://sarthak.adobe.com/files/GlobalResources

MAX 2009 is just around the corner, so I wanted to give you an update to list all of the opportunities to find Fireworks at MAX. I hope you'll look us up and introduce yourself, and meet some of the members of the Fireworks community.

If you are still thinking about whether to attend MAX, there is still time to sign up. It's going to be a very exciting event you don't want to miss!

Meet the Teams sessions on Monday evening from 8:00-10:00pm. Meet several people from the Adobe Fireworks and Dreamweaver product teams. Room 503.

Fireworks Birds of a Feather on Wednesday afternoon during lunch. This will be hosted by Bruce Bowman and Rick Jones from Adobe, and Christian Robertson, Visual Design Director from PUNCHCUT  //  http://www.punchcut.com.

From Sketch to Click-Through HTML Prototype with Fireworks
Presenter: David Hogue, twitter: @DaveHogue
Learn a straightforward process for developing prototypes. Starting with a whiteboard sketch, learn how Fireworks can take a design from concept to wireframe. Then create a functional, click-through prototype from the wireframes to simulate the online experience.

How to Visually Design and Prototype Websites (Bring Your Own Laptop Lab)
Presenter: David Hogue, twitter: @DaveHogue
Learn how to plan a web page structure and think deliberately about the design and layout of the content. This lab will teach you how to use Fireworks to plan, organize, and visually design web pages that can be exported as CSS and HTML for your developer. You'll be able to define the design of your site in much more detail, and the fidelity of your work will be maintained once you hand it off to your developer.

Efficient Web Design Using Adobe Fireworks
Presenter: Jim Babbage, twitter: @JimBabbage
Learn the techniques employed by advanced Fireworks users to quickly design and mock up web pages or complete websites. This hands-on lab is presented by Jim Babbage, author of "Adobe Fireworks CS4 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques" and "Adobe Fireworks CS4 Classroom in a Book."

Repurpose Assets to Mock Up a Standards-Based Website with Fireworks
Presenter: Jim Babbage, twitter: @JimBabbage
Learn to leverage existing Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator assets in Fireworks to mock up web pages or complete websites. Optimize images for the web and export a design as CSS. This session is for print designers who want to take their design skills to the web.

Design for More Media with Creative Suite 4 Design Premium
Presenter: Patti Sokol
Learn how to prepare content for a wide variety of media -- print, web, interactive, and mobile -- using Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. Polish your Illustrator CS4 and Photoshop CS4 skills with practical techniques that will save time and enhance your creative work. Discover tips for designing professional pages more efficiently in InDesign CS4; working in Fireworks CS4, Dreamweaver CS4, and Flash CS4 Professional; and incorporating Acrobat 9 Pro. Learn how to move content across media more efficiently. Requires a working knowledge of InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Familiarity with Dreamweaver and Flash a plus.

Creating Rich Media Websites with Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium
Presenter: Chris Converse
Expand your web design skills with Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium. Learn valuable techniques for preparing web graphics in Photoshop and Illustrator, prototyping websites in Fireworks, and building standards-based dynamic websites in Dreamweaver using Spry. Enhance video with Photoshop Extended, design and heal audio with Soundbooth, and animate Illustrator assets with Flash Professional. Learn to add sound and video to your Flash projects, and test content for mobile devices with Adobe Device Central. By the end of this session, you'll know dozens of usable, practical techniques.

We're going to be using some twitter hashtags for MAX. For anything general purpose about MAX, use #adobemax. For Fireworks at MAX, use #maxfw. For general tweeting on Fireworks, '#Fireworks CS4' is the hashtag that is in popular use.

I hope to see you at MAX!
Bruce

Bruce Bowman
Fireworks product manager
twitter: @brucebowman

We've launched a brand new Adobe TV website today which has been built with some of our newest technologies, including our Adobe Open Source Media Framework (aka Strobe), and ColdFusion 9.

The site has a brand-new look & feel, and many new features including:
• User-customizable homepage
• Vastly improved navigation & search
• Save your favorite episodes to "My Library"
• Share videos on social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg, and StumbleUpon
• Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite shows
• Pop-out video player to view videos at any size
• Commenting & Rating
• Tags

Bruce

Apple has announced that they will be shipping Snow Leopard, a.k.a. Mac OS X 10.6 beginning today, and we're getting a lot of questions about whether Adobe products will be compatible. We've prepared a FAQ document on this subject, but the short answer for Fireworks CS4 and the other CS4 products is that they're compatible with Snow Leopard.

For the CS3, CS2, etc users out there that are considering upgrading to Snow Leopard, I advise you to wait a while and see whether other more adventurous folks can confirm compatibility. Adobe's official stance is that we have not tested older versions of our software on Snow Leopard, and since those older products were not designed for newer operating systems, there may be some significant incompatibilities. We are not planning to create any patches for Fireworks CS3 or earlier versions if incompatibilities with Snow Leopard arise.

Please don't confuse this stance with support for CS3 in general. Adobe still supports CS3 in the configurations recommended in our CS3 System Requirements.

If you're a Fireworks CS3 user, and have Snow Leopard, please share your experiences here in the Comments.