15 Replies Latest reply: Jan 8, 2009 4:42 PM by Jen deHaan RSS

    damn bugs again in CS4

    soom1976 Community Member
      So I've tried Flash CS4 finally and in 2 hours I found 2 new bugs, several old bugs and new inconveniences in the interface. WTF is wrong with those people - they can't fix this damn program for years and years, although the demand for Flash is in the sky!
      I'm a Flash animator, I don't use scripting, so I only deal with what Flash interface has to offer.
      I use now MAC OS x.5, but I had PC all my life before and I know it's almost no different.
      New Bugs (just the start, probably will be much more):
      1. In the View>Preview Mode the Full and the Fast options don't work - its always on Anti Alias, except when you switch to outlines.
      2. This is really bad: if I have a graphic symbol set to Single Frame on any frame other than 1, and then try to modify the color of that symbol (for example tint), the number resets to frame 1. That's crappy! - imagine a sequence of animation with many symbols set to all different frames throughout the timeline. If i want to tint them, the whole thing is being reset to frame 1 !!!
      3. Clicking any property window in any tab kicks you out of the stage, so if you want to go back to the stage you have to click it before using (and eventually if you have brush tool selected at this time, it paints on the 1st click, so u have to undo. This was also in CS3 but could be avoided (sometimes) by clicking Command+Click

      also some interface bugs, that were very nicely transported from CS3 to CS4 making some of them even worse

      and that only in 2 hours of work, i imagine there are many more still to be found.
        • 1. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
          Jen deHaan Community Member
          Hi there,

          Thank you very much for the feedback. I'm having trouble figuring out the 3rd item, and hope you might be able to provide some more details about the steps you're using or your workflow. If possible could you let us know which panel or window you're opening, what tool is active, and exactly what/where you're clicking to see the extra brush stroke? It sounds like the current state and order of steps is pertinent (I'm using the same OS version).

          Thanks,
          Jen.
          • 2. damn bugs again in CS4
            soom1976 Community Member
            Hi
            Actually it's the same problem in CS3 (I think it worked OK in Flash 8)
            anyway - I'll show an example: paint something on the stage, then go to any attribute box that is using a keyboard (for example, when a Brush is picked, go to the Smoothing setting in the Properties panel), type whatever number you need with a keyboard. Now try using a keyboard shortcut for any other tool, or selecting the object on the stage by pressing the Command + click (CTRL + click on PC) - impossible - the keyboard is locked, unless I click the stage first with a mouse. But if I click the stage, my brush tool paints a dot, so i have to undo it. Same with pencil and few other tools. As an example, in Photoshop you can click ESC, or Enter and you get out of an attribute box automatically.
            Exactly the same thing happens after picking a color from tools menu, and this is even more annoying, cause when you design stuff, you pick colors every few seconds.
            In some previous Flash versions you could click Command + click (or CTRL + click in PC) which was toggling the Selection tool, just as usual and it was possible to continue working without painting dots on the stage every time I change some attribute.
            • 3. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
              Jen deHaan Community Member
              Hey there,

              Thanks so much for the details. The panels are getting keyboard focus once you start typing values into them, so it sounds like an enhancement to defocus the panel may be desirable for this workflow.

              Regarding the color picker, I cannot reproduce that issue. When using the brush tool I can go to the color picker in the Tools panel, Color panel, or in the Property inspector to change the color to something else and I can still change between tools using the shortcuts. Right now I'm using CS4 on Mactel Leopard and Win XP. Let me know if this still doesn't work for ya.

              Thanks again for the extra details!
              Jen.
              • 4. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
                rwelti Community Member
                I sympathize. I was using CS3 just fine, and here comes CS4 ( which I did some beta testing of ) with no real "must have" new features and lots of crashing and slowness and CPU usage even when in the background. All old issues that could and should have been dealt with by now. The bloat seems unstoppable, next CS version will come on 4 DVDs and cost $2000.00 that is my prediction, and still will have plenty of hanging and crashing. I wish Adobe would fix the bugs and focus on stability before the "whiz bang" new feature I don't really need or want. Flash has crashed 4 times today. All I did was paste a graphic from Fireworks into it! a small graphic.
                • 5. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
                  Newsgroup_User Community Member
                  rwelti,

                  > here comes CS4 ( which I did some beta testing of ) with
                  > no real "must have" new features and lots of crashing and
                  > slowness and CPU usage

                  I haven't had much crashing at all, honestly. It's hard to imagine what
                  might be going wrong with your particular configuration. Flash MX 2004, for
                  example, had some trouble out the gate (remember the 7.1 and 7.2 updates?),
                  but CS4 has been a very stable release for me.

                  As for "no real 'must have' new features," we'll have to agree to
                  disagree. You're telling me that having two tweening models -- including
                  the new Motion Editor panel, with its object-based tweens -- doesn't improve
                  workflow. That 3D transformations, inverse kinematics, and massively
                  improved text rendering aren't useful. That an Illustrator-like Pen tool is
                  lame. That procedural modeling aparatus, like the Spray Brush and Deco
                  tools, don't boost the creation of scatter/kaleidoscopic artwork (snow
                  drifts, blowing leaves, stars, complex grids ...). That it isn't cool to be
                  able to change the properties of multiple Library assets at the same time?
                  There's more, but that's a good start. To me, these are reason enough to
                  upgrade.

                  > I wish Adobe would fix the bugs and focus on stability before
                  > the "whiz bang" new feature I don't really need or want.

                  What would *you* consider a "must have" feature? That's not a sarcastic
                  question. I really mean it. What do you consider useful -- truly,
                  must-have -- that, at the same time, isn't "whiz bang"?


                  David Stiller
                  Adobe Community Expert
                  Dev blog, http://www.quip.net/blog/
                  "Luck is the residue of good design."


                  • 6. damn bugs again in CS4
                    soom1976 Community Member
                    To jdehaan
                    That is not an improvement - a user needs a way to change keyboard focus in one step, just as it is in all other Adobe programs!
                    Why should I need unnecessary operations to get out of the panel keyboard focus? In Photoshop just press ESC, or Enter and you are out. In FLash you have to click with a mouse on stage, which means that instead of completing the operation with a keyboard, you have to use a mouse again, and then, if you are on a brush tool, you paint a dot because of a click, and have to undo again - is that an improvement?
                    • 7. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
                      soom1976 Community Member
                      quote:

                      Originally posted by: rwelti
                      I wish Adobe would fix the bugs and focus on stability before the "whiz bang" new feature I don't really need or want. Flash has crashed 4 times today. All I did was paste a graphic from Fireworks into it! a small graphic.


                      Agreed!

                      • 8. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
                        Jen deHaan Community Member
                        Hi Soom1976,

                        I'm not saying it's an improvement. I'm saying we may need an enhancement to Flash (like Esc) so you can do that in the future. I was agreeing with you.
                        • 9. damn bugs again in CS4
                          Walter Elias Community Member
                          My question is - and PLEASE somebody from Adobe answer it - is there any intention to fix any of the bugs that have been discovered and release a patch? I realize that the AIR 1.5 update addresses some bugs. But there are still others that have been found, reported on this forum, and official bug reports and support tickets opened. Some are potentially huge workflow problems for animators, such as the bug reported in this and another thread about looping graphics resetting to frame 1 when a filter is applied.

                          Sorry to be so annoying about this, but in the past, up to and including CS3, Flash was released as-is and never updated even for glaring bugs, with the single exception of MX2004, which was so bad that even the Flash development team's buddies complained (I guess that's what it takes). CS3 had some bad compiling problems, which Adobe engineers noted right here on this forum and said: "Open a support ticket". Numerous support tickets were opened, but these were never fixed until CS4, which is pretty absurd.

                          I get the impression that updating to AIR 1.5 was huge priority, and Adobe management figured, what the heck, let's fix a couple bugs at the same time. I don't really want to wait until AIR 2.0 or something else like that before more bugs are fixed.

                          Can someone give a plain yes or no answer, just like Mike Downey once told me personally at a Flash 8 promotional event, just weeks after it was released. I asked whether a patch will be released to fix some UI and Quicktime-related bugs and he flatly said: "No, that's not our policy." Can't get plainer than that. If the answer is still no, at least I can decide for certain whether to use CS4 or stick with Flash 8 (which in spite of some UI bugs is Flash's last pretty-stable release).
                          • 10. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
                            Jen deHaan Community Member
                            Hi Walter,

                            I'm afraid I'm not the right person to give such an answer to the above, but in regards to the graphic issue (in case it's helpful and your workflow could support it) I may be able to provide some clarification. If you can set the filter/effect first and then your first frame you can avoid the frame number resetting. The frame number can also be set to any number after the effect is applied (in that it isn't stuck), and the frame number also doesn't change if you change the effect (type of effect, or settings of an effect) at a later time. I understand there is an issue, but I hope reordering an existing workflow will work for some.

                            HTH,
                            Jen.
                            • 11. damn bugs again in CS4
                              Walter Elias Community Member
                              Jen,

                              Yes, I understand the workaround. The problem arises when one animator has done all the lip sync for a character, and then three days later another animator is editing the scene and decides to place a grey tint over part of the sequence, timed with a change in lighting. Yes, the sequence could be placed into another graphic first (probably a good practice), but in an animation studio, you'll find that best practices are often not the fastest practices, and therefore are neither taught nor encouraged. There should not have to be a reliance on workarounds, for this or other problems.

                              All I'm asking for is fixes -not workarounds- for this bug and others that keep being reported over and over again.

                              Actually, all I'm asking for is an answer: will there be a bug fix patch? End of question. If the answer is "probably not until CS5", then I'm probably not going to convert my own studio's workflow to CS4, in spite of the other new animation enhancements, thus saving both frustration and money.

                              You're on the inside there at Adobe. Maybe you can ask someone for us?.
                              • 12. damn bugs again in CS4
                                soom1976 Community Member
                                Hi David - some thoughts about your reply:
                                quote:

                                Originally posted by: Newsgroup User

                                I haven't had much crashing at all, honestly. It's hard to imagine what
                                might be going wrong with your particular configuration. Flash MX 2004, for
                                example, had some trouble out the gate (remember the 7.1 and 7.2 updates?),
                                but CS4 has been a very stable release for me.


                                CS3 Was crashing all the time - we even had a poster at the studio that said: "CTRL+S AMEN". Had to save every second because crashes were too often and too unexpected. And we had 20 computers with different systems - it crashed all over. I don't know about CS4 yet - I cannot use it because of the new "improvements", that just don't let my workflow go.
                                quote:

                                As for "no real 'must have' new features," we'll have to agree to
                                disagree. You're telling me that having two tweening models -- including
                                the new Motion Editor panel, with its object-based tweens -- doesn't improve
                                workflow.


                                The Motion Tween is a good idea, but as a professional animator I would be much more happy if you could edit Motion Tween on many objects at a time too.
                                And they have removed the Tween button from the Properties panel - how does that improve my workflow?
                                quote:

                                That an Illustrator-like Pen tool is lame.

                                The Pen tool has never worked since Flash 8 and works exactly the same crappy way in CS4 - nothing changed - try adding additional points on a line!
                                quote:

                                That procedural modeling aparatus, like the Spray Brush and Deco
                                tools, don't boost the creation of scatter/kaleidoscopic artwork (snow
                                drifts, blowing leaves, stars, complex grids ...).


                                Never needed those toys.
                                quote:

                                That it isn't cool to be able to change the properties of multiple Library assets at the same time?

                                You even can't Find and replace names in Lybrary by free text search. I need to use a script for that!
                                quote:

                                To me, these are reason enough to upgrade.

                                I work as a Flash animator for 3.5 years. I worked in a studio with most professional Flash people from different industries. We have found a bug or inconvenience almost in evey function tha Flash has (I'm not talking about scripting). And since Flash 8 to Flash 10 about 90 percent of those bugs have NEVER been improved, only worsened.
                                - Shape tween doesn't work as needed, and shape hints don't work at all.
                                - Raster images handling is terrible - anti-alias doesn't work when exporting to any other bitmap format.
                                - Quik time export doesn't work - leaves artefacts all over the video. On Mac there is no option to save AVI, so basicaly I can't use Flash as a video exporter - awesom! Need to do sequences and then compile the movie in another program.
                                - Animated Movieclips cannot be exported into video or bitmap file - have to use Graphic symbols
                                - Work area size is limited and is affected by the scale of a symbol - hard to deal with scaling symbols, or 'edit in place' symbols that are too small or big.
                                - Synchronize symbols command works only occasionaly
                                - Keyboard shortcuts get mixed up, if assigning any shortcuts to 3-d party scripts
                                - Pen tool (in addition to what I said before) does never closes it's ends, even if shows a 'O' sign when clicking near the first point on a line.
                                - Keyboard Zoom (Cmmd+Space or CTRL+Space) doesn't work while in Pen mode.
                                - Line styles canot be shape-animated.
                                - Frames inside symbols cannot be viewed without editing them.
                                - Symbol animation cannot be previewed while swapping symbols.
                                - Sound editing is horrible.
                                - Playing a timeline usually stops at the frame before last and gets stuck.

                                I can continue listing those problems on and on all the day, and those are only ones, that haven't been changed already for 3 versions. If you add to this those things, what I've listed at the beginning of that topic and in this reply, plus all those bugs that are still uncovered (and I'm sure they will be), you can understand why I'm so upset. Really - tell me, how can I work, if a graphic symbol resets it's frame number setting every time I change it's color filter setting??? Why should I want to upgrade, if old bugs are not fixed and new ones are being added?
                                • 13. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
                                  soom1976 Community Member
                                  quote:

                                  Originally posted by: jdehaan
                                  Hi Soom1976,

                                  I'm not saying it's an improvement. I'm saying we may need an enhancement to Flash (like Esc) so you can do that in the future. I was agreeing with you.



                                  Sorry - I misunderstood.

                                  By the way one place that stucking a keyboard was useful, was the Graphic Symbol frame number setting - since you don't have any way to scroll through a symbol with many frames inside, one needed to typoe in the numbers one after another and check whcih frame is needed. That function doesn't work on MAC anymore, and is more frustrating, cause now I need to go into a symbol to find the needed frame, or to click and type the frame window every time again and again.

                                  • 14. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
                                    xianFF0000
                                    I may have found another bug in the CS4 Motion Editor. When I put a component on the stage, edit its parameters, add a Motion Tween to it then publish: flash returns a #1009 null ref error in the __setProp___ function of the parent clip (the clip that contains the component + motion tween). It works fine with a Classic Tween. Any ideas?

                                    - Works fine with Classic Tween
                                    - Works with Motion Tween + default parameters on the component.
                                    - Does not work with Motion Tween + edited Component Inspector parameters on the component.

                                    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -

                                    This may be related... Sometimes when I select a clip on the CS4 stage, the Properties window reads "MovieClip" w/ the standard "Position and Size" options etc., unless I have a Motion Tween on that clip... then it's anyones guess as to what the Properties will say. It switches between "MovieClip" and "Mixed" when nothing has been changed.

                                    Christian
                                    • 15. Re: damn bugs again in CS4
                                      Jen deHaan Community Member
                                      Hi Christian,

                                      Do you have a file that shows the problem, or can you detail which component you're tweening, and how you're tweening it? Any code?

                                      Thanks,
                                      Jen.