Dreamweaver CS3 crashes after Daylight Savings Time ends

Wow--talk about an obscure bug. I've been working with php in Dreamweaver CS3 and kept getting file errors sporadically that caused the program to crash. The problems were not present in the CS4 trial and was about to give up and reinstall CS2 in the hope that it wouldn't have the same problem.

But then I came across this technote on a discussion board: "Dreamweaver CS3 crashes after Daylight Savings Time ends" -- and it just so happens that daylight Savings Time ended in Israel a few weeks ago.

Sure, enough I applied the fix and no more crashes!!

Adobe announces inContext editor

This is a very col new service from Adobe -- the inContext Editor service allows the non-technical person to edit their website without a web designers help. :

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/incontextediting/

I have been a big fan of Contribute -- but now Adobe has raised the bar higher by letting designers focus more on design and development and leave even simple typo fixes and changes to the client.

And its done in Flex :)

Digest mismatch with RSL framework_3.0.0

After launching a brand new Flex app, I had a user report that they got this error when they tried to open the app:

"Digest mismatch with RSL framework_3.0.0.477.swf. Redeploy the matching RSL or relink your application with the matching library"

This very cryptic message related to the feature in Flex3 to have Runtime Sharing Libraries (or RSL's) -- essentially shared libraries of the framework so you don't have to export your swf with everything in it. This awesome feature cuts down on file size dramatically. If the user has visited another site that uses the same library it will save them having to download it again since the framework has been cached inside of Flash Player.

In any event, after some searching I found some pretty intense suggestions to fix this error but I also found this article on Adobe.com:

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_3:Feature_Introductions:Flex_3_RSLs

which indicates that RSLs require Flash Player 9.0.60. After asking the user to update their Flash player, the problem was fixed.

Hopefully this might save another person who gets the same error and only finds very complicated solutions on Google for this error. Start with this approach and if that doesn't work you can try the others...

and good luck...

Sound problem fixed in Flashplayer 10

After finally discovering the root of the problem I was having with the Sound object (see below) I decided to try the beta for flash player 10 and found that the bug has been fixed!! So this just means that I can continue the development of the app and just let users know that the fix can be applied by installing the new player (which will no doubt be released in a very short time -- now that CS4 was announced)...

...phew... I was beginning to debate about building the player in AS2 and embedding it the Flex app -- and that would have been a major pain!

More problems with the Sound object in AS3

Well it appears that the Sound object in AS3 needs a lot more work! After lengthy trial and error (and some Googling) I have found that the Sound object works in direct proportion to the bitrate of the clip. The playback works fine but the problems come in when you want to scrub or pause the track. The target is 128KBPs. If you make sure your tracks are at that target, you'll be ok -- but anything lower cause the sound.position to set incorrectly.

In any event, this is a very significant bug. Kudos to Steven Sacks for helping me understand why I less hair this week!

http://www.stevensacks.net/2008/08/07/bug-with-sound-channel-position-and-mp3s-less-than-128kbps

Sound complete event problem in AS3 (with some mp3 files)

Ok, another frustrating one. It appears that the Sound.complete event in AS3 does not work properly. Here is what is happening:

I'm building an MP3 player and want to include a progress bar that allows a user to scrub the track. Since the Sound object can't tell at the beginning how long the track is until its fully loaded, I'm using the rss feed tag to initially set the duration. Once the sound has fully loaded I have an event handler that gets called by the Complete event. This usually works -- but I have found that for SOME mp3 files (not sure why its only some of them) when the event.COMPLETE fires the Sound.length shows that the sound is TWICE as long as it really is. A second later it return sthe proper value but that means I can't rely on the event to determine what the true length of the file is.

At least I know where to put the hack in (I'll probably wait a second or two and THEN sent the final duration)

Since I didn't get any other Google hits for this exact error (although others have reported errors with the Sound object--including the COMPLETE event), I thought I'd blog it.

Hope it helps somebody else...