Adobe CS4 + Version Cue 4.0.1 = Fatal Error

I just ran Adobe Update for CS4, to check if any new versions are available. There were some. As always, most of them were not installed. But the installed ones destroyed my night in a few seconds. Illustrator was not running :

Illustrator.exe – Fatal Application Exit
The specified module could not be found. C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe Version Cue CS4\4.0.1\VersionCue.DLL

I’m not a fan of Version Cue, I’m not using it, and hell the server is not even installed.

So why Illustrator asks for an updated version for a not-used-by-user application ?

As I figured out, this was the client DLL, and not the server. And what a surprise, Version Cue update I just downloaded from Adobe did not install on my PC. Why ? Because I don’t have any Version Cue server installed…

So, at the end, no updates are available for me, but my Illustrator wants that update to work.

So confusing…

If you ever encounter this error, there is no solution from Adobe.
But there is a hack you can use : Simply rename the 4.0.0 folder name to 4.0.1
Yep, that’s all…

Adobe Air 1.5 And Windows 7 Beta

As you might have already tried, Adobe Air’s new 1.5 update is not installing on Windows 7, even when you try with admin priviledges. Plus uninstallation fails if you were able to install with the new version. Solution ? Uninstall by hand. Delete the Adobe Air files and folder from your Program Files folder :

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe AIR
–or if you are running 64bit :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe AIR

Delete appropriate folder for your Windows 7 installation.

To remove the uninstallation we need to delete a registry key.
Click Start, and then select “Run”, write Regedit and click OK. The key is located in :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Adobe AIR
–or if you are running 64bit os :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Adobe AIR

Be careful, do not delete anything else from the registry.

After these steps you will be able to install Adobe AIR with admin priviledges. By the way, do not let AIR to install tools from the web, as this might cause the same error. Download them to your harddisk first.

If you are still having problems installing Adobe Air 1.5, try downloading and installing Windows Install Clean Up utility from Microsoft. This tool will show all software installed by “Windows Installer”. Delete Adobe AIR installation from the database.

If you are still “still” having problems, these might help also:

If you are not able to install AIR applications from web, download the AIR file. Then go to the folder I mentioned at the quote down here, and run “Adobe AIR Application Installer.exe” as administrator. Locate the AIR file from the opened explorer, and install.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe AIR\Versions\1.0
–or if you are running 64bit :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe AIR\Versions\1.0

Always run AIR application as Administrator (do not run untrusted software, as you’ll be giving every available permission for every action on your computer). If this is the error you are receiving, you definitely need to run as admin.

This application requires a version of Adobe AIR which cannot be found. Please download the latest version of the runtime from http://www.adobe.com/go/getair, or contact the application author for an updated version.

Have you ever installed Adobe Media Player ? Uninstall the older version. Or simply delete the folder and use Windows Install Clean Up here too.

C:\Program Files\Adobe Media Player
–or again if it’s 64bit :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe Media Player

Check out Flash Shared Object cache, delete them. Don’t hesitate. Locations of the Shared Object folder for your operating system can be found here. For Windows 7 it is ,

C:\Users\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects

Try not to install Adobe AIR 1.5 alone. This time, try installing Adobe Media Player‘s new version from Adobe’s web site. It will install AIR automatically.

Detecting Exit on Fullscreen Flash

If you are still using Actionscript 2 in some projects like me, you may be having problems with detecting an exit from fullscreen, when the user presses the ESC key. For securtity reasons Flash Player control does not let you detect keystrokes in fullscreen mode. Player 10 and AS3 lets you detect cursor keys, and some other ones for game development, but that’s all.

//Here is how you can enable the fullscreen in Actionscript 2
Stage.displayState = "fullScreen";
//and to return to normal
Stage.displayState = "normal";

Just changing the display state… It is simple.

But here is the problem. Even though button related screen size changes can be handled by code, Flash does not let you know if the user pressed ESC to exit the fullscreen mode. So, you need a little hack:

//Here is how you can enable the fullscreen in Actionscript 2
Stage.addListener(this);
Stage.displayState = "fullScreen";
 
//and to return to the normal 
Stage.removeListener(this);
Stage.displayState = "normal";

We just added a simple listener to cache what is happening to displayState. Put these codes to a boolean function if you want, or attach to a button onRelease event. Something like a simple function will work for changing the fullscreen on and off:

private function FullScreen(Set:Boolean) {
  if(Set) {
    Stage.addListener(this);
    Stage.displayState = "fullScreen";
    //Your on fullscreen code
   } else {
    Stage.removeListener(this);
    Stage.displayState = "normal";
    //Your on normal screen code
   }
}

We can not detect the ESC key at the moment. For that we need a new function. Remember that we attached a listener to the Stage class (actually itself).

private function onFullScreen(is_fullscreen:Boolean) {
  if(!is_fullscreen) {
    FullScreen(false);
  }
}

Stage class throws a few events on stage changes. One is a boolean, “onFullScreen”. If you start listening the Stage and cache this event you can detect if the user exited from fullscreen.