iLEMONed

I know it's late. The reason I hesitated to publish this post is that... I can't figure out a way to do the pre-serialization. CS4 won't respect an application.xml.override like CS3 did, unless you have a volume license (according to the official CS4 deployment manual). So this time I can only share with you the customization part.

Please be noticed, I myself am not 100% satisfied with what I've figured out, but the hacks have been working absolutely fine for over 2 months on my XP SP3 and Vista SP1. And as always, you do this at your own risk. Read on if we understand each other.

Photoshop CS4 (Extended)

1. Navigate to /Adobe CS4/payloads/.
2. Open /AdobeBridge3All/AdobeBridge3All.proxy.xml with a text editor.
3. Search for <Dependencies>.
4. Delete everything within <Dependencies>, except two blocks with type="critical", make it look exactly like screenshot #1.
5. Open /AdobePhotoshop11-Core/AdobePhotoshop11-Core.proxy.xml, repeat step 3-4, make it look exactly like screenshot #2.
6. Save both files. Oh did I tell you to backup first?
7. Run setup and wave goodbye to craps.

Illustrator CS4

If you already edited AdobeBridge3All.proxy.xml in a previous Photoshop installation and successfully got rid of Adobe Bridge, you won't need to touch the one in Illustrator. Otherwise, treat it the same way (step 1-4 of the Photoshop section above).

Then, yes, /AdobeIllustrator14mul/AdobeIllustrator14mul.proxy.xml, and here's screenshot #3 for your referrence.

Design Premium CS4

Files you need to edit are:

• /AdobeBridge3All/AdobeBridge3All.proxy.xml
• /AdobeDreamweaver10-mul/AdobeDreamweaver10-mul.proxy.xml
• /AdobeFireworks10All/AdobeFireworks10All.proxy.xml
• /AdobeFlash10-mul/AdobeFlash10-mul.proxy.xml
• /AdobeIllustrator14mul/AdobeIllustrator14mul.proxy.xml
• /AdobeInDesign6AppBase-mul/AdobeInDesign6AppBase-mul.proxy.xml
• /AdobePhotoshop11-Core/AdobePhotoshop11-Core.proxy.xml
• /AdobeVersionCue4All/AdobeVersionCue4All.proxy.xml

Edit how? You've already learned that.

One tip is, if you kept, let's say "Adobe XMP Panels CS4" in one of the xml files, you can delete it when you see it else wheres.

I don't use anything other than Photoshop and Illustrator, so I'm unable to tell you which components are required by other products included in a Creative Suite. I'm sorry.

Miscellaneous

I'm not gonna guide you through Dreamweaver or Web Premium or anything else neither. Hopefully you can draw inferences about other cases from the above examples.

You're gonna have to trust Adobe this time, what's been tagged as "critical" in the xml files are indeed critical. Sky falls down if you remove them. Here are my understandings (some are just superficial) to several important components. They are required by the CS4 apps or recommended by me:

• Adobe Anchor Service CS4
  The Lord that rules.
• Adobe CSI CS4
  The infrastructure that rules, too. I guess the VersionCue Client service which enables the "Open File" dialogs is also included in here.
• Adobe Type Support CS4
  Support for layers with texts/fonts.
• Adobe XMP Panels CS4
  Support for the "File Info" dialogs.
• Adobe CMaps CS4 / Adobe ALM CS4
  Required by Illustrator (?)
• Adobe Color - Photoshop Specific CS4
• Adobe Color NA Recommended Settings CS4
• Adobe Color CommonSetRGB
• Adobe Color CommonSetCMYK

At last, my apologies again for I didn't have time and energy to present a more detailed and perfect tutorial. Hope as many folks as possible can benefit from this post. Merry Christmas.

I don't wanna say much about Nero. We don't install a huge piece of crap just to burn some discs.

ImgBurn has always been the perfect replacement. It's free, it's compact and it's powerful. I will also recommend to you the open source InfraRecorder. Ok, I won't go too far.

The official component (or say "plugin") foo_burninate.dll enables foobar2000 of burning discs, but it needs to invoke the Nero API, which means Nero is required to be installed. Canar from hydrogenaudio forum provided an alternative, yet it didn't satisfy me.

Let me get this straight: You want to burn discs using foobar2000 but don't want to keep Nero. You take all necessary files from Nero, then wipe it off your hard drive, and you cheat foobar2000 into thinking that Nero is still present.

I've been doing this for like 3 years, treated a ton of lossless stuff, and it's proved to be fairly reliable. Read on if you wanna know how, but you hack at your own risk.

1. Get Nero Burning ROM v6.6.1.15c, install it. I picked this version because it's relatively small. I haven't tested this with 7.x or greater.

2. Copy these 10 files from where Nero has been installed, put them to (for example) "D:\foobar2000\nero\".

CDROM.CFG / CDROM.dll / Generatr.dll / image.dll / MMC.dll / Nero.txt / neroAPI.dll / neroErr.dll / neRSDB.dll / newtrf.dll

3. Open notepad and ctrl c/v the following codes, save it as nero.reg, then merge them into Windows registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ahead\shared]
"NeroAPI"="D:\\foobar2000\\nero"

4. If there's a 4th step, it's only supposed to be the uninstallation of Nero. Happy burning with foobar2000!

Updated: I seem to remember that you can open the Nero6 installer with WinRAR and extract the necessary files without installing for even once. It's been years since I last used Nero, thanks znix for reminding me!

The final version of Firefox 3.0 has been officially released! Though I obtained it from Mozilla FTP some hours before the official launch, I wasn't stingy to donate another click to help them set a world record. And please don't you be!

btw, The "last modified date", 11-June-2008, hints that the final version is actually RC3.

I've been using 3.0 since beta 4. And luckily enough, I've been able to get most of the compatible builds of my necessary addons via either the Firefox Addons site or the MozillaZine Forum. Here's the list of addons I'm currently equipped with:

• Access Flickr
• Custom Download Manager
• Enhanced Feed Preview *
  
• Extension List Dumper
• Fission
• IE Tab
• Minimize To Tray *
• Multi-proxy Switch
• Pearl Crescent Page Saver Basic
• Personal Menu
• QuickDrag
• QuickRestart
• Save Image in Folder / Save Link in Folder
• SearchStatus
• Stop-or-Reload Button *
• Tab Clicking Options
• Tab Mix Lite CE

* Still incompatible with Firefox 3, but tested and worked after manually modifying install.rdf.

Addons I would also like to have: Autohide, Clear And Close, Copy Plain Text, Download With, Favicon Picker, Firebug, Show Image, SwiftTabs, Tab History.

One more thing, if you just hate the newly designed buttons for Firefox 3, you can download this classic theme which brings you back the 2.0 look, but I highly recommend the stunning Phoenity Aura theme.