iLEMONed

What do you use for enhancing the navigation in your admin center? The ancient thing, Admin Drop Down Menu by Ozh, has always been my choice. This plugin is simple yet very useful, it saves you a lot of clicks! But the plugin was designed for WordPress 1.x, and is too old to get along well with others nowadays.

For instance, if I activate too many plugins that have option pages under the "Options" tab, the "tail" of sub-menu items annoyingly protrudes from the left border (see screenshot). And the CSS style doesn't suit the updated menu in WordPress 2.x (see screenshot). I fixed the errors mentioned above, now it looks beautiful in my admin center (see screenshot). If you also want a copy of my fixed version, you can download it here. But please note this is not an official release.

A couple days ago I discovered Admin Supermenu by Chris Messina, a jQuery version of Admin Drop Down Menu, but it is still buggy. I think until Chris fixes the bug under the post-editing page and implement some more improvements, I will not switch to his jQuery version.

btw I already tried Admin Drop Down Menus, but it wasn't what I expected, though it exactly says the word "drop-down".

We all know that various other components which we don't really need, are bundled with Adobe CS3 products. These few days I came across a little bit and I would like to share my experience with you. So here's a couple tips about having a customized installation. I'll take Photoshop CS3 for examples, the tricks should also apply to other individual CS3 products such as Dreamweaver, Flash, or Illustrator.

Pre-serialization and Suppression

Automatically enter your serial number during installation process.

1. Create a blank text file using (e.g.) Notepad
2. Ctrl+c/v or type the following:
   

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <Configuration>
   <Payload>
   <Data key="Serial" protected="0">1234xxxx5678yyyy4321zzzz</Data>
   <Data key="Registration">Suppress</Data>
   <Data key="EULA">Suppress</Data>
   <Data key="Updates">Suppress</Data>
   </Payload>
   </Configuration>

3. Save as "application.xml.override"
4. Put it into "payloads\AdobePhotoshop10en_US_volume\"
5. Run setup.exe and have fun.

To Choose Components during Installation

Add an "Options" step to installation/uninstallation process.

1. Open folder "payloads\AdobePhotoshop10en_US_volume\"
2. Open the file "AdobePhotoshop10en_US_volume.proxy.xml"
3. Search for "<Requires>" (at line #1770)
4. Delete the whole "<Requires>...</Requires>"
5. Save
6. Run setup.exe and have fun

These components are required or recommended:

• Adobe Anchor Service CS3
  The annoying "Bonjour" service and the licensing service.
  "Bonjour" (C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe) can be disabled manually after the installation but DON'T you delete it! The other one is needed to license the running of the application.
• Adobe Color Common Settings
• Adobe Color NA Recommended Settings
• Adobe Type Support
  You need this to add new text layers to existing PSD files which already contain text layers.
• Adobe Version Cue CS3 Client
  The "Open file" dialog gets errors without this component.

Note: If you're having Web Standard / Premium or Design Standard / Premium instead of stand-alone Photoshop/Dreamweaver/etc., please read this official PDF document carefully to find out the differences of the above two tricks.

Fixing an Installation Error

If you're seeing this error right after the initialization of setup process:

1. Press "Win+R" to launch "Run"
2. Enter "cmd" to open the command-line window
3. Type in "Regsvr32 C:\windows\system32\jscript.dll"
4. Type in "Regsvr32 C:\windows\system32\vbscript.dll"
5. Run setup.exe and have fun