Getting the Dreamweaver PHP hotfix - some progress
December 16th, 2006
A lot of people have complained (and rightly so) about the way Adobe forces people to jump through seemingly endless hoops in order to get the PHP hotfix that fixes a handful of serious bugs in Dreamweaver 8.0.2. One of the advantages of being an author of books on Dreamweaver is that I can participate in a private forum and raise matters of concern directly with Adobe and the Dreamweaver team. Yesterday, I posted a message in the forum expressing my frustration about the “scandalous lack of availability” of the hotfix, and in the process sparked off a heated debate.
I pointed to the slew of complaints in response to my original blog post. Fortunately, Phil Adkins had reproduced the response he received from Adobe Customer Service. An Adobe representative quickly replied that Phil had got in touch with the wrong department. It wasn’t Customer Service, but Technical Support he should have contacted. Quite frankly, this is nonsense. When customers get in touch with a company, they frequently have no idea which department they’re dealing with. It’s the job of Customer Service to put them in touch with the right one.
But it shouldn’t be necessary to ring or email any department in Adobe to get the hotfix. It should be made available for immediate download like any other Dreamweaver updater. That message has been passed on to Adobe in emphatic terms by me and several other people. The Adobe rep promised to convey that message to the Dreamweaver team. (Update: the hotfix can now be freely downloaded - see Scott Fegette’s comment. )In the meantime, the following should help:
Contact Dreamweaver Technical Support, not Customer Support (the details are in the right column of this Adobe page)If Technical Support doesn’t know what you’re talking about, tell the representative that it’s covered by TechNote b6c2ae2aTell Technical Support that you need DW802_HotFix-0_6_0.mxpIf you still get nowhere, ask the representative for an incident number, and post the details here - I’ll pass them on to my contact inside Adobe
Hopefully, nobody will need to go as far as the last point, and this silly saga can be brought to a close. The tragedy is that it happened in the first place.
Entry Filed under: Dreamweaver, PHP
8 Comments
1. Scott Fegette | December 18th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Hey, David-
FYI, the hotfix is now available as the first link in the referred-to technote on Adobe.com (also linked in your post):
http://www.adobe.com/go/b6c2ae2a
Perhaps this will help close down the silly saga?
-Scott, Adobe Systems
2. David | December 18th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
It most certainly should, Scott. Thanks very much. My only regret is that it has taken so long. Instead of recriminations, though, let’s hope lessons can be learned from this. If there is a need to restrict access to an updater or bugfix (doubtful, but there may be valid reasons), all Adobe representatives dealing directly with the public need to be made aware of the proper procedure to get the fix to the customer as quickly as possible.
3. Phil Adkins | December 19th, 2006 at 1:32 am
I was contacted by “David Alcala, Product Support Engineering Lead†who was able to provide the Hotfix to me. Apparently, I was contacting customer service as opposed to tech support. I wish to thank Mr. Alcala but most also say that contacting anyone was far to convoluted just to get a simple update.
4. David | December 19th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Your point is well taken, Phil. I have argued for a long time that the update should be freely downloadable. Unfortunately, it appears that a private message that I sent to Adobe urging them to do so was lost in cyberspace. Your complaint finally got the ball rolling, and as Scott Fegette indicates, the hotfix is now available without the need to contact anyone.
5. Dennis | December 27th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Still cannot find the DW 8.02 hotfix. I think Adobe is making it really difficult, we have to hunt and peck around and waste time trying to find it!!
6. David | December 27th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Dennis, go to this page. Click the words “Dreamweaver extension fix” in the second sentence.
7. Michael | December 29th, 2006 at 5:12 am
Thanks for pursuing this, David. I just downloaded it. I never was able to contact Adobe - their site andphone support was just terrible for me. (Yes, I was trying to contact Tech Support, not Cust. Service.
)
Anyhow, I’ve got it now. I too am just frustrated it was such a burden. Thanks for sticking with it, David.
8. David | December 30th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Glad you got it in the end, Michael. However, this is something that should never have happened in the first place. Adobe got an ear-bending from quite a few people over this, so it’s to be hoped that the lesson has been learned.
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