simcon Posted November 23, 2003 Report Share Posted November 23, 2003 (edited) Hi I've recently downloaded the Codeweavers Crossover Office 2.1.0 demo to see if I could get my favourite professional Windows applications working on my Mandrake 9 box - http://www.codeweavers.com/site/products/d...download_trial/. To be honest I'm quite happy with the applications that come with mdk9 but for me there are three apps in particular that would completely move me away from Windows and they are Macromedia Fireworks (or equivalent), Dreamweaver and Flash. Ok the first app I installed was Fireworks 3. The installation was doing well until it started to install and the progress bar just started going when a messagebox appeared stating that the file in windows\temp\pft05e2~tmp\data1.hdr wasn't write protected, so I cancelled the install, located data1.hdr in the fake_windows temp directory and removed the write permissions. I reinstalled and it was fine. I started it and the Fireworks 3 splash screen came up and nothing else happened. Shame. I have Fireworks 4 and MX to try yet. Ok the second app was Photoshop v5.0, and the v5.0.2 update that I had with it. The installation was going fine until I decided to select a 'custom' install, whereby I clicked on one of the check boxes and it crashed the installation. So I went through the process again just selecting a normal install and it was fine. So far it works flawlessly and haven't yet found any problems with it. I don't have a newer version of Photoshop but there's nothing wrong with v5.0 anyway so it's great. Screen Shot The third app was Dreamweaver 3. This sailed through the installation with no problems. I started it up and tested a previous site I had made with Dreamweaver MX and it seems to work. Just one observation really, that Codeweavers state that if you install Dreamweaver MX don't click on the colour selector in the properties panel as it crashes it. Well I clicked on mine in Dreamweaver 3 and it didn't crash it, but sometimes the text cursor starts to flash a bit fast. Still this disappears just by clicking on other controls. So I can say that really it's fully functional. Again v3 is an older version but who cares, it still does everything you could possibly want and it's Dreamweaver. I do have Ultradev 4 and Dreamweaver MX to try yet. I've attached a screen shot of Dreamweaver 3 running on mdk9 with Crossover Office 2.1.0. Edited November 23, 2003 by simcon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezroller Posted November 23, 2003 Report Share Posted November 23, 2003 that is awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simcon Posted November 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 23, 2003 (edited) Ok now I'm going to try Flash 4. For this I need to install the Windows program called DCOM98.EXE which you can get from here (1.2MB) - http://download.microsoft.com/msdownload/d...6/en/dcom98.exe. Why do you need this you ask, well it's needed for some of the installers, especially the latest releases but so far I haven't needed it for Photoshop 5 or Dreamweaver 3 but Flash 4 requires it. Download it to your home folder, change to your home folder and type this: '/opt/cxoffice/bin/wine -dll ole32=n dcom98.exe' (without the single quotes) assuming you installed Crossover Office to it's default location in opt. Now we are ready to install Flash 4. The installation was painless, very fast with no problems. I started the program and opened and ran a sample project and also tested the standalone Flash player with some animations I made ages ago and it works. Ok Flash 4 is getting old but it's Flash and you can make animations with it, but Flash 5 would be better because it has Action Script. I've attached a screen shot of Flash 4 running on mdk9 with Crossover Office 2.1.0. Edited November 23, 2003 by simcon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simcon Posted November 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 23, 2003 (edited) See the post above about DCOM98.EXE (Flash 4) before attempting these. Ok now then it's time to try Fireworks 4. This installed without a problem, although it uses a more modern installer, is more bloated and takes longer it was still quick. I ran the program and the splash screen appeared just like Fireworks 3 but then nothing. I guess there's something in there that the Wine developers still need to work on. Next up is Ultradev [Dreamweaver] 4. This installed just the same as Fireworks above, no problems at all. I started it up and used the same test site I did with Dreamweaver 3 and there's no problem with it so far. Overall though the refreshing of the window and the menus is slower but then it's newer and more bloated. I tested the colour picker in the properties window and it doesn't crash the program, and I haven't noticed any speeding up of the text cursor flashing either, so it seems to be as perfect as you could possibly get. I've attached a screen shot of Ultradev 4 running on mdk9 with Crossover Office 2.1.0. Edited November 23, 2003 by simcon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simcon Posted November 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2003 (edited) See the post above about DCOM98.EXE (Flash 4) before attempting these. A final attempt at getting a Fireworks product working, this time Fireworks MX. Ok it installed without a problem. I started it, I got the splash screen and then a Fireworks MX messagebox saying "Could not launch Fireworks. A parameter was incorrect". It's a shame I couldn't get any of them working as I really like this program, more so than Photoshop. Anyway I'm sure someone is working on getting it running for the future. At the end of the day Photoshop works Flash 5 installed and started up great. It fully works but I got some graphical corruption on the image of the flash animation in the main window when overlapping it with other windows. It's easy enough to reset just by doing something that refreshes it. I think it's something to do with my personal setup and not Flash 5 itself. Flash 5 has the benefit of Action Script that you can use to easily create interactive animations such as games, so it's still very useable. The programs I tested above are all unsupported and older so they are the sort of discs that developers discard into a draw or cupboard so you could possibly get them for free or perhaps cheaply on Ebay. Older programs too have the benefit of running faster and being less bloated. Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX work almost perfectly for me but again I got that graphical corruption mentioned in Flash 5 above, and it's not supposed to happen as this version is fully supported under Crossover Office so it must be my setup. I think the colour picker crash problem with Dreamweaver MX is actually to do with Wine and not Crossover Office, because you can download Wine and install these apps too. If you're interested in Wine only then visit this site for application installation instructions - http://frankscorner.org/index.php. I still have Freehand 9 and MX to try later. So then to summarise:- Fireworks 3 Fireworks 4 Fireworks MX Photoshop 5 Dreamweaver 3 Ultradev [Dreamweaver] 4 Dreamweaver MX is a Crossover Office supported fully functioning program. Flash 4 Flash 5 Flash MX is a Crossover Office supported fully functioning program. I've attached a screen shot of Flash 5 running on mdk9 with Crossover Office 2.1.0. Edited November 24, 2003 by simcon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted November 24, 2003 Report Share Posted November 24, 2003 Are you going to try and install MS Office? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simcon Posted November 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2003 (edited) Are you going to try and install MS Office? No. I don't need MSOffice on my computer. OpenOffice or StarOffice are perfectly capable programs and so is KOffice. Personally for letter writing I use KWord. In the end I tried Freehand 9 and MX, they installed quickly and problem free but when running them the splash screen came up and then a window appeared with no insides. I had to reset them so neither of them work. Maybe when Fireworks eventually works so will Freehand. Conclusion So in the end by using Codweavers Crossover Office 2.1.0 (demo) I've managed to get my development programs moved over to Linux so that my Windows partition has become pretty much redundant. My only gripe with Crossover Office is that it's $59.99 and in the UK that's £35.49. It's equivalent to buying Norton AntiVirus 2004 from Amazon.co.uk or a full priced PC game from the shops. I'm just not sure that it should be priced at that point. I think if it was £19.99 ($33.78) or £24.99 ($42.23) it would be better value and would sell more. After all it's possible to get Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX running under Wine for free, albeit with a little more effort. Perhaps I'll do this test again with Wine only... B) Edited November 24, 2003 by simcon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted November 25, 2003 Report Share Posted November 25, 2003 Somebody give simcon a medal! I've been looking for way to edit Flash on Linux for a year now, I'm going to try this asap! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero0w Posted November 26, 2003 Report Share Posted November 26, 2003 Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver are now officially supported. The 20031118 WINE build would work very well with them too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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