A Rant about Adobe Scene7

In my happy little part time job, where I work (like I am right now) in B's living room with the chickens strutting along the patio, and the woodstove cranking, and the bearded collie sleeping at my feet, I am truly happy.

Unless I have to work with Adobe Scene7.

What is Adobe Scene7? Well, this wikipedia article pretty much accurately sums it up. It is a "rich media" management tool, web based (although you can buy a desktop version of it) where you can build catalogs, emails, presentation marketing packages and all kinds of things.


You may have used Adobe Scene7 as a consumer as mostly retailers use this program to build their online catalogs. A viewer can zoom in, rotate, change colors of items to see what they'll look like (oh, this dress is lovely in puce! Not so lovely in orchid).

Our customers upload media into Scene7, our software helps build the online shopping experience.

One of the things I have been trying to do FOR WEEKS is get a "universal viewer" to work so one of our clients can have their sales reps carry around an iPad or other tablet device, instead of 6 print catalogs, one of which weighs a million pounds because it is so full of stuff.

Some days, the links work, the previews generate, everything looks great. I go back to it the next day and the exact same links render differently, don't pop up in a new window the same size as they did the day before.

It is almost like there is a ghost in the machine.

The Adobe support for this product is horrible. Their in house support says "reupload your content and try again." Thanks. I've done that. They referred me to a creative partner, and this creative partner charged us by the hour, and we still don't have a solution. She was nice and all and came back a few times with "there is a configuration error on their end in the server, they're fixing it. But now something totally different is wrong.

I'm frustrated with Scene7, I WANT IT TO WORK because in theory, it is pretty bad ass. But right now, I have a migraine, I want to throw my laptop into the woodstove and blind kittens and drown puppies.

There, I got it out of my system.