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btempleton1982
btempleton1982
Inspiring
June 22, 2016
Question

Getting old plugins to run in Illustrator 2015.3

  • June 22, 2016
  • 5 replies
  • 5352 views

Here's how I got my plugins to run in Illustrator 2015.3 (on Mac, though I'm betting it's similar for PC):

New plugins folder:  /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3/Plug-ins

New extensions folder: /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3/CEP/extensions

The installer didn't put them in the right place, but did find an old version that it helpfully stuck in there. I moved everything to those folders and restarted Illustrator. Everything worked fine after that. No changes to the manifest or recompile required. I was using 2015.2 before though, so if you're coming from an older version, your results may be different.

Edit: Well... I spoke too soon. My extension panels are not showing up. Maybe there is something that needs to be adjusted in the Manifest?

There was a post on one of the other forums that said something about using CEP version 7, but that there isn't any information about where to get it. That post has been deleted.

Examining the first-party extensions in the folder, their manifests still reference CEP 6.0, but Illustrator version 20.0 rather than 19.x.

Changing Manifest to Illustrator version [19.0, 20.9] gets a blank panel to appear.

Edit 2: And... my menus show up but don't seem to do anything.​ Menu commands work fine.

Message was edited by: Brian Templeton

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

student_driver
student_driver
Participant
August 15, 2016

Had the same issue. Followed your steps above at first and got the empty panel. Was able to get the panel to display its contents by adding the PlayerDebugMode 1 value to the registry for CSXS.7 (new with June's updates).

Once this is done your panels should work again.

See Davide Barranca's: HTML Panel Tips #21: Photoshop CC 2015.5 survival guide | Photoshop, etc.

Applicable to Illustrator in this case as well.

Edit: If you're dealing with 3rd party panels and not your own you may just want to shoot your developer a quick message and not mess around with your windows registry. Should have added this to begin with, even in the SDK sub forum.

    Silly-V
    Silly-V
    Legend
    August 15, 2016
    adding the PlayerDebugMode 1 value to the registry for CSXS.7 (new with June's updates).

    Yes! This worked for me, not it shows up again. Now I wonder if I had some extension added on some customers' computers and they all quit working- how would one deal with this, exactly? Can some software you write be able to remotely change these things on their computers all at once? I'm planning on making some extensions for others, that do not only have to run on my personal machine, so this is sort-of unsettling. However I'm quite new to this.

    student_driver
    student_driver
    Participant
    August 15, 2016

    I'm also rather new to this as well, but from what I understand, if the panel extension is 'signed' the debug value does not need to be set. I have a couple extensions i installed from the adobe marketplace that do not break on updates, each these however is using an open ended version target in the .xml manifest and not a range. I suspect the one's that were using a range are the ones that are breaking.

    Here's a snippet from one that kept on working across updates using older ILST and CSXS targets:

      A
      Arrakis
      Inspiring
      July 6, 2016

      This post may as well be in another language.  None of it makes any sense to me.  Im not a programmer.  I just want my extensions back.  

      btempleton1982
      btempleton1982Author
      Inspiring
      July 6, 2016

      You're in the wrong forum then. This is the Illustrator SDK programming forum. There is one for Illustrator users up a level.

      btempleton1982
      btempleton1982Author
      Inspiring
      August 12, 2016

      Just to follow up on this, I did get Remote debugging to work now. It looks like it was an error caused by improper types of quote marks "" and new line characters in the .debug file.

      Toto RoToTO
      Toto RoToTO
      Inspiring
      June 24, 2016

      Remote debug:

      Did you add the '.debug' file like described in the documentation?

      it should be something like that:

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
      <ExtensionList>
        <Extension Id="com.your.extension.Panel1">
        <HostList>
        <Host Name="ILST" Port="8003"/>
        </HostList>
        </Extension>
      </ExtensionList>

      extension id should be the same as the one defined in the manifest file.

      Then type this url: http://localhost:8083/ in Chrome.

      Enjoy!

        btempleton1982
        btempleton1982Author
        Inspiring
        June 24, 2016

        Ok, my panel is finally showing up. I'm not sure exactly what was going on. I was getting this error in the Xcode console:

        ERROR PlugPlugDispatchEvent: PlugPlugErrorCode_internalError (PlugPlugSetup must be called first)

        I noticed in my log files (thanks Toto RoToTO!) that the log level was still set to 1, when I had changed it earlier today to 4. There's an issue with newer OS X that it doesn't update plist preferences when you change them, just when it feels like it, or when you kill cfprefsd process. So I did. Restarted Illustrator and now my panel is displaying. I still get the same error in the XCode console though.

        Still can't figure out why localhost:port remote debugging isn't working.

          D
          denvercb
          Participant
          July 2, 2016

          My computer crashed yesterday and after having it wiped and reinstalling

          everything, Adobe Illustrator updated and FineCut won't install properly

          like it always has before. Is there a way to install the older version from

          Creative Cloud (with the green astronaut girl on the loading screen)?

          On Fri, Jul 1, 2016, 8:56 AM btempleton1982 <forums_noreply@adobe.com>


          Re: Mimaki FineCut plugin. I simply copied the "Mimaki FineCut" folder from the old "Adobe Illustrator cc 2015\plug-ins" folder to the "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3\Plug-ins" folder and it seems to work fine (pun intended).

          D
          denvercb
          Participant
          June 23, 2016

          Re: Mimaki FineCut plugin. I simply copied the "Mimaki FineCut" folder from the old "Adobe Illustrator cc 2015\plug-ins" folder to the "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3\Plug-ins" folder and it seems to work fine (pun intended).

          Toto RoToTO
          Toto RoToTO
          Inspiring
          June 23, 2016

          No need to compile c++ plugins.

          Just have to update the extension manifest file.

          But you have already found the solution!

          btempleton1982
          btempleton1982Author
          Inspiring
          June 23, 2016

          Well, I still haven't gotten my panel content to show up. Just the panel frame.

            Toto RoToTO
            Toto RoToTO
            Inspiring
            June 23, 2016

            No exceptions popped in the console while remote debugging?

            Have you checked cep log files?

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