Photoshop CS3 web gallery bugs(?); vanishing metadata, bad sort order

Question

Running OS 1.5.4 on 24" Imac, I'm attempting to generate a "horizontal slideshow" from bridge-selected files in Photoshop CS3.
[Sounded like the problem in this post: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b5a9fe/2 but on re-reading I've decided it's different so I'm giving it it's own thread, with more detail...]
Here's my experience:
1) Description and title show up for a second on the first slide, then revert to just the blank template on that and all subsequent slides (title: [blank] description: [blank]....
Hitting "refresh" produces the descriptive metadata for a tantalizing moment, then it' s back to the blank template for this and all subsequent slides. It does this both for Safari and Firefox.
You can view this behavior in a slideshow at http://oasisdesign.net/projects/earthtoilet/
If it asks for a password, use---
user:earthling
pass: draf1 )
"preserve all metadata" is checked.
I've tried all combinations of checking/ unchecking "title, description, filename" for labeling...also, making slideshows with just one or two slides to reduce the chance that it's a weird character issue of the type some other folks have experienced...
2) additionally, the web gallery is not respecting the manual sort order in Bridge, which is the source of the files. The help files say the slideshow should follow the manual sort order in Bridge.
3) Finally, metadata entered in bridge metadata tab sometimes vanishes, sometimes metadata entered in file info wouldn't show in the metadata tab.
Thanks for your help!!
Art
BTW, here's the related issues I found:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b5a9fe/2
...After some investigation, I found that the descriptions were disappearing only for photos that had a Return / Line Break in the description. If you go back and make sure all of your descriptions are a single line, it works fine....
=Don't have line breaks, nor "and" nor &...
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bff9de1/0
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bd62ec3/0

Answer 1

OK...here's the hack I used to get around what I'm now totally convinced are program bugs and shortcomings relative to advertised functionality, for anyone else who has to deal with this, followed by my (suggested fixes to Adobe)...
1) Sort everything the way you want in bridge.
2) Make meta descriptions w/o weird characters (a warning here would be helpful)
3) Use "batch rename," with "copy to another folder" to give the images totally plain vanilla, DOS-style file names (001.jpg, 002.jpg...). This solves most filename issues and the works around web gallery's failure to recognize bridge sort order in one go. Note that you can irrevocably screw up the names of all your original files if you're not very careful to COPY at this step.
([a] make the bridge sort work directly, as advertised, por favor. [b] add an error message or warning about file names such as 006-(2).jpg causing malfunction. A compassionate, low-effort short-term patch for Mac users of web gallery, especially since bridge generates that particular sort name itself invisibly and automatically if you move a file with the same name into a folder)
4) Use "white on black" instead of bug-ridden "horizontal slideshow" (horizontal slideshow should be fixed or deleted from the next version...multiple slideshow options would be awesome, as they advance automatically at the max rate the user's bandwidth allows, a very attractive feature)
5) Restrict all images to the same height so users can click *in the same spot* to advance the 200 images with less carpal tunnel (the advance arrow should *always* be in the same spot, for every web gallery, IMHO)
Web galleries are a fantastic tool for sharing information easily...I hope to see some evolution in those great automatic updates someday...