Review: Flash CS3
- Article 46 of 89
- MacFormat, June 2007
The ultimate multimedia tool gets an Adobe make-over that surprisingly, really suits it
There’s a statistic that must have irked Adobe for quite some time: nine out of ten Flash designers use Photoshop and three out of four use Illustrator. It’s no surprise that following the acquisition of Flash from Macromedia, top of the new features for every multimedia developer’s favourite authoring environment is better integration with Adobe’s existing products.
The most obvious signs of Flash’s Adobe-isation are the standard Adobe palettes, such as layers, align, swatches and library, that Adobe has given the majority of CS3 programs, and the near-universal, streamlined CS3 interface, which lets you collapse palettes down to small square icons to save space. There are also some Adobe-style pen tools in the Flash toolkit: cursors, keyboard shortcuts and modifier keys are the same as those you’d see and use in Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop for adding, deleting and converting anchor points.
Slightly less obviously, there are some new‘primitive’ tools, which let you create easily re-configurable rectangles and ovals, although you’ll need to play with them for a while to find a use for them.
Even less obviously, Adobe has ripped out Flash’s old drawing engine and replaced it with Illustrator’s to ensure artwork remains the same as you move it between the two programs.
CS3’s interface enhancements are to be welcomed, even by old Flash hands used to the Macromedia way, since they are both time and screen savers. Adobe hasn’t got rid of any of Flash’s trademarks, like its timelines or stage, and being able to use those Illustrator and Photoshop tools in Flash is welcome since Flash never really was as good for creating artwork as animating it.
Which takes us nicely to the next bit of integration: import. Bringing Illustrator and Photoshop files into Flash documents has become a whole lot more reliable, easier and powerful. Using the standard Import function now brings up a dialogue box that specifies in almost mind-numbing detail the layers in the file you’ve chosen, giving you the option of choosing which layers to import; whether to import them as Flash layers or not; the size to import them at; whether to import text as editable, bitmap or vector outlines; and placement.
Flash, of course, is all about multimedia. Its timeline and the ActionScript programming language are what give it its real power. While the timeline has always been easy to use, ActionScript has been the real barrier to entry for designers who are unwilling to turn themselves into programmers. One of the big improvements in Flash CS3 is the ability to convert timeline tween animations into ActionScript 3.0, the latest version of ActionScript. This means you can animate visually and then convert the animation into editable code, ready for re-use, tweaking or handing over to an ActionScript programmer.
Said programmers are also going to be happy with the ActionScript debugger in Flash CS3, the same as can be found in Flex Builder 2, which lets them step through properties to find bugs. It’s still not as powerful as a top-end programming IDE, but there’s now far less guesswork involved in debugging.
Flash beginners are going to be more pleased by the set of pre-built skinable components, such as buttons, progress bars and checkboxes. Rather than having to write code to modify the look of interface components, you can just double-click a component state and draw to redesign it.
This pre-built set of components also includes video objects, which is handy in this YouTube-happy day and age. Improvements to Flash’s video output and encoding tools are pretty minimal in CS3, so don’t go in expecting a revolution in quality. But there is a new export function that converts Flash movies into QuickTime movies exactly.
All in all, there’s a surprisingly good selection of tools for everyone in Adobe’s first Flash release: easier code and design generation for beginners that finally make it possible to get something useful out of Flash without an intensive training course and a good few months hands-on use; improved creation and workflow tools for existing users that’ll cut down on round-trips between apps; and a better programming environment for old pros that want to know where their code is going wrong. And, of course, we must just mention for Mactel users that Flash is finally running at native speeds thanks to promotion to universal binary status.
At £575, it’s a little pricey for new users, but the upgrade price is a definite bargain. If multimedia’s your thing, Flash CS3 is the way to go.