Mac Today Magazine
Flash 5 Is Jive
(I know. That was lame, but you make something rhyme with five.)
Wow, it seems like just last year Macromedia came out with a new version of Flash for the maniacal Web animators out there trying to get their hands on the latest and greatest. Wait a minute. It was just last year! But here we are again reviewing a new version of Macromedia Flash – Version 5. They’d better have some cool stuff for us to run out and buy another upgrade, right? Let’s see…
The good news with this latest installment of Flash is that it seems that Macromedia is keeping up with what designers and developers want. With the newly added functionality listed further on here, and improvements on interface (so wannabee Flash designers like myself can jump right in without a ten day crash course), Macromedia keeps consistent with their Web development product line.
Newly Added Features
New Interface – Don’t freak out, it’s not that dramatic. Macromedia has simply slapped on an updated user interface that creates true commonality with its other applications. FreeHand users will feel very comfortable with the dialogue boxes and tools palette. For those of us who are either new or just dabble in Flash will find that the tool boxes are very straight forward and easier to use than in versions past.
Macromedia FreeHand and Adobe Illustrator Import – For those designers who create Flash elements in FreeHand or Illustrator, you’ll love the fact that you can now import your designs to “create complete cross-media publishing applications”. You can actually drag and drop images directly from FreeHand into Flash 5 without importing- this maintains the high integrity of your original artwork.
Bezier Pen Tools – For those who create artwork within Flash, you’ll find this newly added feature a great find. For giving you more precise control for creating and editing vector graphics, you now have native pen and sub-selection tools (similar to FreeHand’s) that allow you to create actual Bezier curves within Flash.
Shared Symbol Libraries – Now you can shrink the size of distributed symbols within a project. Use this new library to “organize and reuse” shared assets, making it much easier for designers to keep track of elements within a project by placing all assets in a common place rather than having duplicate resources across many different Flash files.
Web-Native Printing – I thought that this was already in Flash 4, but apparently they’ve improved upon the development of customized applications for high-quality Web printing. As the Web becomes more of a delivery system for marcom materials (when was the last time you designed a four-color, printed brochure?), the use of Flash and Adobe PDF files for allowing Web visitors to print material at their leisure has become the standard in this industry.
ActionScript Development Tools – This is one of the more important additions to Flash 5 that I’ve seen. This new feature allows Flash designers who create more than just a little animation short to develop more sophisticated Web applications that have a JavaScript-like syntax. ActionScript Text Editor, Debugger, and Smart Clips give you a way to create “reusable interactive components” that makes it easy to quickly create a more interactive Flash environment.
XML Transfer Support – You can now transmit XML info for more complex E-commerce applications. If you have a hard time putting together a Flash shopping cart system in conjunction with an XML-based system, this just might do the trick for you.
HTML Text Support – You can now place HTML text formatting and hyper links (when was the last time you heard that term?) within a Flash environment. This erases the need to create text-rich information into vector form all by your lonesome.
Some other key upgrades include:
• Flash 5 now has easy to find control panels and palettes. A launcher bar the bottom of the screen enables you to click and activate palettes for:
- Info, Transform, Stroke, and Fill
- Color Mixer, Color Swatches (You can manipulate hue, saturation and brightness of color here, too.)
- Character, Paragraph, Text Options (This lets you work with advanced text options, paragraph alignment, and font controls)
- Instance, Effect, Frame, Sound (Sound palette creates effects like fades and pans)
- Movie Explorer, Object Actions
- Symbol Library
For those of you with small monitors (Come on! You don’t have two 21” monitors linked up yet??), these panels do tend to clutter the screen. But they can easily be put away and called up when you need them. They can also be docked or window-shaded to save screen space.
• A more easily understood Tool Bar.
• As mentioned before, the new Flash 5 interface will be familiar to users of other Macromedia products like Fireworks and FreeHand. This makes it seamless to work within these apps to get your stuff done.
• You can now customize keyboard shortcuts. This is a great feature that allows designers to create and memorize their own keystrokes to quickly perform favorite tasks. Then, when you are working on a client’s machine or one in another department or building, you will look like a two year-old child who has never used Flash before because you won’t know where everything really is.
• You can export Flash 5 movies into Quicktime or RealPlayer! How cool is that?!
• Color tints and transparencies from FreeHand 9 are now supported.
Overall, it seems that new users should have an easier time understanding what this application is capable of. It is much more user friendly than before. The learning curve will be much shorter for those who are just now getting into Flash. So, if you are still reading reviews to decide whether or not to get Flash 5 (just like you did with Flash 4, Flash 3, etc.), then it is now time for you to take the plunge.
For current Flash 4 users, you will have to decide whether or not the features above are worth the upgrade. If you are a casual Flash user, you might not be too excited about Bezier curves or XML integration. But the hard-core designers and firms should absolutely go grab this upgrade. It’s a continuation of the Flash legacy that has created a boom in Web animation and multimedia interactivity for cool and hip Web sites.
– Rick Tracewell
The Verdict
Hot: This version is much easier and intuitive for non-Flash experts. Big improvement on its learning curve.
Not: Not much. For what this software is capable of, it’s a pretty easy-to-learn app and has great documentation to help anyone who has trouble getting things done.
Mac Today Rating: *****
~ END
|
