Review
EXCELLENT
A rethought interface, component building blocks, improved scripting, accessibility features, video support and new client-server capabilities provide a huge boost in power – and productivity.
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Macromedia Flash must be one of the world’s most revolutionary applications. It began life just five years ago as a simple utility for sketching cartoons, was transformed by its ability to provide efficient animations over the Web, was galvanized by its move into multimedia and interactivity and in its last release reinvented itself yet again when it grafted on ActionScript programmability to move into full-blown Web application development.
The power these revolutions have opened up has never been in doubt, but there’s a wide divide between producing an eye-catching banner and producing an e-commerce site and Flash has struggled to keep both designers and developers happy. This new release is designed to do just that. It’s some task and, with over a thousand changes, Macromedia has decided that a simple release number doesn’t do it justice. Rather than Flash 6, the new release is called Flash MX. According to Macromedia it’s the most revolutionary release yet – but does it live up to the claim?
The difference in MX is immediately apparent. The first time you load the program a dialog appears asking if you’re primarily interested in design or development and then sets up the workspace accordingly. More importantly, all the workspace panels are now dockable and, when docked, are easily collapsible and expandable. Docking doesn’t suit all cases – you need more space when writing Actions for example – but it does mean that the vast majority of panels can now be brought under tight control.
The Flash MX interface is built on dockable palettes and the Properties Inspector.
Even better in this regard is the new Property Inspector, a horizontal panel that docks to the bottom of the screen. This provides context-sensitive control over the most common settings for everything from the current document through to the current shape, frame or tool and replaces no less than seven of Flash 5’s floating panels. The control offered by the Property Inspector is comprehensive so that with text selected, for example, you can manage everything from font and size through to type and alignment (including new vertical options). Flash’s working environment has grown organically over time, now for the first time it feels both planned and productive.
When it comes to drawing power, Flash’s unorthodox origins are still very apparent – for example overlying objects still merge with or knock-out those below. Formatting also remains unusual with fills and outlines treated as independently selectable objects, but at least here there has been some rationalization with the Mixer panel now offering quick access to colour, gradient and texture set-up. Also welcome is the new Snap to Pixel option which is useful for exact positioning and for cutting down on anti-aliasing.
Much the biggest difference to Flash’s core drawing capabilities is the addition of a new Free Transform tool which enables easy and interactive scaling, rotating and skewing – previously hidden away as sub-options of the Arrow tool. As well as greater convenience, the tool offers more power with Distort and Envelope options for creating eye-catching perspective and freeform distortions. These effects open up a lot of creative options but disappointingly can only be applied to shapes not symbols, which also means that they can’t be used to automatically create tweened distortions.
New drawing power includes a free transform tool, enveloping and snap to pixel.
At least Flash MX adds some new animation power to compensate. You can now add a movie clip to a mask layer, for example, to quickly produce striking dynamic masking effects. The creation of text effects is also helped by new options for automatically breaking up text and for distributing each character to its own layer. It’s certainly quicker than having to turn each letter into a symbol but it’s still not exactly childs’ play to set up an effect and horrendously difficult to edit once you have. Creating dynamic text effects is one of the most common uses of Flash, but Flash MX is still put to shame by the shareware SWiSH.
An even more fundamental limitation to Flash’s animation capabilities is the reliance on the Timeline which has changed little since it was first introduced and constantly trips up beginner and advanced user alike. Flash MX brings in the ability to nest layers in folders which helps bring some sort of order to advanced projects which might well contain hundreds of layers. The handling of frames has also been improved so that you can resize, cut, and paste multiple frames simultaneously. This is fine if you know exactly what you’re doing but can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Hopefully the Timeline will see a root-and-branch overhaul soon.
Animation handling is improved with layer folders and a distribute to layers command.
In many ways Flash’s core animation capabilities have suffered as Macromedia has instead focused on adding high-end programmability. The creative options such high-end power opens up are almost limitless but currently just 16% of Flash’s user-base takes advantage of the program’s ability to produce full web applications while almost 40% never stray beyond its dynamic graphics capability. Clearly Flash has to make its high-end power more accessible and MX offers a number of features designed to do just that.
The first of these is the introduction of components. The new Components panel offers seven building blocks – checkbox, combobox, listbox, pushbutton, radiobutton, scrollbar and scrollpane – that can simply be dragged onto a design to quickly turn it into an interactive interface. Each component can be controlled by setting parameters in the Property Inspector so that the listbox, for example, can be populated with labels and data. You can also change the appearance of the component by changing its “skin” while you control its behaviour at runtime using tailor-made ActionScript methods.
New UI Components help user to set up Flash interfaces.
Another feature designed to get users off to a flying start is the New From Template command which lets you base your design on a range of pre-built designs. With just over twenty templates on offer the choice isn’t exactly overwhelming especially as many, such as the Banner Ad and Mobile Device options, do little more than set the movie size and give some basic usage instructions. More advanced templates are also provided however, such as the Menu options which walk you through creating a dropdown or tabbed navigation bar by updating an external XML file. You can also save your own designs as templates which is particularly useful for workgroups.
