Adobe Flash CS4 Announced
As you have surely already read, we announced Adobe Flash CS4 today. I am not going to go into all of the details about what is in this release as you can find that on the website. However, I havent really used the authoring tool in some time (I barely picked up CS3), but I have really been enjoying CS4. It just feels like the Flash team nailed it this time around (Keith Peters has similar sentiments).
You can find more information on Flash CS4 here.
You can find more information on all of the new CS4 tools here.
it is a wonderful message, but when trial versions ? ;)
pemekscreen
23 Sep 08 at 12:36 pm
(if you don´t feel like reading the entire comment please at least read the part starting with “Now i also want to post constructive things “)
I already wrote something similar on bit-101, i have more hopes someone at adobe reads it here though, so here it goes:
-Please, please lower the european pricing considerably, its an insult to your european cutomers. That the dollar value is low these days doesn´t make all europeans much richer and the european pricing seems like obvious insulting cheating.
Just offer us the options to buy the US version at pretty much the same price if its not possible with a translated version (which i and many others don´t want anyway)
Now on the actual features of flash cs4:
I won´t go deeply into all of the new features, i want to try em for a bit longer before giving a final verdict.
I´ll just write what i think so far on some of the stuff:
New animation/timeline system:
Seems like it will take a while to get used to but ultimately is way more flexible and powerful: I´d give it a clear thumbs up (unless i try it for a few weeks and find many bugs ).
3D features:
What i can say so far is that i like the addition of the 3D features although its still way too few, way too late, but yeah, finally there´s a start at least.
Bones stuff:
Regarding the IK stuff i´d like it if one could control it better via code, too.
Reagrding the deco tool:
Nice idea, terrible, really awful implementation right now:
When one thinks about what it is made for: placing lots of animated movieclips on the stage quickly, actually in a way in which one doesn´t even think much about the amount one places.
Just about one of the worst things one can do in flash regarding performance.
I also dislike it that while its meant to be a mostly designer targetted focus update still many features introduced with flash 8/9 are not implemented in the ide in designer friendly way, pretty much none of them in a way that also leads to performance savey implementations.
Also, and I already ranted about this one before: Its at least weird that something like filter creation which should be accessible to designers, too, is made in a way that it can´t even be done with simple AS coding. As you said in another post others are working on AS wrapper classes, would be great and NEEDED that adobe adds the functionality to make filters with AS code or ideally in graphical workflow both in the IDE.
Now i also want to post constructive things on how i think the graphical features added with flash 8 (mostly speaking about bitmapdata related functionality) could be added to a future version of the IDE so its user friendly for designers (and could also be handy for coders who otherwise usually write wrapper classes for themselves to get such things going) :
-Have a new graphic object type, let´s say its called the BitmapdataMovieclip:
When one creates it one could set canvas dimensions for it, then one could go into the library and select it to edit it (like with usual movieclips) and there see a timeline, again just like for movieclips.
But the “stage” canvas size when editing them would be what one set for em in moment of creation. Then one could drop bitmaps into the frames.
The result should act and allow controlling the timeline like for movieclip but on codeside it would automatcally generate a bitmapdata and array of content per frame and code to iterate through the array and play that back as if it was a spritesheet based copypixels driven animation. One could also press a button to spit out the code output for the case one wants to use that.
Then one could take that idea a step further and have a new feature to be able to set a layer in a movieclip to be a bitmapdata canvas layer. (essentially in the background it should create a stage size bitmapdata). When one would then drag any bitmapdata movieclips onto such a canvas all contents of the current frame in those bitmapdata movieclips would get drawn into that same bitmapdata canvas.
So one would get as endresult many objects (way more than possible with usual movieclips) get animated at nice performance.
Again there should be a button to generate the code output for that,too for the case one wants to use that.
With something like that a tool like the deco tool would also make sense performancewise: One would choose a BitmapdataMovieclip as “brush” of the deco tool and then draw with the tool onto a bitmapdata canvas and get as endresult many particles running at nice performance.
Well, this is my suggestion for how to make the bitmapdata functionality, the deco tool and graphical things running at nice performance in general accesible to designers right in the ide, after brainstorming for a few minutes.
tomsamson
24 Sep 08 at 6:27 am
Well, overall I am impressed with the entire CS4 Web Premium Suite features. I like the direction Flash CS4 is taking, particularly as some rudimentary 3D features have mande their way into the product.
But… please!!! Why oh why do you almost double the European pricing compared to the US? Taking the various euro taxes into account does not cover the price hike! I was really looking forward to purchasing the upgrade, but I will not pay so much more than people in the US. How do you justify this?
As far as goodwill towards Adobe is concerned I and my colleagues in my industry have an increasigly damaged opinion of Adobe. Are you really wanting us to pour more effort into supporting the open source market? That is the probably irreverible reallity that Adobe is now dealing with.
Ray
25 Sep 08 at 2:48 am
Fantastic Job! Really nice design decisions. I love the focus on making complicated animations more easily changeable.
Cort
2 Oct 08 at 7:17 am