Flash MX Pro 2004 - First Blush: 2 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back
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There are a lot of things to love with this new release of Flash MX Pro 2004, but there are a lot of things that will make you want to pull your hair out by the roots; an increase of power and ability is coupled with an incredible loss of simplicity. In short, the trade off for the all power and features you get with the new version is a very steep learning curve. Get out your oxygen masks - you are going to need them to scale the heights of this new program.
There are a lot of things to love with this new release of Flash MX Pro 2004, but there are a lot of things that will make you want to pull your hair out by the roots; an increase of power and ability is coupled with an incredible loss of simplicity. When it takes you over a week and a half to learn how to add and modify the appearance of scrolling text on a page, you know something is dreadfully wrong. A feature that required no more than a basic knowledge of HTML markup and hyper-linking in Flash 5 now requires a knowledge of XML, CSS, Object Oriented Programming, and Class structures in ActionScript 2 – and that is just for placing text! In short, the trade off for the all power and features you get with the new version is a very steep learning curve. Get out your oxygen masks - you are going to need them to scale the heights of this new program.
A little bit of history: I started using Flash with version 3 and came to it from a designer's background. I learned PHP/MySql, JavaScript, and a smattering of other languages as I needed them for particular projects, but I never majored in programming. My goal as a designer is to have functional tools that increase productivity and cut time spent on labors such as manually retyping HTML tags or PHP code snippets. The more time I save, the more clients I can handle. So, if a program gives me more power or new features that I can use to create income, I'll sacrifice some learning time in the short term to gain productivity over the long haul. My evaluation of Flash MX Pro 2004 then is based upon these criteria.
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