FLASH

Flash MX Pro 2004 - First Blush: 2 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back

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.

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By: Jefferis Peterson

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January 12, 2004

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This new version packs in some fantastic features which streamline the creation of complex behaviors, simplify database linking, and make it easy to add multimedia services. In the last version of Studio MX, Dreamweaver introduced direct web site integration with Open Source databases like MySql. For the Open Source community, it was an answer to prayer. DW's panel based linking of data calls to databases made it easy for designers to integrate pages without hand writing queries. Flash Pro's data binding panel promises to bring this same functionality into the Flash arena (Fig 1). Creating links to data is now a visually based process using the Component structure available in the Flash panels. For designers, the visual orientation creates a simple interface for establishing connectivity. In addition, the calls to data are written out by the program rather than having to be laboriously hand-coded.

Fig. 1 – Data Components and Visual Linking

From past experience with Macromedia's new upgrades and the Mac OS, I normally wait 6 months before I upgrade. That time span gives MM the opportunity to fix the most glaring bugs and glitches. However, as I tested Flash Pro I found the program to be far more stable than Flash MX or Flash 5, and the entire Studio fixed a particularly annoying active-window bug of previous versions. Although a user shouldn't have to pay an upgrade price for a bug fix, the stability of Flash was enticing, if not convincing. What sold me was the new Media Component suite (Fig. 2) which promises a powerful new delivery system for multimedia. I knew I had to have this upgrade. I have not been disappointed with this feature. While I use Discreet's Cleaner 6 to prepare and compress QuickTime movies for the web, Flash Pro's new web streaming feature is compelling. With a built in Sorenson codec, Flash Pro imports QuickTime and exports it as a separate Flash Video (FLV) file, which Flash can stream over the Internet without a streaming server! For clients who do not need or wish to pay for full time streaming services, this Flash embedded streaming compression offers a powerful alternative. This feature alone was worth the price of the upgrade. Not only will it stream video, it also processes MP3 files. The only problem I've noticed with the player is that sometimes a sound track can get separated in timing from the video, but so far I've only seen that happen once to a file.

Fig. 2 – Media Components Suite

Another new drool-worthy feature is a new Timeline Effects behaviors panel which allows the mathematically challenged to produce high-end graphic animations (Fig. 3). When I first started designing in Flash, I was (and still am) humbled by the designers who use high-end math formulas and functions to render graphics. The advantage to their method is that the hidden math creates powerful graphic animations without consuming the processor power of timeline-based, graphic symbol tweens. Math is not my strong suit. However, the new behavior functions allow me to create visual kaleidoscopes while Flash writes the math in the background. Perhaps not as refined as hand-coded, pure math, this new feature is a great bridge for the average designer. It allows you to examine the code Flash writes and learn from it!

Fig. 3 – Mathematical Tween created from single green line

There are two other features worthy of immediate mention. Aside from a slew of new templates for cell-phone Flash productions, photo galleries, and the like, there is a new development environment which includes Applications and Slides. Both of these environments are a similar class of development metaphors which resemble PowerPoint creations. Slides are linear productions which automate navigation with arrow keys and automate slide transitions with the Behaviors panel. In contrast, Applications produce more hierarchical structures with embedded or nested Forms of information or graphics. The new environment has a lot of promise, but woe unto first users. If you run into problems, there is very little documentation to help you out. A couple of gurus I've chatted with have given up on Forms for now because the frustration level is just too high.

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