flash 2004

oh my god!

at first glance this program is amazing! it features many new components to get your hands dirty with and some nice anti-aliased interface graphics to boot

on the downside, the components have been 'packaged' up so you can't easily edit them...still looking into this one.

if you do get stuck, the help files have been improved. so, instead of a couple of lines copied and pasted from somewhere else in the document (as was sometimes the case in MX) you get meaningful deascriptions and guiding.

lets open this up to a discussion on the features of the new 2004. the good, the bad and the downright wierd abou this new fandangled bit of kit.

ebo

hmmm...

quick annoyances:

classes can only be created in an external .as file
those automate-to-timeline functions create HUGE processor hogging movies
All of the windows layer differently now (on a Mac) so that the focus changes depending on what part of flash you had focused

quick pluses

on a mac, you no longer have to save to test the movie
.as no belongs to Flash, not dreamweaver
its about 8x faster on animations on the mac
i like the new edit transform functions


i haven't had much time to work with it tho...

bret,

i'm new to this whole thing too and am using the windws-based version (for my sins). the basic screen layout is fairly similar with some nice tweeks. i can't understand why macromedia felt they had to change the F-key shortcuts, though - strange! for example, i find myself firing up debug windows when i'm trying to code actionscript.

the structure for including classes (AFAICS) remains fairly similar to the old MX. automatically instanced classes are created as objects in their own right as prototypes; although i don't know about accessing classes that you do not want to be instantiated until called. it appears these would have to be external files as you say.

i guess it's this auto-instancing that causes the cpu-burn when using the automate-to-timeline features.

it's all abit new and will take some reading to get up to scratch. any posts you guys can throw this way highlighting concerns or elation will be digested with interest!!!

ebo

actually... dunno if you knew this or not, but the structure is completely different for classes, class methods and class definitons. AS2.0 no longer supports prototypes even!

In the end, it doesn't really matter cuz it gets compiled down to AS1.0 anyway, but if are going to write for the Flash7 player, you can't use prototypes.

What frustrates me about those automate to timeline things is that it's just multiple instances masked and skewed. To me that's a horrible waste of resources, what it should do is have an effects window and then render out a .flv or something. it's just ugly (As far as cost goes) and what scares me the most is every friggin site out there is going to have a motion blur on everything and that will literally be ugly.

i remember they redid the f-keys in 5 and 6 and 6 beta etc. which really pissed me off.. but you can set them in the prefs (or the XML prefs in the install directory) anyway. seems like a pain tho.

True Class-based oop is a HUGE thing tho, although it doesn't add anything for functionality, hopefully we'll start to see some better coding practices

-bret