Product Reviews

Over the last few versions of Flash, two features stand out as driving the technology's evolution and have extended the file format's usefulness and life span. The scripting side has undergone serious changes since ActionScript 1.0 and, in the last couple of years, Flash's video features have been leveraged by the current cool sites of the web, including as YouTube and Google Video.

In Flash CS3 Professional, workflow improvements aren't limited to the new user interface of most CS3 applications. Importing of content from Photoshop and Illustrator is much more flexible, and the Pen tool has been given an overhaul, too. There are also many refinements over the previous release, and ActionScript 3 finally makes its debut in Flash itself.

In the authoring application itself, the new CS3 user interface is a major improvement. It makes the workspace much more comfortable when the palettes are collapsed and displayed only on demand. You need not worry that important tools such as the Actions panel are hidden away, as you can still pull them out of the dock, leave them floating or recall them with a single shortcut as before.

The new CS3 interface is a major improvement over the previous release.

Flash Video Encoder

The core video technologies in Flash remain the same in this release. The bundled Flash Video Encoder has undergone minor reorganisation for the better, everything organized into tabs beneath a larger space for previewing and trimming video.

The new deinterlace option is turned on by default in the new presets for DV Small and DV Large (QVGA and VGA with bit rates of 400Kbits/sec and 700Kbits/sec respectively). The accompanying documentation gives some guidance on when best to use it.

Most important is the ability to save cue points and encoding profiles to external files for reuse. Cue point data is saved as XML, and a Document Type Definition is provided in the documentation. Why encoding profiles couldn't be saved in the last version is anyone's guess. While it's no reason to upgrade, not having to re-enter custom settings each time is a welcome change.

The encoder still lacks the ability to embed metadata in your FLVs. This is possible in third-party encoders such as Sorenson Squeeze, so we continue to be frustrated by its omission here.

Importing Photoshop and Illustrator files

One of the most important results of the consolidation of Adobe and Macromedia's products is the level of control when importing Photoshop and Illustrator files. Previously, Illustrator files allowed a modicum of control - layers could be retained or flattened, text blocks could be maintained, and so on. However, whatever you selected applied to every layer in the file. Photoshop files simply became flattened bitmaps.

Both formats share the new Import dialog (above), which enables you to choose which layers to import and how each is imported - text can remain editable or be converted to vectors or a flat bitmap. You can import each layer or group to a new movie clip and also choose the name of each one. Layers of differing types can also be merged into a single bitmap in Flash.

You also have control over compression settings for bitmap layers, which can follow the Flash document's preset, the PSD importer's setting in Flash's preferences, or can be overridden for any layer. Flash's preferences also cater for default settings on how image, text and shape layers are imported.

It's important to bear in mind the limitations of how text is imported. Importing text as a flattened bitmap or a vector outline will retain Photoshop settings from the Styles panel and each layer's Blending Options. Due to differences in Flash and Photoshop's handling of text, these settings are discarded if you elect to import as editable text.

There's one mild oversight in the Import dialog: an icon is displayed to the right of each layer to indicate its import settings. Only one icon is shown, though, so you can't simultaneously see the type of layer in Flash (text, vector or bitmap) and whether it will be imported into a movie clip. The result is that you'll have to click through the layers if you need to check both settings.

Content in Illustrator can also be quickly copied and pasted into Flash, preserving both simple and complex visual attributes including masks, text layers and blending modes, as well as layering.

Tool changes

Adobe has also been working on Flash's tools. The Pen tool has been changed to behave like the one in Illustrator. Clicking on empty parts of a path adds points, and clicking on points deletes them. Modifier keys have also made the transition to give unprecedented control and accuracy when drawing - you can now reposition anchor points as they're drawn, and command-clicking finishes drawing open paths. Those who don't have Illustrator should welcome Adobe's decision to implement the same Pen tool in Flash; it's more flexible and forgiving of mistakes.

Two other nifty drawing tools have been added: Rectangle and Oval tools create a new class of drawing object - the primitive. Primitives can be deformed to create more interesting shapes that don't have to be redrawn from scratch if you want to adjust their special properties, although they can be broken down into regular drawing objects.

For rectangles, corners can be individually or uniformly

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curved, while ovals become sectors with a given start and end angle. The inner radius value enables you to knock out the centre of the oval.

Flash Lite 2 and Device Central

Adobe has expanded Flash beyond its traditional use on the web, and Flash Lite 1 made some progress in bringing it to the mobile space, but - for handsets that support it, at least - Flash Lite 2 is a massive leap in capabilities.

It adds ActionScript 2 support, so you can use robust methods such as classes in your mobile projects. You can also dynamically download XML content and leverage the handset's video playback capabilities, although video formats must be natively supported by the handset.

The new Device Central application provides an initial testing ground for Flash Lite 1 and 2 content, and will tell you which handsets support ActionScript 2.

Editing code

ActionScript 3 debuted in Flex 2 around a year ago, but this is the first release of Flash to facilitate it. Flash Player 9 runs ActionScript 3 in a new virtual machine, dubbed AVM2. Adobe has introduced it because AVM1 is being pushed to its limits, although it remains in the player for legacy content. It claims ActionScript 3 code will run up to 10 times faster than legacy code, and initial testing seems to bear this out.

Developers will notice there are greater similarities between the code editors in Dreamweaver and Flash. You can collapse sections of code by dragging through a range of rows and clicking a triangle to the left of the range. This is great for inspecting long sections of code by hiding the parts you don't need to see. Additional tools are provided at the top of the document window and Actions panel to add and remove comments - either as a block or to each line in a selection.

These two improvements alone make it easier to browse through large portions of code and document it.

Compiler errors are no longer given in a simple plain text report. Instead, a table lists the source of each error, a description and the line of code. This applies to both legacy and ActionScript 3 code. Developers targeting older versions of Flash Player also benefit from being able to jump directly to erroneous code with a double-click, and you can copy the error description for research.

While the debugger hasn't changed for legacy code, it works slightly differently for ActionScript 3 code. A debug version of Flash Player now runs outside of the authoring application (above) and data is passed back and forth.

We deliberately tried to crash the debugger with an infinite loop, but while his would have hung the program in the past, the debugger remained responsive with ActionScript 3.

Data types are handled more robustly in ActionScript 3. While the language remains dynamically typed, developers can make use of strict mode compilation and runtime type checking.

Strict mode forces warnings to be reported as errors and stops compilation when they occur. Thankfully, it's the default for ActionScript 3, but can be turned off so type declarations remain notational or can be left out altogether, so it won't hold back small-scale projects. Strict mode doesn't force you to declare data types for all your variables, so there's still flexibility if you really need it and have a discerning eye. There's also runtime type checking in this version of ActionScript, so you have some extra safety where mistakes can slip by the compiler.

Other language features

Among other changes to ActionScript 3 are sealed classes and new primitive data types, to improve memory usage and better performance. There are also powerful tools for manipulating text through the new RegExp (Regular Expressions) class, and XML interaction is now E4X-based implementation. You don't have to work at the object level anymore; instead, notation similar in principles to object-oriented programming allows read and write access to XML properties and attributes.

Components

Components have also been re-implemented in ActionScript 3. Project-wide skinning is much friendlier to manage: you can simply click on an instance on the stage and all of the component's states are displayed. Further clicks on states and elements that make them up allow you to edit their skins directly.

Copying motions from object to object

The Copy Motion feature does what it says, but that's not all. You can also copy and paste Flash's native filters and blend modes between movie clips. It's akin to similar features in Final Cut Pro.

This isn't just a workflow improvement, though: there's also an option to copy motion as ActionScript code that uses various built-in classes and XML descriptions of your animation, giving developers a good starting point for scripting reusable and sharable animations.

In summary

The version of Flash included in CS3 is an all-round improvement. Designers benefit from compatibility with other Adobe applications, developers gain a better coding and debugging environment plus a new and improved version of ActionScript, and both benefit from Device Central for testing mobile content.

Read reviews of the other applications in Creative Suite 3

• Photoshop CS 3: Smart Filters for non-destructive editing + Movie features

• Illustrator CS 3: Intuitive Eraser + Great colour control

• InDesign CS 3: Richer styles and effects + Easier to place multiple items

• Flash CS 3: Improved Photoshop integration + Better illustration tools

• Dreamweaver & Fireworks CS 3: Web 2.0 tools + Intelligent scaling

• Device Central: Easily check mobile devices' capabilities and test content