Product Reviews

Macromedia's Flash is probably the most popular Web authoring tool around. It's unique in providing the ability to create complex Web graphics with fast download times, smooth anti-aliased text, and scaling and streaming animation with interactivity and sound. Best of all, the plug-in is so small it can be downloaded in minutes.

Flash is appealingly easy to use, and while it has a lot in common with Macromedia Director, it's less complex, far cheaper, and creates smaller files. In version 3.0, now available in public beta, major enhancements have been made to the animation abilities, interactivity and delivery of Flash movies. Download times have, if anything, been made even shorter, and it can now also create standalone applications - something Flash users have been after since version 1.0.

Drawing

The Flash creator boasts a fully fledged drawing environment, which produces the vector graphics that are the secret of its small file sizes. However, users of more standard drawing tools, such as Illustrator or FreeHand, will find some of its behaviour strange. Portions of graphics can be cut away with a marquee or erased and painted on like a bitmap, and objects can be reshaped by simply pushing the sides or using control points. Flash can import both bitmap and draw-type PICT format files, as well as Illustrator files. Although Flash can't read native FreeHand files, users can copy and paste between the two, or export draw-type PICTs or native Flash files from FreeHand. Both TrueType and PostScript fonts can be used, and the character shapes are embedded in the final file and rendered, like all graphics, with glorious anti-aliased smoothing. This proves to be a good way of getting around the limited Web typeface options.

Graphics are animated using a timeline, with keyframes inserted when a change is required. Multiple graphics can be animated simultaneously using layers, each with a timeline. Flash can perform 'inbetweening' to automatically generate a gradual set of changes between start and end keyframes. In addition to blending the position, size and colour of a graphic, shapes can be blended to produce a morphing transformation of vector graphics. To control how a shape is morphed, Flash uses markers called 'shape hints', placed in the start and end images to specify how certain points should transform. A frame labelling facility has also been added to the timeline. This enables the user to attach labels to a frame as an action target that will move with the frame through any timeline editing.

Symbols

One of the methods Flash uses to keep files small is storing items as reusable symbols in a library. These can be used as many times as necessary throughout a movie without increasing the file size. Each instance of a symbol appears as a separate element, but all are linked to the master symbol, and changes made to the master are automatically transferred to each instance in the project. Many of the animation effects depend on symbols, as each instance of a symbol can have its own properties, including actions and colour. Symbols can contain layered animation and three types of behaviour: graphic, button or movie clip.

Graphic symbols can hold simple images or non-interactive animations, and are controlled via the main movie's timeline. Button symbols contain frames representing an interactive button in the three different states: up, mouse over, and down. Actions can be assigned to each state independently of the main movie. The new Movie Clip symbol works as a functional, interactive, self-contained movie that can play independently of the main movie's timeline. In fact, it will remain operational even if the main movie has stopped - ideal for producing animated navigation devices.

Interactivity is provided by associating actions with an event, like a user clicking on a button or the movie reaching a certain frame. In addition, multiple actions can now be specified for

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a single button event.

Alpha channels

A major new feature of version 3.0 is alpha channel support in graphic symbols, which can be used to define degrees of transparency, allowing Flash to tween different levels of transparency to produce smooth fades. However, as there's no on-stage preview, getting the desired result isn't easy. Flash files can also be created with transparent backgrounds, so if the Flash technology is incorporated into a set-top box, semi-transparent overlay graphics could theoretically be applied over live video.

PNG (pronounced 'ping') is set to be a popular Web bitmap graphics format, and Flash now provides a cross-platform method of importing bitmapped images with an alpha channel. PNG images can also be exported, and a number of options are provided which control the compression and quality of the image.

Interface

Some subtle interface changes have been made to the authoring environment. All major commands are now found in the main menu bar instead of being hidden away in pop-up menus (although these still feature heavily). An Inspector palette shows information for selected elements, displaying the name, type, size, and exact co-ordinates of any selected element and attached actions for buttons. Unfortunately, the timeline is still permanently attached to the top of the Stage, whereas clued-up designers prefer to tuck palettes and controllers away, or place them on a second monitor.

Movies can now be tested with full interactivity in Flash 3.0 using the new Test Movie mode. This brings up a new window in which the movie can be run as it would look in a Web browser. To check download performance, the new Bandwidth Profiler indicates areas of a movie where delays may occur by checking the contents of every frame and comparing it to a specified modem speed. The Bandwidth Profiler can also simulate streaming at different modem speeds.

Aftershock

Flash 3.0 comes with Aftershock, a separate Macromedia application which can turn the Flash movie into a Shockwave Flash SWF file. Aftershock performs compression and automatically generates the HTML which embeds the Flash movie into a Web page for playback with the Flash plug-in. It can also produce a version that includes the Java classes for playback in any Java-enabled browser on any platform. There's no need to download a plug-in, as the movie can be a self-contained Java-compatible applet, although performance isn't as good.

Even though Flash 3.0 is primarily a Web graphics and animation technology, there's no reason not to use it for disk-based presentations. A Flash player application is provided which will show any Flash movie in its own window, with no browser required. Movies can also be turned into standalone projector applications with their own player and no need for external files. The amount of code which must be added to create the projector engine is an impressively small 170K, so even a floppy disk will hold what in Flash terms is a huge movie, especially if bitmaps and large sounds are avoided. The projector display can automatically scale to fit the screen and hide the menu bar if required, and there are button actions to toggle the menu bar status and quit the projector. The question is whether the final version will be able to build projectors for both platforms, containing code for either Mac or Windows. It would be a shame if you had to buy a version of Flash for Windows just to perform conversions.

Both Director and Authorware can use Flash movies directly as asset Xtras, providing a degree of control over the Flash movie from within its environments. Movies can use a limited 'command+argument' scripting called FS Commands to send messages to be interpreted by whatever scriptable environment the movie is playing in, whether JavaScript in a Web page or Lingo in Director.

Raising the standard

Macromedia has just published the Flash file format for third-party development, and will submit the specification for recognition as an Internet standard. There is currently no standard for vector-based Web graphics, and as Flash is a tried, tested and popular format, its adoption seems likely.

Flash 3.0 has a lot to offer the graphic designer and multimedia artist, both on and off the Web. It's a truly versatile format which is set to become a standard for Web graphics. As a Flash file can contain bitmaps, typefaces and animation, and can be used on any platform, it makes an attractive alternative to hybrid HTML and bitmap media page design.