Flash 4 review

Macromedia Flash is the de facto standard for high-quality animation and interactivity on the Web. The format's vector nature provides fast, scalable playback over ordinary modem connections, which is why high-profile companies like Disney, Audi and Pepsi have chosen it for their sites. Flash's end results are unmatched, but the process of achieving those results has always been complex and has limited the format's take-up to bleeding-edge Web designers. With Flash 4, Macromedia is determined both to set a new standard in high-end power, but also to rework the entire production process to broaden the program's appeal.

The first area that has been overhauled is the toolbox. In the past, rectangles and ovals were only available as options under the Pencil tool, but now they have their own dedicated tools. Formatting has also been updated so that you can specify both a line style and a fill when you add your rectangle, rather than having to first create an outline and then fill it with the Paintbucket. You can also set rectangles to have rounded corners by specifying a radius. Under normal circumstances this could hardly be called revolutionary - a polygon option is still lacking - but if you've grappled with previous versions of Flash, you'll no doubt appreciate the difference.

Once you've added your objects, you'll also appreciate the greater control offered by Flash 4's new Inspector palette. This is a tabbed floating palette giving access to four sets of controls, each of which can be dragged off separately. The new Object Inspector replaces the previous Inspector window to give feedback on exact position and size, and also allows these to be specified. The Transform Inspector enables precise scaling, rotation and skewing to be applied to the current object or to a duplicate - ideal for the creation of symmetrical patterns. The Scene Inspector is used to add, delete, rename and duplicate the separate sections of an animation, and replaces the former confusing system of named tabs running down the right of the screen. Meanwhile, the Frame Inspector gives feedback on the current frame's label, sound file and action.

For handling symbols - the major elements in each Flash movie - the Library palette has been completely redesigned. You can now organise symbols into folders that can be customised, so that you can keep sounds, bitmaps, buttons and movie clips separately - a godsend for complex jobs. There's also a new wide view of the Library, giving details on when the symbol was created and how often it's used in the movie. Another major advance is the ability to edit symbols in place, with the rest of the movie temporarily greyed-out. If you've ever tried to create rollover buttons that affected other on-screen elements, you'll know just how complex this was when you had to work in a separate Symbol Editing window.

With such a major overhaul, it's no surprise to find that the Timeline has also been tackled. To begin with the window is now floatable so that you don't have to have it permanently docked at the top of the screen. Much more useful is the new handling of layers. Previously all options such as locking, hiding and outlining had to be handled through a single Layer icon and its pop-up menu. Now there are three separate icons indicating the View, Lock and Outline status for each layer. Even better, by clicking on the icon header at the top of the column you can instantly toggle the status of all layers. Clicking on the Outline icon, for example, represents each layer's objects as coloured wireframes.