Flash 4

Incorporating MP3 sounds into your animation is equally straightforward. You simply create a new layer and keyframe and then drag the file on to the stage. The sound is represented in the timeline by its waveform, which makes it possible to synchronise animations. Double-click on a frame and you can even set up simple effects such as fades and loops.

All told, Flash 4 now offers all the power that you need to set up everything from realistic talking characters through to fully animated jukeboxes.

Flash forms

The second major area of new power in Flash 4 is its form-handling capabilities. In the past it's always been possible to set up features such as drop-down lists and option buttons, and a selection of such pre-prepared form controls are provided as libraries. However, there have always been two huge holes in functionality: users haven't been able to enter information and there has been no way to collect feedback. As such, even in the most exciting interactive Flash sites, the only option has been to link to an ordinary HTML form.

Now, both problems have been solved. By using the Text Field option of the Text tool, you can quickly add editable text areas to the stage. Right-click on these and you call up the Properties dialog. This offers various controls for managing word wrap, multiline boxes and text length. You can also set the field to be a password, in which case characters will only appear as asterisks. At the bottom of the dialog are controls over the text outlines. The Flash player has serif, sans serif and typewriter fonts built in, but other fonts can be embedded in the movie. To keep file size to a minimum you can specify exactly which characters should be included.

At the top of the dialog is the variable name for the text field and it's via this that Flash 4 can now be used to retrieve information. The Get URL action now supports sending variables by POST or by GET so that you can pick up data, such as user names and addresses, through your existing ASP, ColdFusion or CGI server-side systems. By using the Load Variables parameter of the Load Movie command you can also pick up new information, for example, to return an order number once credit card details have been received. The uses for e-commerce sites are obvious.

In fact, such sending and retrieving of variables is only the beginning. Two new action commands, If and Loop, have been added which can be used to evaluate variables and so proceed on an intelligent, conditional basis. Before processing an order, for example, you can check that credit card values are numerical and that passwords match. By using the Set Variable, Get Property and Set Property commands, you can also control the running of the movie as it plays depending on user input. By using the Call command you can even re-use sections of code and bring repetitive tasks under tight control - and cut file size at the same time.

Macromedia provides an example of just what can be done using actions with a sample game. This takes advantage of another new capability - the Drag Movie Clip command - to create an interactive puzzle where you have to re-order the numbers in a grid. By looking at the actions involved, it's clear that Flash is beginning to tread on the toes of the full Director/Lingo programming combination. When allied with Generator's variable-driven graphic creation, the potential should be enormous. This is why it's particularly disappointing that Flash 4 doesn't currently support the Generator extensions. Clearly this will come, but for the moment it means that Flash's most advanced current users will have to stick with version 3.