Adobe Flash CS4 provides newly features which are very easy to be used.
Designing using Flash had become easier and more efficient. Designer can easily applies tweening technique to a symbol and smoothly modify the motion paths. The success project can be delivered to a very wide audience. Adobe Flash CS4 can help to deliver this interactive multimedia to web browsers, mobile devices and computes. The newly 3D Translation and 3D Rotation, Bones, and Deco had bring a new animating, interesting and creative experience to the designers. The workspace of the Adobe Flash CS4 is now more elegant and can be set into different style which suitable for everyone.
With Adobe Flash CS4, the complicated animation can now be created easier and quicker. In Adobe Flash CS4, creating animation had become easier compare to the previous version which needs to involve with the keystrokes, symbol creation and manual placement of key frames and adjusting the tweens on the timeline. It will be more difficult and time consuming when creating and editing the animations. With Adobe Flash CS4, designers can straightly apply the motion tweens technique directly to the object itself compare to the previous version which need to apply through the key frames. Now, creating an animation is incredibly easy which only within two steps.
The motion path which is automatically generated can be easily edited using the Bezier handles. Besides that, the timing of the animation can be easily adjusted in the timeline and without breaking the tweening of the object. With this features being introduced in Flash Adobe CS4, new users and advanced developers or designers can gain more control on the object for developing an animation. (Adobe, 2008) Motion Presets Panel Adobe Flash CS4 provides a library which is full of prebuilt animations for the designers or developers to start their project. The motion presets panel is very easy to understand and use. Besides that, it will be a time saver for project which had little time.
Users can easily define a motion preset through saving the object which had tween applied on it. While users can apply the presets by just simply click on the preset on the motion presets panel. Motion Editor Panel Another new feature of the Adobe Flash CS4 is the motion editor panel. In Adobe Flash CS4, key frames had a new and important role with the introduction of the object based animation. With the new motion editor panel, users can now independently control over the key frames parameters which include size, scale, positions, etc. The motion editor panel allows users to control over the key frames of the animation graphically using curves.
The fine control over tweens had been brought back with the motion editor panel which will let the users to fine tune the animation parameters for their each attributes. (Adobe, 2008) Bones tool In Adobe Flash CS4, there is a new feature which is known as bones tool. With the bones tool, users can now create inverse kinematics animation easily. The bone tools are very useful for the movement of character in an animation. The bones tool is a tool which can link a series of objects together and create an effect like chains. The bones tool is like bones in human bodies which will moves in a definitive way.
The bones will be able to let users to link several objects together. After that, users can easily and quickly animate the object via controlling the movement of each segment of the object which had link with the “bones”. The “bones” can be easily created by just simply click and drag between the symbols. For an example, the bones tool can be use in the part of the mechanical machine which is use to pick up things.
(Adobe, 2008) Deco Tool In the designing part, deco tool is the new feature which was being added in Adobe Flash CS4. The deco tool provides a new and more creative way to design symbols for users. It is great whether on creating or other effects. The deco tool lets the user to unleash their creativity through the different types of drawing effects which are available. The vine fill effect fills the background with a pattern of branching plant formation.
The grid fill effect fills the background with patterns of symbol which are selected by the users. While the symmetry brush will allows the user to create kaleidoscope-like effects. (Adobe, 2008) Sample Sound Library Another fantastic feature of the Adobe Flash CS4 is the sample sound library. Adobe Flash CS4 has a library which is full of various kinds of sound effects. Users can now easily apply sound effects to their project. In order to add sound effects to the project, users can simply drag and drop the sound to the project from the library to the frame on the timeline.
Besides that, users can also download sounds from the internet and then import it to the sound library in order to apply it to the project. (Adobe, 2008) Macromedia Flash 8 Macromedia Flash 8 is the software which allows designers to design animations, videos, games and advertisements. In Macromedia Flash 8, it had several improvements over the work flow and the design tools which are the run time blend mode, filters and effects, alpha channel video and file size shrinking and playback time. The major change of Macromedia Flash 8 compare to the previous version is the Flash’s video capabilities.
The enhanced video capabilities provide a wider range of codec and output options which unavailable in the previous version. Macromedia Flash 8 provides more advanced controls for the users and made complex actions and effects just within one click. The action script for Macromedia Flash 8 now has script assists which will help the beginner users to learn and use action script easier. (Jacobi, 2005) New Blend Mode In Macromedia Flash 8, the new blend mode is a totally new feature compare to the previous version.
The blend mode is a feature which can applies graphical effects to the movie clips or buttons which are created by the users. The new blend mode includes the normal, darken, lighten, hard, light, invert, alpha, etc effects. (Cipollo, 2011) http://www.webdesign.
org/get.php?type=imgart&id=6822&name=blend_modes_adj.png&no-download New Filter Effects Besides the new blend mode, users can now also add glow, blur, shadow and adjustable color effects to the movie clips or buttons. This feature will be an ideal for creating the Fireworks style of effects quickly and easily. Users can easily apply these effects by just choosing it from the filter tab which is located on the Property Inspector.
The size of the Flash document file will not increase because the filter effects were applied on the runtime. (Cipollo, 2011) New Drawing Mode Macromedia Flash 8 is now features with the new drawing which is called the object drawing mode. In this mode, users can now draw an object on another object and the shapes of both of the objects will still remain. So, users can now move the top object and no need to worry the shape of the object below will be destroyed.
Users can easily change between the new object drawing mode and old merge mode through the toggle button which is located in the toolbar of Macromedia Flash 8. (Cipollo, 2011) Script Assists Now, Macromedia Flash 8 comes with a new feature which is known as the script assists. It will become easier to apply action script to the movie clip with the new scrip assists feature. The script assists feature will prompts suggestions of syntax for the users.
Besides that, it will also explain the parameter choices of the code for the users. So, users which are not very familiar with action script can easily learn it through this feature and use the action script. (Cipollo, 2011) Custom Ease In/Ease Out The custom ease in or ease out is also one of the new feature which is available in the Macromedia Flash 8. Users can now easily control the speed, scale, color and filters of the animation with this custom ease in/ease out feature. Users will control the animation through a graph like tool that uses a Bezier curve. Users can edit the attributes of the animation via editing the curve in the dialog box.
With this new feature being introduced, designer can now have a better control and runtime results of the animation. (Cipollo, 2011) http://www.webdesign.org/get.
php?type=imgart&id=6822&name=custom_ease.jpg&no-download Bitmap Caching Flash continuously redraws the vector object when movie plays because it is a vector based program. Bitmap caching will help users to improve the animation performance to become faster through reducing the calculations which occur during the movie. Users should cache their vector movies into bitmap before continue on their vector image.
Users will know which vector objects can be cache as bitmaps in the Flash movie through the use action script or property inspector. (Reiven, 2006) Action Script Action Script is a type of coding language which was developed by Adobe. It is use with flash to create animations, videos and games. There are few versions of action script which are 1.0, 2.
0 and the latest 3.0. Action Script 2.0 Action script 2.0 adds some new runtime functionality which improves the object oriented development in flash.
It formalizes the object oriented programming syntax and methodology. In action script 1.0, it is lack of traditional vocabulary for creating classes and objects. While action script 2.
0 has the feature of supporting syntactic for traditional object oriented. It will provide class keywords for the user when creating classes and extends for inheritance. Action Script 3.0 In action script 3.
0, there is a new action script virtual machine which is known as the AVM2 that uses new instruction set of byte code and the performance also had been improve. Besides that, the 3.0 version also had become a more modern compiler code base which is now closer to the ECMAScript standards. The application programming interface (API) of action script had also been expanded and improved compare to the previous versions.
In this version of action script, it is designed to work with a more complex application which has large data sets and object oriented code bases. With AVM2, the code can be executed ten times faster than the previous versions of action script code. Action script 3.0 also is compatible with the older version. For example, action script 3.0 codes can load swf files which are written in 1.
0 or 2.0. In this new version, there will be no more stage coding available. It means that users cannot apply scripts directly to the movie clip using on() and onClipEven(). Now, the stage instanced will be automatically declared. With Flash CS3 or greater versions, it will help users to simplify the application entry point.
It will help instantiating the class for the users. Besides that, there will be no more onEventHandlers and is now replace by EventDispatcher. Users can now access the data from the URLs immediately. The object oriented programming will improves the development of a project through breaking down into objects.
Object oriented programming actually is not a must in action script 3.0, but it helps the cases with large projects which involved multiple programmers. (Adobe, nd)
