
Every year I’m lured by awesome features to upgrade Adobe Creative Suite. And as a true sucker for the latest and coolest, I usually bite. This year I decided to put these expectations to the test and put each product I’m familiar with through a gut check gadget – is it cool, will it inspire me to do better work? and will I work better?
The review series will focus on the stuff Adobe promotes as great new features. I’ll be doing a post each week, focusing on a different product, working my way, first through ones I’m most familiar with (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign, AfterEffects, Premiere) and then moving to those products that are new (Flash Catalyst) or abandoned (Dreamweaver, Fireworks).
This week it’s Adobe Flash CS5…
1. New Code Editor with Code Snippets
Anyone who’s ever worked in the Flash IDE (Integrated Development Environment) has hated the Flash code editor. And while technically, the new code editor isn’t a “new” feature, it should be considered new.
Finally, you get custom code hinting and…best of all curly brace completion. In addition, it looks like they fixed an annoying bug with code between Flash CS4 and Flash Builder – you can now copy and paste text from Flash Builder into Flash…wow. The editor has truly been brought into the 21st century.
2. SWF Compile File Size and History
This is really a time saver. Anyone who’s had experience developing SWF files in the Flash IDE for specific file size specifications, has always struggled to know exactly what the current file size was, not to mention what recent change caused the increase in size. You could use the size report function in the publish settings, but that was tedious to read. Now, on the properties panel, you get a SWF file size and history for each compile.
3. Flash CS5 and Flash Builder Integration
Anyone who’s worked on a large Flash project immediately understands the benefits of working in a dedicated development environment like Flash Builder for coding. But no one should ever suggest creating graphics by code – which is why Flash CS5 is still a key element for developing graphics for Flash applications.
To make it easier to work in the best of both worlds, you can now link your Flash CS5 project to Flash Builder, code in Flash Builder and create and publish from Flash. This is really nice for designers who code. Is it worth it to get Flash Builder if you’re coding is not that complex? Probably not. With CS4 my response would have been different but the Flash CS5 code editor truly is improved.
4. XML-Based Flash Resource Files
This is actually more impressive than it might first seem. I’ve not a had chance to really put it to the test, but the very fact that you can edit outside of the Flash IDE – things like color, text, etc – is really powerful. No longer can die-hard developers complain about Flash locked down. Just provide them with an uncompressed .xfl file and they can edit and recompile with the Flex SDK.
5. Inverse Kinematic Effects
There are times when it’s good to use Flash for what it was originally intended – a timeline based animation tool for “rich” visual animations on the web (ok, so what I’m saying is banner ad development). This feature is a great addition for those that use Flash for animation. You can add cool animation parameters, such as decay, to simulate real-life effects.
There are other new animation features such as a particle system, that also are quite interesting, and I can see situations where these might be fun in games. I will say, I’ve never been impressed with tools that I cannot customize – such as the “new” building draw tool – who cares? The buildings are ugly. Now if I could create my own buildings and draw with those….yeah, not impressed with the Building Deco feature.
I’m also not that impressed with the new video features. Yes, this is nice for quick fast cue point creation and video player development, but for professional work and production, it’s just not that feasible to hard code videos into a player with the components. The cue points can be added just as easily with code, or in Adobe Premiere, or Adobe Media Encoder – so I’m not really hyped by this new feature.
And of course – the biggest feature – exporting to Apple’s iPhone platform – turned out to be a bust. Adobe’s at fault for chasing this in the first place. Did they really think Jobs would give it up? Now I guess they’re rushing to push out a similar feature for Android, and that should be more promising.