What’s new in Flash 5?

On tuesday march 28th (2000), at the end of the second day of the FF2K conference Macromedia invited the attendees to a party with a 'technology preview' for Flash X. Of course everyone wanted to get the scoop on what's up next with Flash, and the que of people wanting to enter the party was almost 2 blocks long...

Please remember that this was a 'technology preview of Flash X', and that the things listed here might end up not even being in the final version. Here's what we picked up:

- Beziers and full spline tools.
Finally you get precise control within Flash, while the old editing method is still there.
- Total rework of the User Interface (UI):
The main change is in how the UI is buildt up. In Flash 4 (F4) you usually have to open a lot of 'extra' windows to get something done. Let's say you wanted to tint a symbol. In F4 you'd have to doubleclick the symbol, and then open the 'Color Effect'-tab, set the properties, and then close the window. In Flash 5 (F5) you'd just change the tint in a seperate floater. This is the same for all operations that used popup windows, they now reside in separate, arrangable panes.
Other UI improvements:
- Sliders for values, just as in Fireworks, but also numeric input fields.
- Separate font-pane, where you can see the whole font name...
- Ordinary color-panes, in addition to the traditional swatches.
- Widgets:
A whole new concept. Use Flash to author Flash. For those of you who have been using Director, this is like you create custom 'behaviors' that can do a spesific task. The example shown was a standard dropdown-box for a form. Editing these was a tedious task before, as all had to be done manually. Now, you just double-click the object and open a new window consisting of a HTML-file and a SWF-file. The SWF contains settings for the dropdown-box + fields to add the information to the drop-down! Simply click the plus-icon to add more items in the dropdown or use the minus-icon to subtract. The best is still to come: The SWF and HTML are all standard files, and you can create you own and exchange them with other users! This is done just as in DreamWeaver. Simply drop the files in a certain folder, and there they are... Expect to see many of these around as soon as F5 is released.
- ObjectBrowser:
Inspect all the objects in your scene, complete with nested movieclips, multiple selections, filters (i.e. only see text objects). Select multiple text objects, and change the font of all in just a few clicks!
- Search and replace:
Finally you can search and replace properly within Flash.
- Macros:
record a combination of commands and apply to many objects.
- Better selection-masking:
With this you can see the final result when filling a object with a new color.
- Select and change multiple objects:
Select text, graphic-symbols and more and change colour at multiple objects simultaneously.
- Deployment SDK:
A set of tools for detection and implementation of the Flash and the plugin for both client-side (browser) and server-side.

 

 

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