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Web Design & Productivity
Review: Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium
5/29/2007
For example, you can now save compression settings in both the standalone Flash Video Encoder and the import wizard in Flash itself. Both methods also now offer deinterlacing as an option, a feature that was unfortunately overlooked in Flash 8. And, as with Flash's other Components, the video Components have also been enhanced, featuring the same easy customization. Then there's the fast and easy solution: the ability to quickly change the background color of the included controller skins when importing a video clip.
(Click for larger image.)
And in the "big one" category, QuickTime export out of Flash has been dramatically improved. Flash CS3 now takes absolutely animated elements in your movie into account, rather than relying simply on what's going on in the main Timeline. If you have animation generated by ActionScript, you're set. Nested clips, check. Filters or blend modes applied, bingo. Basically, everything that the Flash Player would play is translated to QuickTime, which addresses an ancient Flash annoyance.
And just to wrap up our all-star Flash CS3 new features tour, let's take a look at a few of the new drawing and design improvements. First, we have the improved Pen tool, which now looks and acts like the one found in Illustrator, right down to the same keyboard modifiers. Flash CS3 also adds the oval and rectangle primitives, which allow you to create things like rounded rectangles and arcs with ease.
(Click for larger image.)
Lastly, the live Scale-9 preview gets a mention. For those not familiar, Flash 8 introduced 9-slice scaling, allowing you to draw 3x3 grids inside a Movie Clip. Those grids dictated which parts of the clip would scale, which parts would scale in one direction, and which parts would stay unscaled, which was especially useful for being able to use a single Movie Clip of (for example) a rounded button while retaining the ability to gracefully resize individual instances of that button. However, Flash 8 did not offer live previews of scaled instances, so it required testing the movie to visually confirm changes on the Stage. In Flash CS3, Scale-9 objects now display correctly on the Stage during development, which is a huge time (and sanity) saver for those who make extensive use of Scale-9 objects.
Whew! That's a pretty good helping of new stuff, and taken all together, Flash CS3 is a solid version. It's obvious that Adobe wanted to make sure Flash put its best foot forward as the new adopted child of the family, and Flash CS3 doesn't disappoint.
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