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Macromedia Flash is known as the authoring tool that brought vector graphics and interactive animation to the Web. But the Internet is no longer a one-way highway that merely disseminates information—no matter how entertainingly it is presented. The Web is increasingly a place for e-business and two-way data exchange. Macromedia Flash MX responds to this reality with a host of new tools focused on applications development.
ActionScript, the scripting language that powers Flash interactivity, is now easier to write and analyze. Flash MX has a fully functional script editor with features similar to those found in its sibling program Dreamweaver. The editor helps both experienced and beginning programmers write valid ActionScript by providing code-hinting, auto-formatting, and search-and-replace functions. An integrated reference manual lets you check syntax quickly. In addition, Flash MX contains a debugger, complete with both breakpoints and code stepping.
Flash MX offers several ways to jump-start the development process. A collection of templates simplifies the production of standard Web documents such as ads, slide shows, and tutorials. In addition, the templates are smart; for example, a quiz template includes all the programming necessary to score student responses.
Flash MX also ships with a number of preprogrammed UI components such as scroll bars, check boxes, and list boxes. The appropriate behaviors are built into these objects, so adding functional interface elements to an application is a simple drag-and-drop operation. And since all of the UI elements are built using standard Flash shapes, you can change their appearance using in-place symbol editing.
Designers will find that Flash MX makes it easier to dazzle clients with video. The integrated video support, provided by the Sorenson Spark codec, can import standard video formats, such as AVI, MPEG, or QuickTime, and convert them to a streaming format that is displayed natively by the Flash MX player. The import filter can also resize the video or sync the frame rate to the Flash movie when converting a file.
There are dozens of other program tweaks that make the animation process more efficient. The import filter for Fireworks PNG files now intelligently preserves text and vector shapes. Snapping controls are now accurate on the pixel level. And headline animations are easier to update, because Flash now maintains individual characters as editable text rather than as nontext vector shapes.
Flash MX also provides a powerful tool to modify vector shapes. Flash's Free Transform tool is similar to the Free Transform tools found in standard graphics programs like FreeHand and Illustrator. The program lets you rotate, size, skew, and distort objects. A special bounding box—called an envelope—lets you manipulate an object's shape using control points and tangent handles.
Unfortunately, distortions and envelopes exhibit intrinsic limitations. They cannot, for example, be applied to true text, imported bitmaps, or symbols. And these transformations are supported only in the authoring program (not the Flash Player), which means that you cannot use two distorted shapes as the starting and ending keyframes in an animation.
The Flash interface has been fine-tuned with organizational tools and more configuration options. Now you can dock and collapse palettes, and you have the ability to define and switch between different palette configurations to optimize the workspace for design or coding. Designers can clean up the clutter in the timeline by grouping related elements into folders right on the timeline. And the new Properties Inspector offers an easy way to change an object's basic attributes.
The Library function has also been improved. Now symbols can be shared freely between documents, because Flash automatically tracks the original location of each symbol and auto-updates all instances in all documents if the original is modified.
Several important benefits promised by Flash MX won't be realized until Macromedia releases other products in the MX line. Macromedia has already announced Flash Server Solutions, which will consist of a gateway and a communications server. The latter will allow developers to add real-time messaging as well as two-way audio and video to Flash applications. For example, a workgroup could collaborate on a diagram using a shared whiteboard.
The gateway promises to deliver more efficient data transfer between the Flash Player and Web application servers. Though Macromedia is committed to supporting industry-standard server technologies such as Microsoft .NET and J2EE, expect to see a higher level of integration with the soon-to-be-released Macromedia ColdFusion MX server.
Flash is an essential Web development tool that offers powerful new programming functions and increased productivity enhancements.
Copyright © 2002 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.
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