Adobe Flash CS3 Professional [OLD VERSION]

Great application. Been using it for years after migrating from Macromedia (now Adobe) Director. Flash is the de facto online interactive design software out there right now. You can create sophisticated animations synced to sound as well as full blown interactive media and training projects. Excellent compression of assets which makes the output (SWF) files extremely small as compared to say Director Shockwave files. However, you cannot access the local client file system (i.e. you cannot save information on the client's machine) except through cookies for security reasons. This is one thing I miss about Director Lingo - you had full access to everything.

Currently, lot's of work available for Flash developers too. You can still program in ActionScript 2, but Adobe made a big leap forward with ActionScript 3. AS 3 moves towards true Object Oriented Programming (OOP). I do have some misgivings about this though. I am a programmer with OOP training so this isn't as difficult a leap for me, but a lot of Flash developers tend to be Web and/or Graphic Design people not programmers.

OOP is a whole different paradigm that requires some abstract understanding of how objects work. It introduces a lot of new concepts to the uninitiated and it changes the way you used to do things in Flash. My initial feeling is that if they deprecate AS 2 with the next version and go fully to AS 3 there will be a drop in sales as I believe the learning curve may become too steep for the average designer to cope with. It will make Flash development a specialist job requiring a savvy programmer...just a surmise, but we'll see.

The latest Flash upgrade enhances this amazing world standard for vector animation. Like many Adobe products the amount of power under the hood is both astonishing and overwhelming. Unfortunately this software, like other Adobe products such as Photoshop, is plagued by a terrible user interface. Once again get ready to enroll yourself in classes and buy a pile of books just to decipher a user interface that is completely non-intuitive. If your idea was to sit down and get something done be prepared to suffer. Simple operations like assigning actionscript can be extremely confusing, as you might not understand "where" the script is being applied. A totally obvious feature called "stroke" which outlines text easily is totally missing from Flash. You might think it would be a snap to put a black outline on some white text, but it's more like rocket science. You can either use a glow filter that doesn't really do the job or get ready to break apart each and every letter so you can apply the ink bottle. The world isn't fair, is it? This program is worth about a hundred bucks.

I can't find a reason why anyone would upgrade to Flash CS3 from CS2.

It's the same interface, apparently most of the same features, and not significant enough to upgrade. I'm actually let down that Adobe seems to care so little about this product, given the widespread use of Flash video on the web today.

One of my biggest pet peeves that I had hoped would be fixed in this version but wasn't, was the inability to trim videos by punching in times rather than using the slow and inaccurate scrubber. What a terrible, terrible way to trim video.

Flash CS3 has a wonderful interface including newly integrated tabs for windows like Scene, Color, Align, etc. It's more user-friendly than before and you can choose to do more things with your published flash than before as well. A very good tool for the web animator.

I am new to Flash and I think this version is very user-friendly. Keep in mind that I am not doing any heavy animations - just simple projects.