Bonus Chapter1: Working with Incoming and Outgoing Data

Well, it's official: both new versions of Flash have some truly cool features. With both releases, Macromedia has upheld its longstanding tradition of producing meaningful software updates. By introducing a horde of new and exciting features, Macromedia has once again managed to push the boundaries of cutting-edge interactive design tools. This chapter details the latest and greatest additions.

Robust Usability and Productivity Improvements

Great software is easy to use. As such, Macromedia has included the following additions in both Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 to increase its usability and streamline your workflow:

Halo interface       The improved interface (called Halo) is featured in both Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004. While not really a radical change, the Halo interface is primarily visual in nature ”designed to give Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 a little extra visual appeal .

Start Page       The Start Page is a handy utility that acts as a central location for the logical first tasks that a user would likely choose when they open up Flash to start a work session. For more information on the Start Page, check out Chapter 3.

Improved user interface       Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 feature the new and improved, tabbed, multiple-document interface. Now, you can have multiple Flash movies open at any given time, and seamlessly move between them for maximum productivity. To learn more about the improved interface, check out Chapter 3.

Timeline Effects       Sometimes creating a simple animation can be tedious ( especially if you have to repeat the process over and over again). Timeline Effects simplify the animation process. With them, you can create complex animations without ever having to work with traditional flash animation techniques such as keyframes or tweening. If you want to learn more about Timeline Effects, turn to Chapter 10.

Templates       Templates were introduced back in Flash MX, but Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 have taken them to the next level. Now you can select from a plethora of new templates that allow you to bypass many of the common tasks required to create a great-looking Flash movie. For more information on the new templates available, check out Chapter 3.

Spell Checker       Now you no longer have to be a slave to bad spelling! The new Spell Checker allows you to check the spelling of all aspects of your Flash movie. You can read more about the Spell Checker in Chapter 5.

Improved Flash Player performance       Macromedia has been working hard on improving the Flash Player's overall performance. Runtime performance of the Flash Player has been improved by two to five times for video, scripting, and general display rendering.

Find and Replace       The new Find and Replace tool is extremely powerful, allowing you to search your entire Flash movie for text, specific fonts, colors, sounds, symbols, video, or bitmaps. If you want to learn more about the Find and Replace tool, check out Chapter 9.

Improved external file import support       Despite the fact that Flash's painting and drawing tools are fairly robust, there are definitely times when you'll want to import external files for inclusion in your grand Flash creation. With these two new versions of Flash, Macromedia has included high-fidelity import of Adobe PDF and Adobe Illustrator 10 files. For more information on the new external file import support, flip to Chapter 6.

Behaviors       Taking a hint from Director and Dreamweaver, behaviors simplify the creation of ActionScript so that even beginners can easily add advanced interactivity to their Flash movies, all without writing a line of ActionScript by hand. Behaviors are covered in detail in Chapter 14.

Integrated help feature       Macromedia knows that learning Flash can be a complex process. As a result, it has included a new, fully integrated help system that features an in-context reference, a language guide, and extensive tutorials. For more information on how to get help in Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004, refer to Chapter 3.

Publishing Profiles       Now, with the help of Publishing Profiles, you can save your publish settings for a given project, and then reuse them whenever you need to publish a similar project but don't want to go through the trouble of manually setting the necessary properties. To learn more about Publishing Profiles, read Chapter 30.

History Panel       The History Panel allows you to record your interaction with the program. The recorded steps can then be converted into Commands for future use. The History Panel is covered in depth in Chapter 9.

Components       For developers who create highly interactive or content-driven movies, Components are a welcome addition. They enable you to add standard interface controls through a simple drag-and-drop procedure. Both Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 have a series of cool new UI- and scripting- related Components that make your life easier. To learn more about Components, turn to Chapter 16.

International language character support       No longer are you limited to creating Flash movies with language characters native to the operating system upon which you are working. Now, full Unicode support throughout the product allows international language character sets to be used within any version of the application running on any operating system. In addition, the Strings Panel allows strings to be isolated for efficient localization into multiple languages.

 Pro only      Screens The Screens authoring mode allows users to create Flash movies in a new and tremendously exciting way. Now, you can quickly and easily create either interactive presentations (Slides) or form-based applications (Forms). The Screen Outline Pane shows the overall structure of your screen-based project in a graphical/hierarchical manner, and allows you to manipulate the screens in your Slide- or Form-based project with maximum efficiency. In addition, a series of Screens specific behaviors allows you to create effective navigation and interesting transitions. To learn more about creating interactive presentations with Slides, turn to Chapter 13.

 

New Tools for Enhancing Typographic Freedom and Creativity

Flash MX 2004 and MX Pro 2004 include a series of new tools for enhancing your typographic freedom and creativity during the Flash creation process:

Aliased text       Ideal for use on mobile devices, aliased text produces crisp and legible text optimized for small size representation. Text is first rastered to a non-anti-aliased state, and then converted to a vector representation, thus ensuring a highly legible font at small display sizes. Aliased text is covered in detail in Chapter 5.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) support       With the help of the new ActionScript setStyleSheet method, you can format the text in your Flash movie using an external style sheet or internal style information.

 

Rich Video Integration

What is Flash without rich media? In Flash MX, Macromedia introduced a host of new tools for video integration. With Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 . the application has taken a whopping step forward in its ability to work with imported digital video.

Video Import Wizard       When importing video clips, this new multi-step wizard provides additional control over frame ranges to be imported, reusable encoding settings and new capabilities for cropping color correction. For more information about the Video Import Wizard, check out Chapter 31.

External Flash Video (FLV) support       You can now play FLV files back from disk directly from an FLV (without the need to pack video into a SWF). This eliminates file duration limitations, and optimizes delivery so long videos can be played back with limited RAM and without having to download the entire file from the web server. External FLV support is covered in Chapter 31.

 Pro only       Video application integration The new QuickTime FLV Export plug-in enables third-party products that support QuickTime to export video files directly to FLV format. Supported products include Avid, Final Cut Pro, Cleaner, After Effects, Combustion, and the QuickTime Movie Player. If you want to learn more about video application integration, see Chapter 31.

 Pro only       Enhanced video quality and screen recording Through the use of the Quicktime FLV Exporter, a new encoder is now available that offers greater encoding control and superior image quality for video with larger frame sizes and higher frame rates. For more information about enhanced video recording and screen recording, check out Chapter 31.

 Pro only       Streaming media components Three new components allow FLV and MP3 files to quickly be connected to an interactive controller within your movie. In addition, an event model allows video to trigger other events in your project. Streaming media components are discussed in Hands On 8.

 

Project Management and Version Control

 Pro only     Flash Project file The Flash Project file ( .flp ) is a new file type that allows you to group related files ( .fla , .as , .jsfl , and other media files such as digital video and audio) into a project that can share common properties. The Flash Project files are then manipulated using the Project Panel. The new Flash Project file format is discussed in Chapter 9.

The Project Panel       The Project Panel is a centralized location from which you can manage the properties of a Flash project. With it, you can upload your Flash project to a web server (using the Remote Site model and an FTP client much like that in Dreamweaver) and manage and manipulate the individual files that make up your Flash project. In addition, the Project Panel acts as a powerful version control system, ensuring that the correct file versions are used during editing, and to prevent accidental overwriting. For more information about the Project Panel, refer to Chapter 9.

 

Application Development and ActionScript Advancements

Flash's scripting language, ActionScript, is probably one of the most powerful tools at your fingertips during the creative process. You'll see incredible enhancements to ActionScript in Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004. In addition, Flash MX Professional 2004 features a series of incredibly robust and powerful tools for application development.

ActionScript 2.0       Arguably one of the most noteworthy ActionScript enhancements in Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 is the introduction of ActionScript 2.0, the next generation of ActionScript. ActionScript 2.0 features greatly improved support for object-oriented programming and a more robust programming model. For those Flashers who aren't inclined to the intricacies and complexities of the kind of high-level object-oriented programming that characterizes ActionScript 2.0, the original ECMA-26 ActionScript featured in Flash MX (now known as ActionScript 1.0) is available for use in Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004.

 Pro only       Data integration Easily one of the most progressive and exciting features for Flash developers, Flash MX Professional 2004 now boasts a full-featured set of tools that allows you to connect and work with external data sources as never before. Through the use of data binding, you can connect to web services or XML data sources, and then manipulate and display the data through the use of a series of new data-specific components or ActionScript.

 

Extensibility

Macromedia has always been committed to extensibility. It shows in all of their products, and Flash is hardly any different. Whether you want to create new Components or customize the program's working environment, the tools have always been available to make Flash more than the program it was when it was released.

JavaScript Application Programming Interface (JSAPI)       The JSAPI is the Holy Grail of extensibility. With it, you can develop new Components, Timeline Effects, behaviors, and even program modules that fit right into Flash's program architecture.