Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Please note: This review is not intended for experienced Flash developers!
Let me qualify the following opinions by saying that I am a professional web designer who daily uses Adobe and Microsoft software, am of course comfortable with XHTML and CSS, and am what is often called a "power user" in computers in general. I did work through the tutorials to familiarize myself with the program. However, I don't have prior Flash experience.
As a designer, I was disappointed to find that scripting is typically required to achieve professional results, especially with text effects. (This can be overcome by purchasing clunky addons which average around $50.) Theoretically, attractive text effects can be achieved without scripting, but the time it costs to animate words character by character is prohibitive.
This was a huge problem for me as I am not a programmer. Important: Truly benefiting from your investment requires learning ActionScript on top of learning the Macromedia Flash program itself.
This is not to say you can't do a significant amount of animation without scripting knowledge. In my limited experience though, the major strength of Flash 8 seems to lie in the **development of interactive web applications** that include animation, and NOT in animation-centered uses such as presentations. For animation-centered uses you would be better off to choose a more specific tool such as those listed below.
Other programs to consider before you buy Flash 8 would be:
- Toon Boom: all-in-one (and high end) tool of choice for animators
- SwishMax: budget-friendly Flash8 replacement with 230 built-in visual effects
- e frontier's MotionArtist: PowerPoint on steroids, presentation-oriented
For myself, I have chosen to stay with Macromedia Flash 8 since I already have it.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Macromedia Flash Pro 8 (Win/Mac)
Macromedia Flash Pro 8 is the industry's most advanced authoring environment for creating interactive web sites, digital experiences, and mobile content. With Flash Professional 8, creative professionals can design and author interactive content rich with video, graphics, and animation for truly unique, engaging web sites, presentations or mobile content.
A major product release for Macromedia, Flash Professional 8 has many brand new features including: amazing graphic effects, integrated and stand-alone video encoding complete with support for alpha transparency, high-quality text rendering with advanced anti-aliasing control, improved text tools, and a new video plug-in to export Flash Video (FLV) files from professional video products.Get Full Creative Control Great ideas deserve great tools. Flash provides full design control to maximize creativity, resulting in a consistent end-user experience across a variety of platforms. Flash Pro 8 gives you the creative and technical tools you need to unleash applications to the web, Windows, Macintosh, Unix, PDAs, and even cell phones. With Flash Pro 8, you can reach the widest possible audience via the free and widely distributed Flash Player, installed on 98 percent of desktops globally.Flash Professional 8 includes a major focus on usability enhancements so developers can work more efficiently without the application getting in the way. Script Assist, formerly Normal Mode, is back, and it's better than ever. Script Assist provides a visual user interface for editing scripts that includes automatic syntax completion as well as descriptions for the parameters of any given action. With multiple files open, each open files is consolidated into a single panel that acts like all other panels in Flash -- it stays where it's put. This way you can navigate between open libraries more easily using the new drop-down list.Improved panel management optimizes the workspace as you require. You can group panels together in tabbed-panel sets, ala Dreamweaver and Fireworks, thereby reducing on-screen clutter by grouping most commonly-used panels together. For projects that require large graphics that extend far beyond the size of the stage in Flash, Flash Professional 8 lets you view objects much further off-stage. To expand the size of the pasteboard, simply drag an object close to the edge and the pasteboard will automatically grow to fit.Rich Animation, Video, and Mobile Capability Flash Pro 8 gives you the tools to create compelling 2D animations. By taking advantage of the most widely deployed video platform on the Internet, you can take video where it has never gone before. Flash Professional 8 offers continued momentum to the rapidly expanding Flash video platform and new functionality for mobile content developers. Build content once and test it on a wide variety of devices using preset profiles for every mobile device that supports Flash Lite. Configure the testing profile to include multiple devices and filter the supported device list by target content type to easily determine which handsets support screen savers, wallpapers, in-browser content, stand-alone player, and so on. This will greatly reduce development time and simplify your planning for delivery. Flash Player 8 includes a new, advanced video codec that provides superior video quality that's competitive with today's best video codecs at a much smaller file size. It also offers support for a real alpha channel at run-time. This revolutionary new capability provides the unique ability to overlay video composited with a transparent or semi-transparent alpha channel over other Flash content. This allows you to create dynamic presentations such as splashing water, smoke and fire effects, and more.Enhancing The Image Flash Pro 8 lets you create more compelling designs with built-in filter effects like drop shadow, blur, glow, bevel, gradient bevel, and color adjust. Filters are visual effects applied to MovieClips and text fields and are natively supported and rendered in real time by Flash Player. Going well beyond what other design tools offer, Flash Professional 8 offers run-time control over blend modes, allowing graphical effects to be composited for fully dynamic user interactivity.Other enhancements include FlashType, a revolutionary new font rendering engine that provides clear, highest-quality font rendering. FlashType makes small fonts look amazingly clear and greatly improves readability. You can choose from several options for font rendering, each optimized for different use cases, as well as resize a text field using new, improved text handles. You can also easily, intuitively, and precisely control the velocity of animated objects through an intuitive graph that provides independent control of position, rotation, scale, color, and filters. In addition to enhanced stroke functionality that allow you to select from a variety of cap and join types, you can apply a gradient to a stroke as well as a fill, and render stroke intersections better with stroke hinting.
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