What does "8Ball is focused on designers" mean?
关于下一个版本的FLASH侧重点的文章.(转载)
There has been some discussions over the past couple of days around 8Ball (the next full release of Flash) and what its focus is going to be.
I wanted to make a quick post, and just clarify something:
8Ball is focused on designers.
What exactly does that mean? It means that the past 2 releases of Flash have been focused almost solely on developers, and that it is time that we once again show some love to designers. Does this mean that 8Ball will have no developer features? No, not at all (there is going to be some very cool stuff). It does mean that one of the primary themes though are designer focused. What are the primary themes?
Performance / Stability / Usability
Expressiveness
Again, just to repeat, this doesn't mean we are dropping developers, or that we are not going to have any features for developers. It does mean that we are spending a lot of time adding new features to Flash that will once again make it the top tool and platform for creating expressive content. Regardless of the focus, this is something that will benefit both designers and developers.
We are really focusing on building a great platform for creating content and applications (more info on this in the coming weeks and months). Flash Developers are vital to the success of that platform.
Posted by mesh at September 15, 2004 01:33 PM
Comments
good move.
I feel that a lot of the interactive arty experiments of the flash 4 days drew a lot of creative people to flash...these people have now moved to proce55ing. Id like to see flash take some ideas from <a href="http://processing.org/" rel="nofollow">http://processing.org/</a> and encourage creativity.
Posted by: david doull at September 15, 2004 01:58 PM
Maybe some more integrated options for Central or enhanced Flex component builder or something????
Just to have some developer stuff as well in the next release ;-)
But the looking forward to a beta ;-)
Posted by: Mike at September 15, 2004 02:42 PM
I think that's really exciting news. Although I have followed Macromedia's lead and tried to keep up with the great advances on the dev side, I have felt the neglect on the art and animation side. The biggest thing MM could do in my opinion, is to update the timeline to be closer to what Adobe did with LiveMotion - more animation-friendly. Advanced easing options, and easier to handle bezier motion paths for every tween should be the standard!
It also occurs to me that there are a lot of developers trying to simulate the timeline using math - perhaps there could be some way to combine these capabilities with the timeline environment? That's sort of a stretch though, a better timeline would be enough.
Posted by: Moses Gunesch at September 15, 2004 03:59 PM
"we once again show some love to designers. Does this mean that 8Ball will have no developer features? No, not at all " so what's the point ? There won't be any new interesting improvements to the swf format AGAIN ? you'll only be fixing some usability features ? so we may still stick to flash MX and wait for Flash NINE for the real deal ? or is it all over with flash ?
Posted by: Robert at September 15, 2004 08:37 PM
>There won't be any new interesting improvements to the swf format AGAIN ?
Where in the world did you get that from? No one has said we were not making changes to the SWF format.
Instead of assuming things for the worst, why dont we all make informed decisions on real information. Lets not make up stuff...
mike chambers
Posted by: mike chambers at September 15, 2004 08:59 PM
Hmm nice to know things are moving in the relm of designers. Is this also going to apply to animators? I remember a while back there being a discussion on a prmiative Boning Structure for 2D characters being tested in house. Any word on features like this coming in?
I take my hat off to you guys, it's a very hard line to walk "Designers" or "Developers" ... I had my own suspisions that maybe version 8 or 9 would see Flash split into 2 items to service each community. It will be nice to see it tightening up back into ONE solid app.
Can't wait to see it and start working with it.
Posted by: Mr K at September 15, 2004 09:07 PM
maybe the developers wish the 8ball that it will make as3 100% compatible with ECMA 4
Posted by: 7yue at September 15, 2004 09:43 PM
past 2 releases, are you insane. Try, past 4 releases. Whatever MM does it going to have to be big, Microsoft Sparkle is just around the corner and quite frankly I'm already in line with wallet in hand.
Posted by: Ibis Fernandez at September 15, 2004 09:46 PM
Why the pessimism? Isn't this good news to you? Flash has been good to most of us here Ibis, so have fun with Sparkle. Hope to see you at the next Annecy!
I've enjoyed Flash for 4 years now and I've always been happy with it. I've found design and animation with the interface nigh-on perfect for what I want to do (i.e. web animation which is the type of animation for which Flash is designed).
True it's limited (and limiting) but take a look around the internet at what some people have managed to achieve with it. Now just imagine what they'll be doing with a designer-focused Flash :)
I'm eagerly awaiting 8ball.
Posted by: chluaid at September 15, 2004 10:30 PM
Thanks for the clarification Mike. For those of us with a foot in both camps, and who doesn't these days, its all good news!
Posted by: NickC at September 16, 2004 12:20 AM
Number 1 on my wishlist: make component skinning extremely easy and fast.
Posted by: Vinny Timmermans at September 16, 2004 02:08 AM
Expressiveness? ... it is time that we once again show some love to designers? ... is perhaps better 3D animation support in the works?
Posted by: Peter at September 16, 2004 02:33 AM
What most developers are screaming for is improved performance (read: hardware accelerated) to make those data intensive RIA's run on PC's with less than a Xeon cpu and 3gigs of ram. If that's the case for 8-ball, I can easely wait untill Flash10 for MM to introduce new dev features (Oh, except for file input/upload, that's long overdue ;)
Posted by: Tom Versweyveld at September 16, 2004 03:59 AM
"basically Macromedia feels that the center of attection for the next release should be designers but, that does not mean, in any way, that inprovements on the developement side of Flash MX will be ignored."
So Java - nice meet you back.
Posted by: Tom at September 16, 2004 04:20 AM
Why all the negativity? I think if MM succeeds in making the authoring environment more efficient, stable and user-friendly >everyone< will benefit - designers and developers alike.
One thing that i recently realized is that as my attention has shifted towards more coding and less designing, some elements of creativity have gone from my work - and coming back to the F7 timeline has been a painful (and buggy) experience. A new (more Director-like?) approach to the timeline in 8 would make a welcome refreshing change.
Posted by: mani at September 16, 2004 07:00 AM
I'm happy to read this, Mike. I know a few designers who, what with the current "business cycle", haven't upgraded to MX2k4, and they code better than I do. It's really too bad for them, since 2k4 is way easier to work in; Flash has only gotten better and better with every release, and I say that as someone who's leveled some fairly harsh assessments in MM's followup surveys.
But I have wondered where Flash was heading. I'm just the man in the street here, 1337 at nothing, but I've questioned whether the RIA movement isn't headed into the same quagmire as the Netscape/Java thing from the 90's, stepping on the toes of The Giant. Or has it been heading into Konfabulator territory? I enjoy using Central, but ...
Anyway, I'm really interested to see what develops, given that Fireworks 1.0 was incomprehensible to me in it's first release, whereas now I use FWMX2k4 more and more.
Posted by: John Dwight at September 16, 2004 07:19 AM
Improved performance is on the very top of my Flash wish list, both in the IDE and the player. I seriously hope MM is looking into using hardware acceleration to aid the Flash Player - the speed restricitions on the player are a big creative stifler.
Posted by: Paul Neave at September 16, 2004 07:21 AM
hey mike,
whats up with the f#+?$ing font-bug in flash when i'll work with both platforms; MAC and WINDOWS-PC? i'll hope macromedia'll fix this as fast as they can.
Posted by: jo at September 16, 2004 08:37 AM
This is good news. Animators have definitely been left out of the picture for quite some time with Flash. It seems that MM forgot about the enormous amount of (non-coded) animated content created with Flash-- and how the methods of creating that content haven't really changed since F4. It's time to give all those artists a reason to upgrade!
It also seems that each new version of the player has given up a little bit of size for a little bit of performance (in other words, the player keeps getting bigger but also faster)-- I think this is a _good_ thing. Note that this is the first month ever where there are more broadband users than dialup. As the months and years pass, performance will steadily become more important than small filesize.
Keep up the good work, MM.
Posted by: gwint at September 16, 2004 12:16 PM
(I should note that those broadband stats are for the U.S.-- obviously countries are at a variety of levels)
<a href="http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0408/" rel="nofollow">http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0408/</a>
Posted by: gwint at September 16, 2004 12:19 PM
this is great news. i can't understand all of the negative reactions. i am always happy to hear that they are focusing on making flash a more usable and stable product. i would upgrade just for that alone.
how about a cms system for flash. i know you can build one... still...
Posted by: cramdesign at September 16, 2004 01:03 PM
I was hoping MM would pick-up on some of the stand-alone swf-to-exe stuff we're seeing in mProjector, SWF Studio and Flash Studio Pro.
Is that all relegated to Central or will we some of this functionality integrated into Flash? The emphasis on design is great but makes me worry the .exe thing is a non-issue.
Posted by: DanielMcQ at September 16, 2004 01:16 PM
Lots of great suggestions here. I'm already getting pretty pumped about 8ball. I think expressiveness is a great theme to be focusing on, and it's fantastic to hear that stability/performance are also on top of the list.
Keep up the good work MM. I know I'll be standing in line when 8ball comes out.
Posted by: Lucas Swick at September 16, 2004 01:38 PM
If you want to make life easier for animators, aquire MOHO (<a href="http://www.lostmarble.com)" rel="nofollow">http://www.lostmarble.com)</a>
Posted by: Richard T-J at September 17, 2004 02:33 AM
I think that the possibility to make a region capture of the flash animation and send these data to the server as a jpg (or png or bmp) stream would be an extraordinary possibility.
Posted by: Daniel at September 17, 2004 08:37 AM
"I seriously hope MM is looking into using hardware acceleration to aid the Flash Player - the speed restricitions on the player are a big creative stifler."
my sentiments exactly, wondeful new features for the designer are much needed -just hope the player can handle it while not ripping my machines proccessor to shreds...
loooking forward to 8ball!
Posted by: Maccer at September 17, 2004 12:01 PM
Will the new flash add features like the Moho software animation? This would be the ultimate tool if this were the case... it would be a "buy now" auto-execute feature!
Posted by: John Farrar at September 17, 2004 12:53 PM
I remember some talk about this at FlashForward SF earlier this year. Even basic things like photoshop-style blend modes would be killer. Hardware accelleration would be ideal, I agree.
Posted by: danherwig at September 17, 2004 01:40 PM
Performance improvements and Photoshop-style blend modes, yes, those would really be great new features. Built in drop-shadowing and bevelling effects would be handy too.
I would most of all like to see the Undo feature fixed/reverted back to how it was with older versions of Flash. Undoing is a royal pain in MX04. At the *very least*, Flash shouldn't count things like "clicking on stage" as an Undo action.
Other little features/bugs to be fixed:
- It would be good to be able to control character spacing for dynamic text fields.
- Font panel needs to be upgraded to support all the varieties of type1 fonts. More control over type in general would be welcomed.
- Ever since flash mx we can no longer change color/alpha properties of a movieclip by clicking its keyframe. We must click the object itself on the stage, adding a step to the process. I think the context sensitivity should really be re-evaluated.
-Better space usage of property inspector or ability to customize the property inspector. Why are sound controls displayed when selecting a keyframe without any sound? Let's put alpha/colour properties and even instance name there instead (for keyframes with only one object).
Overall, I think the UI could be improved to speed up the workflow of common/repetitive tasks. These are the things that really make working with Flash either a pain or a joy.
And I guess this would be a developer feature, but I would love to see the ability to accept file uploads through the Flash player. Right now there is no way to build a real CMS with Flash because of this limitation... I'd like to see this feature complete with methods like getBytesTotal and getBytesLoaded too.
Thanks for listening.
Posted by: Tom Klepl at September 17, 2004 05:13 PM
Oh and one more suggestion:
Why not have instances auto-name themselves using the symbol name as default? This could possibly be a checkbox in the Convert to Symbol dialog box, just like the Linkage ID.
Posted by: Tom Klepl at September 17, 2004 05:19 PM
Where will it all end? I just bought MX 2004...
Posted by: yusuf at September 18, 2004 01:22 AM
Slow down with it all. Let the users get a chance to learn the tools and new technologies. An upgrade a year is expensive, stressful, and hard to keep up with.
You can see all the hostilities from the user communities(not just MM users)...I think MM really needs to consider this and slow down a bit. Go to <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/" rel="nofollow">http://www.macromedia.com/software/</a> and count how many times you see the word New(16).
New features are great, a sharp eye for what the designers need is called for, enchancements for the developer...rock on! But give us another year or so to learn and also so MM can make it right, make it work, and give us a chance to desire the new version...
Posted by: jj at September 18, 2004 03:22 AM
That is too bad because where Flash MX 2004 seems to need improvement the most (aside from fixing bugs such as the ones that result in the IDE state being forgotten or mangled) is in its functionality for developers. I have a long, long list of problems and other annoyances I have encountered with Flash MX 2004 in general and ActionScript in particular. For example, would it be so ridiculously hard to allow developers to include media assets without dragging them to the stage or having them export on the first frame, before a preloader can load? (Selectable export frames could also solve that; for example, the ability to export on frame 2 or frame 10 from either the asset properties window or ActionScript.) Would it be so hard to allow classes to be associated with dynamically-created movie clips? Would it be so hard to make FlashPlayer hide the extra vertical space when menus are hidden instead of throwing off both the appearance and the height property of the stage? Would it be so hard to optimize compiled code just a little bit instead of retaining user-defined variable names (they tend to be longer than compiled code needs, so they waste file space) and oddly high numeric labels that reveal how many items have been created and deleted in the IDE (that just looks a bit sloppy)?
I would definitely like to see Flash become more designer-friendly as some of the interface can be a bit baffling, but I very much hope that you are going to address some of the more annoying developer issues as well.
Posted by: Brian [This form disallows my REAL NAME!!!] at September 18, 2004 08:57 AM
A blanket ban on the sequence of letters s-e-x is just plain stupid or at the very least, astoundingly ignorant.
What sort of instrument would you use to measure the altitudes of celestial bodies to determine latitude and longitude? A s-e-x-t-a-n-t.
Who recorded the proceedings between Dogberry, Borachio, et al. in Much Ado About Nothing? The s-e-x-t-o-n.
Have you ever heard of W-e-s-s-e-x?
What if my domain name were einsteins experiments.com (without the space)?
If you are going to require people to enter their e-mail addresses, you should also allow them to enter the domains names that are simply their REAL NAMES so your software creates HTTP links instead of e-mail (read: spam) links. This nonsense is tedious.
Posted by: Brian at September 18, 2004 09:07 AM
Dears,
The only thing that doesn´t let grow the commercial flash aplications in market , is just how is easy to rip the SWF format, when MM made a SECURE SWF against thiesfs, this will chance, And so grow the number of flash users.
(sorry my poor english)
Posted by: Cosmo at September 18, 2004 09:31 AM
More method for Array and String
Array.indexOf()
Array.lasIndexOf()
Array.keys()
Array.unique()
Array.sum()
Array.last()
Array.shuffle()
Array.merge()
Array.CLONE() !!!!!
String.ucfirst()
String.ltrim()
String.rtrim()
String.trim()
String.htmlentities()
Please please please :)
Posted by: Daniel at September 18, 2004 11:28 AM
I have the strange feeling that MM does not really know what they want. I mean i am walking around telling everyone that flash is "GOOD" because it can be more than heavy animations and that it`s now a ria tool. And now I`m afraid that MM wants to let the ria stuff all be done by flex and go back to make flash the "we don`t care what users want tool because we make funky animations" But hey on the other side you said that 8ball will be for both sides. I`m just a bit confused and don`t like it if my future is changed by marketing experts in every new release!
That said even if flash 11 will be designed for programming washing machines i would still love it!
Posted by: benz at September 18, 2004 07:08 PM
Our Big Wish That Flash 8 Enable And Fully Support Arabic, Hebrew, Persian And All RTL Languages. I Think That Flash Can Do What The Swish Did, Swish Support This Languages From 2002, If Macromedia Dosn't Care For About 1200 milions Read And Write Arabic, Hebrew, And Persian. That's Ok Tel Us. Is Swish Better Than Flash? I Think No. Thanks
Posted by: Soska Sosaka at September 19, 2004 06:32 AM
Sosaka, whether Macromedia or any other company supports a particular language has nothing to do with whether they care about people; it is a business decision. When more of those Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian people have free (as in not government-restricted) access to technology, their languages will be better-supported by all companies that have the resources to do so.
Posted by: Sosaka Informer at September 19, 2004 04:16 PM
Id definitely be interested to see the new stuff added in Flash 8. But as long as Flash stays with AS2, I will be staying with MX 2004 Pro. My biggest wish is that MM gets themselves deeply rooted into this market so that when the release of the "Almighty" Sparkle from Microspunk does not make a large impact on MM's market share. As for a comment made earlier about RIA's eventually being strictly Flex, Im not sure I agree, however thats only speculation, I do not work for MM, so I have no clue either way, but logically thinking, I would have to disagree, simply for the fact Flex costs the end user $12000+ as compared to $300 for Flash. I also think its entirely possible to have both as RIA development tools. Flex is just a strong resource for java developers on web applications, whereas Flash can be web and standalone. And with making full use of XML data integration, Flash has no trouble communicating with any type of middle-tier software, whether it be JRun, .NET, Websphere, etc. Then again, these are just opinions based upon experience and semi-educated guesses.
And yes, I totally agree with Daniel, please more Methods on strings and arrays. And can we please clean up the Remoting, I had to search hell and high water to migrate from the MX way of remoting to the MX 2004 way of remoting. More information on that would be kindly recieved.
Posted by: adam at September 19, 2004 04:44 PM
I truly hope Flash isn't turning into one of these 'Amazing 3D Animation Just Click One Button' softwares where everything is too much premade. Leave some room for the handicraft, please.
Posted by: jp at September 20, 2004 07:31 AM
Brush tool problem - Comments invited.
I'd like to know if anyone else has had issues with the "brush" pressure tool on the Mac platform in versions after Flash 4. Our studio uses this tool almost exclusively, and in all PC versions of flash (before and after 4) and Mac versions of Flash after 4, it has changed so that the tool adds a huge number of control points to the brush stroke, resulting in jaggy brush lines and enormous file sizes. This is the single biggest flash issue to my studio, which has been producing Flash animation for TV since 1997, and has 68 half hours of completely Flash animated broadcast TV under our belts (Seen on Teletoon in Canada, soon on Animania in the US, and ABC in Australia, among others). I invite emails from other animators to share your experiences about this issue.
I especially invite anyone from the Macromedia team to contact me - I have detailed reports about this problem that I can share, and I have a 3 person tech / software development team who are very versed in this problem and who can prepare a full report to your specs (We're not looking to be paid - I just want to get this fixed)
Thank you.
Michael-Andreas Kuttner
Collideascope Digital Productions Inc
m-a@collideascope.com
Posted by: Michael-Andreas Kuttner at September 20, 2004 11:37 AM
Why dont you keep up with RIA idea ? The components are way too slow ! If you built an array with 100 data lines, the player gets stuck. MM should handle this first before inventing new features. MM propagtes RIA and gave out a half thought product.
Cya, Bernd
Posted by: Bernd at September 22, 2004 04:36 AM
I think macromedia should now create 2 products : Flash for developers and Flash for designers. The developer version should allow file access, etc and web apps made with that can probably have a warning like Java's JNLP/web start apps ("do u want to let the app access ur machine"). Just a thought ...what say ?
Posted by: amp at September 22, 2004 11:38 AM
Agree with Amp!
Flash must be better to handle text. Its a real pain right now working with large text blocks. If Flash could be more like Freehand when it comes to text tools it would be great!
Posted by: Jonas Skoglund at September 23, 2004 05:44 AM
Here are a few things I'd like to see in the next Flash release...
Stage.backgroundColor
Stage.frameRate
There is currently the ability to alter almost every aspect of the Flash environment dynamically except the background colour and the frame rate.
Microphone frequency properties.
Only volume (.activityLevel) is available at the moment, and the ability to retreive base and treble quantities would be a massive benefit. If the frequencies of sounds could be retrieved and set, graphic equalisers could be created to improve audio quality and clarity for voice and music.
Simple oscilloscope visualisations could be made based on frequencies, similar to how Winamp and media players work.
And... ability to alter the tab graphic for buttons instead of the yellow box outline.
Posted by: Paul Neave at September 23, 2004 07:17 AM
I agree with Paul Neave above....a better sound object would be ideal...even just the ability to grab and set 4 or 5 freq bands, the benefits would be fantastic.
However, since I have a sopabox of sorts, I have to say *slow down* with all the massive changes. 1999 - 2001 saw sites like praystation, etc bring reams of design/develop - ers to Flash (including me). I saw a whole new breed of web-design-develop type person evolving, interested in pushing UI design, entertain novel HCI issues, hooking onto backends and XML, and build up their own development skills using Flash.
MX seemed to build on that. But then MM seemed to get over eager, and force what looked to me like a very healthy organic evolution of the Flash des-eloper (not my word) into a business plan...get MX2004 out, turn these people into legit developers, now switch the language (I do love AS2), now central, now Flex...as my boss says, you can choose any two from the quality/quantity/quickness package, but not all three. perhaps the massive downturn in 'community' activity is a good indicator...people were all on board until the captain got a little too excited and wanted everyone going to his party and playing his games.
BTW, I really love Flash, but a free proce55ing/JAVA combo ....hmmm???
Not a rant, just an opinion, and certainly up for dissection. :)
Posted by: Daren at September 23, 2004 12:01 PM
I hope they still put in alot of developer stuff still too, i look forward to the new features but as agreed wit habove wish the flash player was alittle faster and stronger
Posted by: Mike at September 23, 2004 07:59 PM
great news mike,
im in remote area here, doing some special project in c#. i didn't managed to send you my ideas for flash's next version till now, but this news just puched me to start writing.
thats really good to have more designer features, bcoz now we (devs) wanna create some good gfx with ease :D
but there's a lot need for dev features to be included as well. like i posted before on mm forums. upgradation of DATE object. its shud be like C#'s date object. isn't it?
lots of data going in and out of flash, and data is mostly manipulated based on dates mostly. so its the real need.
i've lot more to say for other features, but when i compelete my mail, i'll post it here and to mike as well :D
looking for beta login :D
Posted by: chall3ng3r at September 26, 2004 08:32 PM
I think focusing more on the design side of things is a good move for the next version of Flash... as long as the current programming structure is kept the same, or improved.
I hope MM don't change the entire interface again though, that would be a real pain in the ass.
Posted by: Si++ at September 27, 2004 04:00 PM
Regarding the issue of audio in Flash, there are some ideas (perhaps) worth dropping here, although they are most likely Flash player issues;
- It would be really nice if there was a way to create a reliable click track for audio events.....frameRate is too variable, and as far as I know, setInterval is also tied to frame rate (or at least can fall victim to it at times), so I use the hack of using onSoundComplete along with a sound of the intended length. This however uses up one of the precious few audio channels...it would be ideal to have the ability to create reliable timers for audio.
- The ability to handle more than 8 sounds at a time.
- more usable implementation of sound.duration and and sound.position
Posted by: Daren at September 27, 2004 04:34 PM
Is it true that the next version of Flash will do away with Actionscript 1.0? Will Flash 5 movies need to be converted to AS 2.0?
Posted by: Mike at September 28, 2004 10:52 AM
full screen mode - like PS, FW, etc.
better font handling
image browser
Posted by: Michael Tuminello at September 28, 2004 11:28 AM
full screen mode - like PS, FW, etc.
better font handling
image browser
Posted by: MT at September 28, 2004 11:28 AM
hi,
i need in new version of flash function "MESH TOOL" - advanced gradient tool from Adobe illustrator ...
thank you,
fandango
Posted by: fandango at September 28, 2004 11:55 AM
Adding to all those wishlists above. I look forward to some improvements with the embedFonts and using them between two or more SWFs :)
Posted by: Arun at September 29, 2004 05:50 AM
I have a very small wish (including all the above mentioned ones;) .....
We need to have more HTML support. I have seen many e learning projects not made in flash, because of small things like super/sub script support.
Posted by: Owas at September 29, 2004 11:59 AM
cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
----\\ www.Vichitex.com �--I Blog//-----
-+- Team Macromedia Member -+-
Posted by: vicho at September 30, 2004 07:07 PM
In my opinion AS 2 is really a blessing. And actually I would like to see flash getting even more distance to this sometimes confusing timeline-metapher. But most important: better performance! Especially for heavy-data-duty apps. btw. How about a more complete implementation of xml and xpath?
Posted by: holgi at October 1, 2004 07:52 PM
>Is it true that the next version of Flash will do away with Actionscript 1.0?
no. that is not true.
mike chambers
mesh@macromedia.com
Posted by: mike chambers at October 2, 2004 08:52 PM
What are the chances of bringing back the normal mode in the actionscript editor? One of the cool things about flash was the ability to code when you did not know all that much about it. As a teacher MX 2004 did not appeal to students due to the difficulty in understanding code structure. I have seen a decrease in student attendance and interest.
Posted by: Digiguru at October 3, 2004 04:50 PM
Just a quick developer feature hardly needed:
Proper support for coding like code hinting (of my own classes, not just built in ones), Jump to definition of method in any file in a project.
In general, look at functionality of e.g. Visual studio.... which makes a coding life much easier. Much less to remember.
Posted by: Ben at October 8, 2004 03:42 AM
I am a developer and I am glad the macromedia is putting powerful new design features in the flash player 8 format. Without new design capabilities developers can not justify, to there clients, the use of a new flash player version. Transparency in Flash player 6 was a must have that made it worth excluding some users. No such must have was offered in flash player 7. Sure, I would like to use exception handling but, I can't tell my client that we are going to limit the user base to make my job easier.
With that said we must start to see more of a Microsoft Jscript.net implementation of the ecma-262 language (ActionScript).
We need abstract classes and above all else interfaces must support properties and getter/setters! If abstract classes are not allowed then let us put private members in interfaces so that we can treat them as abstract classes. (How to make a pseudo abstract class with an interface.>> <a href="http://www.actionscript.org/tutorials/advanced/Abstract_Class_in_AS2/index.shtml)" rel="nofollow">http://www.actionscript.org/tutorials/advanced/Abstract_Class_in_AS2/index.shtml)</a>
Posted by: Andrew Simmons at October 10, 2004 06:15 AM
It's my birthday, so I'd like to request one feature for a future version of the Flash player:
GPS device detection, just like the great microphone and webcam detection in the current Flash player.
With Macromedia's push into the non-PC market, and the price of GPS devices/add-ons dropping rapidly, there's going to be a serious opportunity for location-based applications. I'd be a very happy camper if the next version of the Flash player allowed us to start developing these GIS apps.
Cheers,
BB
Posted by: Bill Brown at October 13, 2004 06:13 PM
We desperately need better .swf encryption/protection. It is way too easy to use various actionscript viewers to steal code and assts from any published .swf
This is mostly happening to games, where webmasters take .swf files out of browser cache, remove any protection within it, remove copyright info, and then post our files on their websites as theirs.
Same thing to a lesser extent happens to web applications and sites as well.
Posted by: Mike M. at October 17, 2004 08:05 AM
I kind of felt this was going to be the next focus again.
I hope to see much more text control with (block) justify, leading, kerning etc and text on a path. setting the width of a textfield numerically in the IDE shouldn't distort the text either, but just reflow it.
more control of line style, possibly something like creature house has. better pen/subselection tool, i often want to select a vertex and put a numerical position in too.
improved masks with multiple objects an transparency graduations.
better sound synch, hardware acceleration
Looking forward to this release!
Posted by: Cyberdigitus at October 26, 2004 09:16 PM
Shape tweening i flash is a unique carismatic and powerfull feature.
I will re-wish more evolution to its possibilities as I have wished it a couple of versions earlier. Now that designers can wish..
More functionality to Shape Hints.
Ability to copy frames, add keyframes without leaving the hints behind.
Control of the hints through sets of keyframes - maybe grids..
Thanks!
Posted by: kamilla at October 28, 2004 06:41 PM
I would really like to see and improved timeline: With individual keyframes for opacity, scale, movement, etc. like after effects. And having each element in a different layer will a lot better, like director. Also being able to select many objects in different frames in the timeline and move them in the stage all at the same time.
Another problem is that when creating a keyframe Flash will split the elements in the timeline, so they are no longer connected (Graphics). I usually create an animation inside a graphic symbol and then do pans and zooms with the entire symbol. The problem is that if then I change the animation inside the symbol I then need to go through each keyframe to adjust the start frame of the graphic symbol.
Individual Frames per rate for movieclips
When I work with vectors I don’t like how flash keeps creating points in the curve by itself, I will like some way of blocking this.
Some way of stretching frames
A better sound editor
A tool like SWF Studio PRO for creating executables. I don’t see Central like a good alternative.
getBytesLoaded and getBytesTotal for movieClips and not just the whole swf.
Loading PNGs on the fly
Xpath coding
Some code to get the current, next and previous frame labels, and also all the frame labels in a movieclip
Blending options like photoshop: overlay, screens, etc
The info panel should allow to select all the 9 coordinates, not only top left and center
A better color mixer, maybe like that wheel with a triangle in painter
More gradient options
3D!
Posted by: Sebastian at October 31, 2004 11:44 PM
on the developer side, we use flash to create libraries of items that can be called by our apps. it'd be great to see something like master pages in quark, where you can set up a template symbol and create new symbols based off that master and when you want to change something, you wouldn't have to change every symbol, you'd just change that one master symbol. it'd save us tons of time.
Posted by: chuck at November 10, 2004 05:30 PM
It would be nice to see a new version that builds up on the previous ones!
(not a fresh start again as was the case with flash 7)
A cleaner version than the present one would be already an achievement.
But till Flash will not able to talk directly to a database (without a midway application) we will not in the position to talk here about a real new version of the product.
Posted by: shirley65 at November 11, 2004 07:13 AM
Any info about the support of CSS3?
Posted by: david at November 17, 2004 02:16 PM
I would like the ability to be able to skew,distort, envelope movieclips. This is something ive been looking to do for the longest while, also, being able to upload files through the flash player with a browse button the way you can in an html page. I think these 2 features are minimal, but very needed. Thanks for listening
Posted by: Kojac C at November 23, 2004 09:12 AM
Also, can you guys please make it so that you can mask text fields with no problem? its highly annoying that i cant do it without some workaround
Posted by: Kojac C at December 5, 2004 12:59 AM
Hello Mike,
I would like to say that the NetConection Debugger, has an interface horrible, icones of traces, status, return and call, could be different thus to have one better performace.
Sorry my poor engles
Posted by: Hélio Antonio Francisco Silva at December 9, 2004 03:16 PM
And please,please,please.........make skinning of components a visual excersice instead of playing with codes, linkage ids, etc..... geez
Posted by: Kojac C at January 2, 2005 11:41 PM
Why did they name it after a large bag of cocaine?
Posted by: Mike at February 2, 2005 01:26 PM
Macromedia should concentrate on actually making things work inside of Flash MX 2004 instead of plowing ahead with new features without making them work like they have done with each version so far. One person on here mentioned that Macromedia should bring back "normal" mode in a future version of Flash. Starting now, I don't think that Macromedia will bring back "normal" mode in any future version of Flash. The reason why is because with Flash MX 2004 we now have "code hints" that pop up telling us what the next step is.
Posted by: Jay at March 19, 2005 04:33 PM
It has become crystal clear that Macromedia has put zero emphasis on the future of data components in Flash. Believe me, I use them all with AS2.0 - (datasets,resolvers,connectors,xml,remoting), and have exploited all their features. I had faith that Macromedia would enhance these to the point of competing with the robustness of .NET datasets. That obviously never happened, and as a result, I have moved to .NET for building robust database application font-ends. When Macromedia released FLEX, the "writing was on the wall" for Flash database developers to abandon Flash. It is apparent that Flash will remain a designers tool.
Posted by: David Dumas at March 30, 2005 04:24 PM
Please fix the crappy, v2 components, listeners, and focus manager :-D
Posted by: John at May 5, 2005 10:57 PM
Maybe i'm going back a few posts, this is a big list of comments to read, but.....
all those flash developers who are moaning about this version being geared towards designer can up the f**k shut. Quite frankly, developers have ruined the flash format making it tacky and cheap. designers, at least those in the uk, have moved away from flash, like i have, in favour of gimick free consumer focused design. and in the first instance, flash grew because it was designers, not developers, who adopted it as the weapon of choice. it's about freaking time two things happend...
1) flash made mac friendly
2) More design features
so ram it if you're going to sob into your big geeky pillow just because the 8-ball team can't move forward at the speed of light, i for one welocome MM's stance on this release, lets not run before we can walk.
however, one more thing i'd like to see if you have the time, the ability to browse the users machine (file uploads wink wink). From what i've seen, this version is going to see the biggest improvements to the whole platorm sinced flash 4, so well done.
-t
关于下一个版本的FLASH侧重点的文章.(转载)
There has been some discussions over the past couple of days around 8Ball (the next full release of Flash) and what its focus is going to be.
I wanted to make a quick post, and just clarify something:
8Ball is focused on designers.
What exactly does that mean? It means that the past 2 releases of Flash have been focused almost solely on developers, and that it is time that we once again show some love to designers. Does this mean that 8Ball will have no developer features? No, not at all (there is going to be some very cool stuff). It does mean that one of the primary themes though are designer focused. What are the primary themes?
Performance / Stability / Usability
Expressiveness
Again, just to repeat, this doesn't mean we are dropping developers, or that we are not going to have any features for developers. It does mean that we are spending a lot of time adding new features to Flash that will once again make it the top tool and platform for creating expressive content. Regardless of the focus, this is something that will benefit both designers and developers.
We are really focusing on building a great platform for creating content and applications (more info on this in the coming weeks and months). Flash Developers are vital to the success of that platform.
Posted by mesh at September 15, 2004 01:33 PM
Comments
good move.
I feel that a lot of the interactive arty experiments of the flash 4 days drew a lot of creative people to flash...these people have now moved to proce55ing. Id like to see flash take some ideas from <a href="http://processing.org/" rel="nofollow">http://processing.org/</a> and encourage creativity.
Posted by: david doull at September 15, 2004 01:58 PM
Maybe some more integrated options for Central or enhanced Flex component builder or something????
Just to have some developer stuff as well in the next release ;-)
But the looking forward to a beta ;-)
Posted by: Mike at September 15, 2004 02:42 PM
I think that's really exciting news. Although I have followed Macromedia's lead and tried to keep up with the great advances on the dev side, I have felt the neglect on the art and animation side. The biggest thing MM could do in my opinion, is to update the timeline to be closer to what Adobe did with LiveMotion - more animation-friendly. Advanced easing options, and easier to handle bezier motion paths for every tween should be the standard!
It also occurs to me that there are a lot of developers trying to simulate the timeline using math - perhaps there could be some way to combine these capabilities with the timeline environment? That's sort of a stretch though, a better timeline would be enough.
Posted by: Moses Gunesch at September 15, 2004 03:59 PM
"we once again show some love to designers. Does this mean that 8Ball will have no developer features? No, not at all " so what's the point ? There won't be any new interesting improvements to the swf format AGAIN ? you'll only be fixing some usability features ? so we may still stick to flash MX and wait for Flash NINE for the real deal ? or is it all over with flash ?
Posted by: Robert at September 15, 2004 08:37 PM
>There won't be any new interesting improvements to the swf format AGAIN ?
Where in the world did you get that from? No one has said we were not making changes to the SWF format.
Instead of assuming things for the worst, why dont we all make informed decisions on real information. Lets not make up stuff...
mike chambers
Posted by: mike chambers at September 15, 2004 08:59 PM
Hmm nice to know things are moving in the relm of designers. Is this also going to apply to animators? I remember a while back there being a discussion on a prmiative Boning Structure for 2D characters being tested in house. Any word on features like this coming in?
I take my hat off to you guys, it's a very hard line to walk "Designers" or "Developers" ... I had my own suspisions that maybe version 8 or 9 would see Flash split into 2 items to service each community. It will be nice to see it tightening up back into ONE solid app.
Can't wait to see it and start working with it.
Posted by: Mr K at September 15, 2004 09:07 PM
maybe the developers wish the 8ball that it will make as3 100% compatible with ECMA 4
Posted by: 7yue at September 15, 2004 09:43 PM
past 2 releases, are you insane. Try, past 4 releases. Whatever MM does it going to have to be big, Microsoft Sparkle is just around the corner and quite frankly I'm already in line with wallet in hand.
Posted by: Ibis Fernandez at September 15, 2004 09:46 PM
Why the pessimism? Isn't this good news to you? Flash has been good to most of us here Ibis, so have fun with Sparkle. Hope to see you at the next Annecy!
I've enjoyed Flash for 4 years now and I've always been happy with it. I've found design and animation with the interface nigh-on perfect for what I want to do (i.e. web animation which is the type of animation for which Flash is designed).
True it's limited (and limiting) but take a look around the internet at what some people have managed to achieve with it. Now just imagine what they'll be doing with a designer-focused Flash :)
I'm eagerly awaiting 8ball.
Posted by: chluaid at September 15, 2004 10:30 PM
Thanks for the clarification Mike. For those of us with a foot in both camps, and who doesn't these days, its all good news!
Posted by: NickC at September 16, 2004 12:20 AM
Number 1 on my wishlist: make component skinning extremely easy and fast.
Posted by: Vinny Timmermans at September 16, 2004 02:08 AM
Expressiveness? ... it is time that we once again show some love to designers? ... is perhaps better 3D animation support in the works?
Posted by: Peter at September 16, 2004 02:33 AM
What most developers are screaming for is improved performance (read: hardware accelerated) to make those data intensive RIA's run on PC's with less than a Xeon cpu and 3gigs of ram. If that's the case for 8-ball, I can easely wait untill Flash10 for MM to introduce new dev features (Oh, except for file input/upload, that's long overdue ;)
Posted by: Tom Versweyveld at September 16, 2004 03:59 AM
"basically Macromedia feels that the center of attection for the next release should be designers but, that does not mean, in any way, that inprovements on the developement side of Flash MX will be ignored."
So Java - nice meet you back.
Posted by: Tom at September 16, 2004 04:20 AM
Why all the negativity? I think if MM succeeds in making the authoring environment more efficient, stable and user-friendly >everyone< will benefit - designers and developers alike.
One thing that i recently realized is that as my attention has shifted towards more coding and less designing, some elements of creativity have gone from my work - and coming back to the F7 timeline has been a painful (and buggy) experience. A new (more Director-like?) approach to the timeline in 8 would make a welcome refreshing change.
Posted by: mani at September 16, 2004 07:00 AM
I'm happy to read this, Mike. I know a few designers who, what with the current "business cycle", haven't upgraded to MX2k4, and they code better than I do. It's really too bad for them, since 2k4 is way easier to work in; Flash has only gotten better and better with every release, and I say that as someone who's leveled some fairly harsh assessments in MM's followup surveys.
But I have wondered where Flash was heading. I'm just the man in the street here, 1337 at nothing, but I've questioned whether the RIA movement isn't headed into the same quagmire as the Netscape/Java thing from the 90's, stepping on the toes of The Giant. Or has it been heading into Konfabulator territory? I enjoy using Central, but ...
Anyway, I'm really interested to see what develops, given that Fireworks 1.0 was incomprehensible to me in it's first release, whereas now I use FWMX2k4 more and more.
Posted by: John Dwight at September 16, 2004 07:19 AM
Improved performance is on the very top of my Flash wish list, both in the IDE and the player. I seriously hope MM is looking into using hardware acceleration to aid the Flash Player - the speed restricitions on the player are a big creative stifler.
Posted by: Paul Neave at September 16, 2004 07:21 AM
hey mike,
whats up with the f#+?$ing font-bug in flash when i'll work with both platforms; MAC and WINDOWS-PC? i'll hope macromedia'll fix this as fast as they can.
Posted by: jo at September 16, 2004 08:37 AM
This is good news. Animators have definitely been left out of the picture for quite some time with Flash. It seems that MM forgot about the enormous amount of (non-coded) animated content created with Flash-- and how the methods of creating that content haven't really changed since F4. It's time to give all those artists a reason to upgrade!
It also seems that each new version of the player has given up a little bit of size for a little bit of performance (in other words, the player keeps getting bigger but also faster)-- I think this is a _good_ thing. Note that this is the first month ever where there are more broadband users than dialup. As the months and years pass, performance will steadily become more important than small filesize.
Keep up the good work, MM.
Posted by: gwint at September 16, 2004 12:16 PM
(I should note that those broadband stats are for the U.S.-- obviously countries are at a variety of levels)
<a href="http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0408/" rel="nofollow">http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0408/</a>
Posted by: gwint at September 16, 2004 12:19 PM
this is great news. i can't understand all of the negative reactions. i am always happy to hear that they are focusing on making flash a more usable and stable product. i would upgrade just for that alone.
how about a cms system for flash. i know you can build one... still...
Posted by: cramdesign at September 16, 2004 01:03 PM
I was hoping MM would pick-up on some of the stand-alone swf-to-exe stuff we're seeing in mProjector, SWF Studio and Flash Studio Pro.
Is that all relegated to Central or will we some of this functionality integrated into Flash? The emphasis on design is great but makes me worry the .exe thing is a non-issue.
Posted by: DanielMcQ at September 16, 2004 01:16 PM
Lots of great suggestions here. I'm already getting pretty pumped about 8ball. I think expressiveness is a great theme to be focusing on, and it's fantastic to hear that stability/performance are also on top of the list.
Keep up the good work MM. I know I'll be standing in line when 8ball comes out.
Posted by: Lucas Swick at September 16, 2004 01:38 PM
If you want to make life easier for animators, aquire MOHO (<a href="http://www.lostmarble.com)" rel="nofollow">http://www.lostmarble.com)</a>
Posted by: Richard T-J at September 17, 2004 02:33 AM
I think that the possibility to make a region capture of the flash animation and send these data to the server as a jpg (or png or bmp) stream would be an extraordinary possibility.
Posted by: Daniel at September 17, 2004 08:37 AM
"I seriously hope MM is looking into using hardware acceleration to aid the Flash Player - the speed restricitions on the player are a big creative stifler."
my sentiments exactly, wondeful new features for the designer are much needed -just hope the player can handle it while not ripping my machines proccessor to shreds...
loooking forward to 8ball!
Posted by: Maccer at September 17, 2004 12:01 PM
Will the new flash add features like the Moho software animation? This would be the ultimate tool if this were the case... it would be a "buy now" auto-execute feature!
Posted by: John Farrar at September 17, 2004 12:53 PM
I remember some talk about this at FlashForward SF earlier this year. Even basic things like photoshop-style blend modes would be killer. Hardware accelleration would be ideal, I agree.
Posted by: danherwig at September 17, 2004 01:40 PM
Performance improvements and Photoshop-style blend modes, yes, those would really be great new features. Built in drop-shadowing and bevelling effects would be handy too.
I would most of all like to see the Undo feature fixed/reverted back to how it was with older versions of Flash. Undoing is a royal pain in MX04. At the *very least*, Flash shouldn't count things like "clicking on stage" as an Undo action.
Other little features/bugs to be fixed:
- It would be good to be able to control character spacing for dynamic text fields.
- Font panel needs to be upgraded to support all the varieties of type1 fonts. More control over type in general would be welcomed.
- Ever since flash mx we can no longer change color/alpha properties of a movieclip by clicking its keyframe. We must click the object itself on the stage, adding a step to the process. I think the context sensitivity should really be re-evaluated.
-Better space usage of property inspector or ability to customize the property inspector. Why are sound controls displayed when selecting a keyframe without any sound? Let's put alpha/colour properties and even instance name there instead (for keyframes with only one object).
Overall, I think the UI could be improved to speed up the workflow of common/repetitive tasks. These are the things that really make working with Flash either a pain or a joy.
And I guess this would be a developer feature, but I would love to see the ability to accept file uploads through the Flash player. Right now there is no way to build a real CMS with Flash because of this limitation... I'd like to see this feature complete with methods like getBytesTotal and getBytesLoaded too.
Thanks for listening.
Posted by: Tom Klepl at September 17, 2004 05:13 PM
Oh and one more suggestion:
Why not have instances auto-name themselves using the symbol name as default? This could possibly be a checkbox in the Convert to Symbol dialog box, just like the Linkage ID.
Posted by: Tom Klepl at September 17, 2004 05:19 PM
Where will it all end? I just bought MX 2004...
Posted by: yusuf at September 18, 2004 01:22 AM
Slow down with it all. Let the users get a chance to learn the tools and new technologies. An upgrade a year is expensive, stressful, and hard to keep up with.
You can see all the hostilities from the user communities(not just MM users)...I think MM really needs to consider this and slow down a bit. Go to <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/" rel="nofollow">http://www.macromedia.com/software/</a> and count how many times you see the word New(16).
New features are great, a sharp eye for what the designers need is called for, enchancements for the developer...rock on! But give us another year or so to learn and also so MM can make it right, make it work, and give us a chance to desire the new version...
Posted by: jj at September 18, 2004 03:22 AM
That is too bad because where Flash MX 2004 seems to need improvement the most (aside from fixing bugs such as the ones that result in the IDE state being forgotten or mangled) is in its functionality for developers. I have a long, long list of problems and other annoyances I have encountered with Flash MX 2004 in general and ActionScript in particular. For example, would it be so ridiculously hard to allow developers to include media assets without dragging them to the stage or having them export on the first frame, before a preloader can load? (Selectable export frames could also solve that; for example, the ability to export on frame 2 or frame 10 from either the asset properties window or ActionScript.) Would it be so hard to allow classes to be associated with dynamically-created movie clips? Would it be so hard to make FlashPlayer hide the extra vertical space when menus are hidden instead of throwing off both the appearance and the height property of the stage? Would it be so hard to optimize compiled code just a little bit instead of retaining user-defined variable names (they tend to be longer than compiled code needs, so they waste file space) and oddly high numeric labels that reveal how many items have been created and deleted in the IDE (that just looks a bit sloppy)?
I would definitely like to see Flash become more designer-friendly as some of the interface can be a bit baffling, but I very much hope that you are going to address some of the more annoying developer issues as well.
Posted by: Brian [This form disallows my REAL NAME!!!] at September 18, 2004 08:57 AM
A blanket ban on the sequence of letters s-e-x is just plain stupid or at the very least, astoundingly ignorant.
What sort of instrument would you use to measure the altitudes of celestial bodies to determine latitude and longitude? A s-e-x-t-a-n-t.
Who recorded the proceedings between Dogberry, Borachio, et al. in Much Ado About Nothing? The s-e-x-t-o-n.
Have you ever heard of W-e-s-s-e-x?
What if my domain name were einsteins experiments.com (without the space)?
If you are going to require people to enter their e-mail addresses, you should also allow them to enter the domains names that are simply their REAL NAMES so your software creates HTTP links instead of e-mail (read: spam) links. This nonsense is tedious.
Posted by: Brian at September 18, 2004 09:07 AM
Dears,
The only thing that doesn´t let grow the commercial flash aplications in market , is just how is easy to rip the SWF format, when MM made a SECURE SWF against thiesfs, this will chance, And so grow the number of flash users.
(sorry my poor english)
Posted by: Cosmo at September 18, 2004 09:31 AM
More method for Array and String
Array.indexOf()
Array.lasIndexOf()
Array.keys()
Array.unique()
Array.sum()
Array.last()
Array.shuffle()
Array.merge()
Array.CLONE() !!!!!
String.ucfirst()
String.ltrim()
String.rtrim()
String.trim()
String.htmlentities()
Please please please :)
Posted by: Daniel at September 18, 2004 11:28 AM
I have the strange feeling that MM does not really know what they want. I mean i am walking around telling everyone that flash is "GOOD" because it can be more than heavy animations and that it`s now a ria tool. And now I`m afraid that MM wants to let the ria stuff all be done by flex and go back to make flash the "we don`t care what users want tool because we make funky animations" But hey on the other side you said that 8ball will be for both sides. I`m just a bit confused and don`t like it if my future is changed by marketing experts in every new release!
That said even if flash 11 will be designed for programming washing machines i would still love it!
Posted by: benz at September 18, 2004 07:08 PM
Our Big Wish That Flash 8 Enable And Fully Support Arabic, Hebrew, Persian And All RTL Languages. I Think That Flash Can Do What The Swish Did, Swish Support This Languages From 2002, If Macromedia Dosn't Care For About 1200 milions Read And Write Arabic, Hebrew, And Persian. That's Ok Tel Us. Is Swish Better Than Flash? I Think No. Thanks
Posted by: Soska Sosaka at September 19, 2004 06:32 AM
Sosaka, whether Macromedia or any other company supports a particular language has nothing to do with whether they care about people; it is a business decision. When more of those Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian people have free (as in not government-restricted) access to technology, their languages will be better-supported by all companies that have the resources to do so.
Posted by: Sosaka Informer at September 19, 2004 04:16 PM
Id definitely be interested to see the new stuff added in Flash 8. But as long as Flash stays with AS2, I will be staying with MX 2004 Pro. My biggest wish is that MM gets themselves deeply rooted into this market so that when the release of the "Almighty" Sparkle from Microspunk does not make a large impact on MM's market share. As for a comment made earlier about RIA's eventually being strictly Flex, Im not sure I agree, however thats only speculation, I do not work for MM, so I have no clue either way, but logically thinking, I would have to disagree, simply for the fact Flex costs the end user $12000+ as compared to $300 for Flash. I also think its entirely possible to have both as RIA development tools. Flex is just a strong resource for java developers on web applications, whereas Flash can be web and standalone. And with making full use of XML data integration, Flash has no trouble communicating with any type of middle-tier software, whether it be JRun, .NET, Websphere, etc. Then again, these are just opinions based upon experience and semi-educated guesses.
And yes, I totally agree with Daniel, please more Methods on strings and arrays. And can we please clean up the Remoting, I had to search hell and high water to migrate from the MX way of remoting to the MX 2004 way of remoting. More information on that would be kindly recieved.
Posted by: adam at September 19, 2004 04:44 PM
I truly hope Flash isn't turning into one of these 'Amazing 3D Animation Just Click One Button' softwares where everything is too much premade. Leave some room for the handicraft, please.
Posted by: jp at September 20, 2004 07:31 AM
Brush tool problem - Comments invited.
I'd like to know if anyone else has had issues with the "brush" pressure tool on the Mac platform in versions after Flash 4. Our studio uses this tool almost exclusively, and in all PC versions of flash (before and after 4) and Mac versions of Flash after 4, it has changed so that the tool adds a huge number of control points to the brush stroke, resulting in jaggy brush lines and enormous file sizes. This is the single biggest flash issue to my studio, which has been producing Flash animation for TV since 1997, and has 68 half hours of completely Flash animated broadcast TV under our belts (Seen on Teletoon in Canada, soon on Animania in the US, and ABC in Australia, among others). I invite emails from other animators to share your experiences about this issue.
I especially invite anyone from the Macromedia team to contact me - I have detailed reports about this problem that I can share, and I have a 3 person tech / software development team who are very versed in this problem and who can prepare a full report to your specs (We're not looking to be paid - I just want to get this fixed)
Thank you.
Michael-Andreas Kuttner
Collideascope Digital Productions Inc
m-a@collideascope.com
Posted by: Michael-Andreas Kuttner at September 20, 2004 11:37 AM
Why dont you keep up with RIA idea ? The components are way too slow ! If you built an array with 100 data lines, the player gets stuck. MM should handle this first before inventing new features. MM propagtes RIA and gave out a half thought product.
Cya, Bernd
Posted by: Bernd at September 22, 2004 04:36 AM
I think macromedia should now create 2 products : Flash for developers and Flash for designers. The developer version should allow file access, etc and web apps made with that can probably have a warning like Java's JNLP/web start apps ("do u want to let the app access ur machine"). Just a thought ...what say ?
Posted by: amp at September 22, 2004 11:38 AM
Agree with Amp!
Flash must be better to handle text. Its a real pain right now working with large text blocks. If Flash could be more like Freehand when it comes to text tools it would be great!
Posted by: Jonas Skoglund at September 23, 2004 05:44 AM
Here are a few things I'd like to see in the next Flash release...
Stage.backgroundColor
Stage.frameRate
There is currently the ability to alter almost every aspect of the Flash environment dynamically except the background colour and the frame rate.
Microphone frequency properties.
Only volume (.activityLevel) is available at the moment, and the ability to retreive base and treble quantities would be a massive benefit. If the frequencies of sounds could be retrieved and set, graphic equalisers could be created to improve audio quality and clarity for voice and music.
Simple oscilloscope visualisations could be made based on frequencies, similar to how Winamp and media players work.
And... ability to alter the tab graphic for buttons instead of the yellow box outline.
Posted by: Paul Neave at September 23, 2004 07:17 AM
I agree with Paul Neave above....a better sound object would be ideal...even just the ability to grab and set 4 or 5 freq bands, the benefits would be fantastic.
However, since I have a sopabox of sorts, I have to say *slow down* with all the massive changes. 1999 - 2001 saw sites like praystation, etc bring reams of design/develop - ers to Flash (including me). I saw a whole new breed of web-design-develop type person evolving, interested in pushing UI design, entertain novel HCI issues, hooking onto backends and XML, and build up their own development skills using Flash.
MX seemed to build on that. But then MM seemed to get over eager, and force what looked to me like a very healthy organic evolution of the Flash des-eloper (not my word) into a business plan...get MX2004 out, turn these people into legit developers, now switch the language (I do love AS2), now central, now Flex...as my boss says, you can choose any two from the quality/quantity/quickness package, but not all three. perhaps the massive downturn in 'community' activity is a good indicator...people were all on board until the captain got a little too excited and wanted everyone going to his party and playing his games.
BTW, I really love Flash, but a free proce55ing/JAVA combo ....hmmm???
Not a rant, just an opinion, and certainly up for dissection. :)
Posted by: Daren at September 23, 2004 12:01 PM
I hope they still put in alot of developer stuff still too, i look forward to the new features but as agreed wit habove wish the flash player was alittle faster and stronger
Posted by: Mike at September 23, 2004 07:59 PM
great news mike,
im in remote area here, doing some special project in c#. i didn't managed to send you my ideas for flash's next version till now, but this news just puched me to start writing.
thats really good to have more designer features, bcoz now we (devs) wanna create some good gfx with ease :D
but there's a lot need for dev features to be included as well. like i posted before on mm forums. upgradation of DATE object. its shud be like C#'s date object. isn't it?
lots of data going in and out of flash, and data is mostly manipulated based on dates mostly. so its the real need.
i've lot more to say for other features, but when i compelete my mail, i'll post it here and to mike as well :D
looking for beta login :D
Posted by: chall3ng3r at September 26, 2004 08:32 PM
I think focusing more on the design side of things is a good move for the next version of Flash... as long as the current programming structure is kept the same, or improved.
I hope MM don't change the entire interface again though, that would be a real pain in the ass.
Posted by: Si++ at September 27, 2004 04:00 PM
Regarding the issue of audio in Flash, there are some ideas (perhaps) worth dropping here, although they are most likely Flash player issues;
- It would be really nice if there was a way to create a reliable click track for audio events.....frameRate is too variable, and as far as I know, setInterval is also tied to frame rate (or at least can fall victim to it at times), so I use the hack of using onSoundComplete along with a sound of the intended length. This however uses up one of the precious few audio channels...it would be ideal to have the ability to create reliable timers for audio.
- The ability to handle more than 8 sounds at a time.
- more usable implementation of sound.duration and and sound.position
Posted by: Daren at September 27, 2004 04:34 PM
Is it true that the next version of Flash will do away with Actionscript 1.0? Will Flash 5 movies need to be converted to AS 2.0?
Posted by: Mike at September 28, 2004 10:52 AM
full screen mode - like PS, FW, etc.
better font handling
image browser
Posted by: Michael Tuminello at September 28, 2004 11:28 AM
full screen mode - like PS, FW, etc.
better font handling
image browser
Posted by: MT at September 28, 2004 11:28 AM
hi,
i need in new version of flash function "MESH TOOL" - advanced gradient tool from Adobe illustrator ...
thank you,
fandango
Posted by: fandango at September 28, 2004 11:55 AM
Adding to all those wishlists above. I look forward to some improvements with the embedFonts and using them between two or more SWFs :)
Posted by: Arun at September 29, 2004 05:50 AM
I have a very small wish (including all the above mentioned ones;) .....
We need to have more HTML support. I have seen many e learning projects not made in flash, because of small things like super/sub script support.
Posted by: Owas at September 29, 2004 11:59 AM
cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
----\\ www.Vichitex.com �--I Blog//-----
-+- Team Macromedia Member -+-
Posted by: vicho at September 30, 2004 07:07 PM
In my opinion AS 2 is really a blessing. And actually I would like to see flash getting even more distance to this sometimes confusing timeline-metapher. But most important: better performance! Especially for heavy-data-duty apps. btw. How about a more complete implementation of xml and xpath?
Posted by: holgi at October 1, 2004 07:52 PM
>Is it true that the next version of Flash will do away with Actionscript 1.0?
no. that is not true.
mike chambers
mesh@macromedia.com
Posted by: mike chambers at October 2, 2004 08:52 PM
What are the chances of bringing back the normal mode in the actionscript editor? One of the cool things about flash was the ability to code when you did not know all that much about it. As a teacher MX 2004 did not appeal to students due to the difficulty in understanding code structure. I have seen a decrease in student attendance and interest.
Posted by: Digiguru at October 3, 2004 04:50 PM
Just a quick developer feature hardly needed:
Proper support for coding like code hinting (of my own classes, not just built in ones), Jump to definition of method in any file in a project.
In general, look at functionality of e.g. Visual studio.... which makes a coding life much easier. Much less to remember.
Posted by: Ben at October 8, 2004 03:42 AM
I am a developer and I am glad the macromedia is putting powerful new design features in the flash player 8 format. Without new design capabilities developers can not justify, to there clients, the use of a new flash player version. Transparency in Flash player 6 was a must have that made it worth excluding some users. No such must have was offered in flash player 7. Sure, I would like to use exception handling but, I can't tell my client that we are going to limit the user base to make my job easier.
With that said we must start to see more of a Microsoft Jscript.net implementation of the ecma-262 language (ActionScript).
We need abstract classes and above all else interfaces must support properties and getter/setters! If abstract classes are not allowed then let us put private members in interfaces so that we can treat them as abstract classes. (How to make a pseudo abstract class with an interface.>> <a href="http://www.actionscript.org/tutorials/advanced/Abstract_Class_in_AS2/index.shtml)" rel="nofollow">http://www.actionscript.org/tutorials/advanced/Abstract_Class_in_AS2/index.shtml)</a>
Posted by: Andrew Simmons at October 10, 2004 06:15 AM
It's my birthday, so I'd like to request one feature for a future version of the Flash player:
GPS device detection, just like the great microphone and webcam detection in the current Flash player.
With Macromedia's push into the non-PC market, and the price of GPS devices/add-ons dropping rapidly, there's going to be a serious opportunity for location-based applications. I'd be a very happy camper if the next version of the Flash player allowed us to start developing these GIS apps.
Cheers,
BB
Posted by: Bill Brown at October 13, 2004 06:13 PM
We desperately need better .swf encryption/protection. It is way too easy to use various actionscript viewers to steal code and assts from any published .swf
This is mostly happening to games, where webmasters take .swf files out of browser cache, remove any protection within it, remove copyright info, and then post our files on their websites as theirs.
Same thing to a lesser extent happens to web applications and sites as well.
Posted by: Mike M. at October 17, 2004 08:05 AM
I kind of felt this was going to be the next focus again.
I hope to see much more text control with (block) justify, leading, kerning etc and text on a path. setting the width of a textfield numerically in the IDE shouldn't distort the text either, but just reflow it.
more control of line style, possibly something like creature house has. better pen/subselection tool, i often want to select a vertex and put a numerical position in too.
improved masks with multiple objects an transparency graduations.
better sound synch, hardware acceleration
Looking forward to this release!
Posted by: Cyberdigitus at October 26, 2004 09:16 PM
Shape tweening i flash is a unique carismatic and powerfull feature.
I will re-wish more evolution to its possibilities as I have wished it a couple of versions earlier. Now that designers can wish..
More functionality to Shape Hints.
Ability to copy frames, add keyframes without leaving the hints behind.
Control of the hints through sets of keyframes - maybe grids..
Thanks!
Posted by: kamilla at October 28, 2004 06:41 PM
I would really like to see and improved timeline: With individual keyframes for opacity, scale, movement, etc. like after effects. And having each element in a different layer will a lot better, like director. Also being able to select many objects in different frames in the timeline and move them in the stage all at the same time.
Another problem is that when creating a keyframe Flash will split the elements in the timeline, so they are no longer connected (Graphics). I usually create an animation inside a graphic symbol and then do pans and zooms with the entire symbol. The problem is that if then I change the animation inside the symbol I then need to go through each keyframe to adjust the start frame of the graphic symbol.
Individual Frames per rate for movieclips
When I work with vectors I don’t like how flash keeps creating points in the curve by itself, I will like some way of blocking this.
Some way of stretching frames
A better sound editor
A tool like SWF Studio PRO for creating executables. I don’t see Central like a good alternative.
getBytesLoaded and getBytesTotal for movieClips and not just the whole swf.
Loading PNGs on the fly
Xpath coding
Some code to get the current, next and previous frame labels, and also all the frame labels in a movieclip
Blending options like photoshop: overlay, screens, etc
The info panel should allow to select all the 9 coordinates, not only top left and center
A better color mixer, maybe like that wheel with a triangle in painter
More gradient options
3D!
Posted by: Sebastian at October 31, 2004 11:44 PM
on the developer side, we use flash to create libraries of items that can be called by our apps. it'd be great to see something like master pages in quark, where you can set up a template symbol and create new symbols based off that master and when you want to change something, you wouldn't have to change every symbol, you'd just change that one master symbol. it'd save us tons of time.
Posted by: chuck at November 10, 2004 05:30 PM
It would be nice to see a new version that builds up on the previous ones!
(not a fresh start again as was the case with flash 7)
A cleaner version than the present one would be already an achievement.
But till Flash will not able to talk directly to a database (without a midway application) we will not in the position to talk here about a real new version of the product.
Posted by: shirley65 at November 11, 2004 07:13 AM
Any info about the support of CSS3?
Posted by: david at November 17, 2004 02:16 PM
I would like the ability to be able to skew,distort, envelope movieclips. This is something ive been looking to do for the longest while, also, being able to upload files through the flash player with a browse button the way you can in an html page. I think these 2 features are minimal, but very needed. Thanks for listening
Posted by: Kojac C at November 23, 2004 09:12 AM
Also, can you guys please make it so that you can mask text fields with no problem? its highly annoying that i cant do it without some workaround
Posted by: Kojac C at December 5, 2004 12:59 AM
Hello Mike,
I would like to say that the NetConection Debugger, has an interface horrible, icones of traces, status, return and call, could be different thus to have one better performace.
Sorry my poor engles
Posted by: Hélio Antonio Francisco Silva at December 9, 2004 03:16 PM
And please,please,please.........make skinning of components a visual excersice instead of playing with codes, linkage ids, etc..... geez
Posted by: Kojac C at January 2, 2005 11:41 PM
Why did they name it after a large bag of cocaine?
Posted by: Mike at February 2, 2005 01:26 PM
Macromedia should concentrate on actually making things work inside of Flash MX 2004 instead of plowing ahead with new features without making them work like they have done with each version so far. One person on here mentioned that Macromedia should bring back "normal" mode in a future version of Flash. Starting now, I don't think that Macromedia will bring back "normal" mode in any future version of Flash. The reason why is because with Flash MX 2004 we now have "code hints" that pop up telling us what the next step is.
Posted by: Jay at March 19, 2005 04:33 PM
It has become crystal clear that Macromedia has put zero emphasis on the future of data components in Flash. Believe me, I use them all with AS2.0 - (datasets,resolvers,connectors,xml,remoting), and have exploited all their features. I had faith that Macromedia would enhance these to the point of competing with the robustness of .NET datasets. That obviously never happened, and as a result, I have moved to .NET for building robust database application font-ends. When Macromedia released FLEX, the "writing was on the wall" for Flash database developers to abandon Flash. It is apparent that Flash will remain a designers tool.
Posted by: David Dumas at March 30, 2005 04:24 PM
Please fix the crappy, v2 components, listeners, and focus manager :-D
Posted by: John at May 5, 2005 10:57 PM
Maybe i'm going back a few posts, this is a big list of comments to read, but.....
all those flash developers who are moaning about this version being geared towards designer can up the f**k shut. Quite frankly, developers have ruined the flash format making it tacky and cheap. designers, at least those in the uk, have moved away from flash, like i have, in favour of gimick free consumer focused design. and in the first instance, flash grew because it was designers, not developers, who adopted it as the weapon of choice. it's about freaking time two things happend...
1) flash made mac friendly
2) More design features
so ram it if you're going to sob into your big geeky pillow just because the 8-ball team can't move forward at the speed of light, i for one welocome MM's stance on this release, lets not run before we can walk.
however, one more thing i'd like to see if you have the time, the ability to browse the users machine (file uploads wink wink). From what i've seen, this version is going to see the biggest improvements to the whole platorm sinced flash 4, so well done.
-t
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