©2000 Applelust.com

Reviewer: Joel Davies 1-03-01
Price: Full: US$399; Upgrade US $149.
Requirements: Power Macintosh with MacOS 8.5 or later, 32 MB of free available system RAM, 40 MB of available disk space, 256-color monitor capable of 800x600 resolution, CD-ROM Drive.
URL: www.flash.com and http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/
Contact: sales@macromedia.com
Rating: Four and three quarter bites from the apple.

A brief history of web graphics

Flash was originally developed by Macromedia to fill the gap created by millions of new web users in the last five years of the 20th century. As new users began experiencing the web, way back in the days of America Online busy signals and before cable modems, the single biggest complaint most users had once they actually managed to dial into their ISP was the long download times of graphics. The late nineties also saw the birth of the freelance interactive designer - and consequently, a lot of massively graphic Web sites loaded with huge .jpegs and animated .gifs.

Macromedia brought download relief to the interactive design community in the form of Flash - the first vector graphics program for web designers. Vector graphics are significantly smaller than their rasterized counterparts, as they contain minimal information about the image. Vector graphics are simply a set of points on a flat surface, much like a graph. The vector file only stores relative coordinates for the points, color information, and if the points are connected to form lines and shapes, the vector (in the true physics sense) between the points. Vectors are define as movement or force with both a given direction and amount of force.

Rasterized graphics, on the hand, are huge in comparison, even with various means of compression. Gifs and .jpegs are made up of tons of pixels, each with a given color value. For instance, a 300x300 pixel photograph displayed in millions of color has 90000 total pixels, each with 32 bits of color information per pixel. That's 2,880,000 pieces of information in one puny graphic. For simple images, vectors are a far better alternative for fast downloads than rasterized images.

Flash 5 is the latest in the series from Macromedia, and for those loyal Flash users out there - the upgrade does not disappoint.

Installation

Installation is fairly straightforward, and does not take up a great deal of disk space. I installed EVERYTHING on my hard drive, and the final tally came to about 60MB. I do recommend, however, resetting the memory allotment for the Flash program however. I have generally found the "suggested size" to be inadequate to complex interactive files, so if you've got the RAM, crank up the memory setting. To do this, use the finder to find the Macromedia Flash 5 folder you just installed. Open the folder and SELECT the Flash 5 program. Don't launch the program - you can't change the memory allotment for a running program -so if it's running, quit the software. With the program selected, go to the Apple File Menu, and pull down to Get Info>Memory. You can then increase the RAM Flash will use. I set 32000 as a minimum with a maximum of 64000. This will avoid memory related crashes and speed up the program. NOTE: make sure you have plenty of installed RAM before you do this. My powerbook has 192MB RAM - OS9 eats about 40MB, which leaves 150MB or so for me to play with. The amount of memory you give Flash should not exceed your total available memory - which can be found under the Apple Menu>About This Computer.

New Features

The single biggest improvement for the experienced Flash user is the new interface. It features tabbed docking panels that allow designers to customize the workspace to fit their needs. You can yank apart the standard panel sets and toss the stuff you never use, and then recombine your favorites in a manner that best suits your workflow. You can allow save and load different panel arrangements and sets under the Window menu.

In addition to the docking feature of panels, Flash users can also appreciate the sheer abundance of panels. Flash 4 utilized pop-up windows to add actions, sounds and animation, but Flash 5 now has panels for every operation you can imagine. This allows you to simply select items in the workspace and view or alter their properties at a glance. Docking panels are a tremendous boost for those of us who use multiple monitors - we can dump all the programming tools in one monitor, and have the creative tools on the other. Thank you Macromedia.

Assigning actions to buttons and frames has gotten significantly easier in version 5. The new Actions panel features both a Normal mode for quick action editing and Expert mode for Actionscript junkies. A feature that I appreciate is the "Insert Target Path" button at the bottom of the panel - which makes linking actions to a specific target symbol or movie very simple.

Text can now be better controlled with 3 panels dedicated to typography. The Character panel controls typeface, size, color, style, tracking, kerning and baseline shifts. It also now allows you to link type to a URL, just like web editors such as Dreamweaver. The Paragraph panel controls alignment, indents, and leading (line spacing). Finally the Text Options panel allows you to create 3 types of text: static (normal); input (for use with forms and passwords); and dynamic (text from an outside document or source). With a little experience, you can import text from outside HTML documents that maintain their HTML style attributes.

The timeline has been improved, borrowing a few tricks from its big brother, Director. Animating graphics and symbols is much easier in Flash 5, although you will need a little time to get accustomed to a few differences. Symbols placed in a movie now have a defined beginning and end in the timeline. Both of these keyframes are easily manipulated, but the end frame is a bit of a shock at first. After an hour of toying around, experienced designers will learn to appreciate the new keyframe.

Flash 5 also integrates standard vector tools, such as those found in Freehand, into the Flash interface. The Bezier tool allows you to tightly control vector curves and points, unlike the traditional Flash vector tools, which have a more "painterly" feel. Now designers can use either sort of tool as the situation demands.

Flash 5 imports many file formats - both rasterized and vector graphics from Photoshop and Freehand, and various sound formats, now including MP3 audio files.

Practical Application

To show off a few of these features - I've whipped up a quick project that serves as a public service to the Flash Design community. As a professor that teaches interactive design with Flash and a designer in the real world, I find that many students and pros make text buttons with poorly defined hit areas. In this quickie project, we'll make a text button and link it to a Web site

First, open a new Flash movie. Using the Text tool (the big "A" in the tools panel), place some text on the workspace. Goof around with the Character panel to define the color, size, and typeface (I've chosen Futura Extended Bold in a lovely red).

Next, select the text with the Arrow tool. Press F8 or go to Insert>Convert to Symbol to make the text a button symbol. A dialog box will appear asking you to choose a name and behavior for the symbol. Type in a name, and assign the button behavior.

We are now going to edit the button. Select the text again, and look at the Instance panel. We have an instance of the symbol (mine's called Applelust) on the workspace - and it behaves as a button, and will track as a button. Click on the pen and paper symbol to edit the button (where the mouse arrow is in the pic).

This is where life gets a little more complicated. Notice the timeline has changed to include 4 frame states: Up ( how the button appears as it sits on the workspace); Over (how the button appears when the mouse rolls over it); Down (how the button appears when the mouse button is clicked); and Hit (the INVISIBLE area that will activate the button. We need to add more keyframes to fill in the frame states. CLICK the mouse in each frame and press F6 or go to Insert>Keyframe to add a keyframe. Keyframes display as gray boxes with a dot in the center. You should have 4 total keyframes.

Now, select the Over keyframe, and change the color of the text. You should be able to tell which frame is selected by the red playback head (line) that appears through the timeline. Go to the Down frame and change the text to yet another color. By clicking on each keyframe, you should be able to see the color progression.

Go to the top of the workspace and look at the tabs. There should be a tab on the left that reads Scene 1, and a second tab with a button icon that displays your button name. Click the Scene 1 tab to leave the editing of your button and return to normal editing. Now, go to Control>Enable Simple Buttons, which will activate all buttons in the workspace. You can now roll over and click the button to see the different button states. However, you will notice that the button only works if you are on top of a solid area of text - the middle of an O, for example, won't activate the button. This is not only inconvenient to users, it is bad design.

Turn off the button by going to Control>Enable Simple Buttons again, and double click on the text. This will jump to back into button editing mode, just like clicking the cute little icon in the Instances panel. Select the Hit frame. This frame is invisible to viewers and only serves to tell Flash what area of the symbol should activate the button. Using the Rectangle tool, draw a box around the text (shown in an awful shade of green). This box will activate the text, and the bizarre button activation areas will magically disappear. Go back out to Scene 1 using the tabs at the top. Re-enable the Simple Buttons, and VIOLA, it all works correctly.

Finally, select the button and go the the Actions panel. Click the "+" and follow the Basic Actions to Get URL. Type in the URL you wish to visit (including http://) and you have now set up a linked button. You can Publish the movie in numerous file formats for web and CD distribution. Happy flashing!

What's still missing?

Not much. Well, it would be nice to have Flash import linked video files and display them in the Shockwave Flash file format. Some designers use Flash to make simple CD-ROMs, and having Flash play linked video files would be great. Apple and Macromedia have teamed up to some degree, as you can produce a flash navigation for an imported and linked Quicktime movie and export the new file in a Quicktime format. It is unlikely that Macromedia will bring video display features into Flash, however, as this would eat into the sales of Director.

I highly recommend Flash to interactive and motion graphics designers. It is fairly easy to learn the basics, but includes a ton of advanced functions for those who are looking to create state-of-the-art interactive projects using custom scripts. If you want to have a crack at the software before you spend 400 bucks, download the 30-day trial from www.flash.com. It is a fully enabled version of the software that will expire 30 days after installation.

Joel Davies