Another year has passed and Adobe, in a move that hails back to the pre-CS line, has a brand new advancements in their product line in the form of a .5 release. For a software that is web related, a big push has been made to give developers a stronger toolset to manage projects that need to perform on a wide array of displays and operating systems. With Flash CS 5.5 and Adobe Air, getting applications and video content to every type of mobile device has never been easier.
Ease of Use
Flash has always had a concise workflow with operations that make sense (once you get used to it, of course). The new features in Flash CS 5.5 fall in line with that ideology, but with less of a focus on creation toolsets and more to do with managing what has been created. All the options are available in logical locations and are pretty self-explanatory by their labels. For a more in-depth overview of the workflows of Flash, check out our articles on earlier versions of Flash here. The great thing about Flash is that the basic operations have stayed largely consistent for a long time and are improved upon with each iteration.
Code snippets are a quick way to get up to speed with understanding and adding functionality to your application.
New Features
First and foremost, every new feature or tool extension that has been brought to Flash CS 5.5 is intended to help deliver content to any type of screen available on the market today.. With the emergence of mobile devices, exporting to Adobe Air allows Flash content to be experienced on Android, iOS, and Blackberry as well as internet enabled televisions and your standard computer devices. Scripting in Flash allows developers to take the same content and focus more on reconfiguring the layout rather than the adapting the scripting functionality. Adding to that ability to test on connected devices via USB or virtually through Adobe Device Central, developers have an ability to test within a vast amount of environments before final deployment.
The changes made to increase productivity in Flash start right at the new document screen all the way to publishing the final product. The new document dialog box lets you set the dimensions and properties for the overall project from the beginning, rather than as 2nd or 3rd step in the process. Picking from a list of Adobe’s general templates, or some that you have created, cuts down even more time that goes into setting up your content. Here also, the new Auto-Save feature can be set to save your file on a time increment and placed in a temp folder. If Flash quits for some reason and you haven’t saved, on restart, you are given the option of starting from the last auto-save file.
Flash Projects have been around for some time, but they were buried within Other Panels in previous versions. In Flash CS 5.5, Projects has been released from the submenu and brought to the forefront to assist in the challenge of managing content that is reusable across a related project. From within Project, files, linked assets, and publishing destinations are organized in a centralized location. Upon saving a file, assets that are linked are updated in the AuthortimeSharedAssets.fla to be propagated to the rest of files within a project. Finally, whichever document is designated as the default file can be tested within the Project panel for debugging.
Asset caching is one of the new ways in Flash to optimize performance. On first play through, any embedded fonts and sound files will be cached so that any plays after that run faster. If any of those files are changed in any way, the caching process has to be done again, but the alternative of not having it at all would be much more time consuming.
Being able to duplicate layers with all properties attached can speed up production when trying to repurpose content for an animation.
To help handle building apps on the mobile devices, Code Snippets have been upgraded to support the new interfaces and their interactions. Code Snippets are a sort of shortcut code base for putting together functionality for Flash applications. The new Mobile Touch Events, Gesture Events, and Actions help to cover the interactions we’ve gotten used to doing on our touch devices. Clicking a single snippet gives users access to the Show Code and Show Description options that explain the action and assign it to whatever symbol you have selected on the stage. Having these scripts there to help users get started working with Actionscript really encourages its use and lowers the learning curve to beginners.
The publishing settings in Flash CS 5.5 has been streamlined, as well, to offer a completely revamped experience of working in this program. Most of the settings are the same with the exclusion of the updated player types that have been added to support applications on mobile devices. Taking away the extra clicks to accessing export settings is small, but welcome addition.
Before final deployment, Flash applications need to be tested on their targeted environment. The challenge for making apps that are intended for mobile devices is that there are so many of them with different dimensions. If you do happen to have a few of the most popular devices, Flash CS 5.5 allows developers to debug Air programs on any USB connected devices. And for the devices that are not readily available exporting to Device Central lets developers virtually test their application against a library of device profiles that can be downloaded.
Flash Projects not only help you manage the files associated with a project, but also keep linked assets consistent no matter which variation you are working on.
Depth of Options
Various areas of Flash have been touched to help accommodate the development for multiple platforms. To deal with the numerous dimensions, Flash has added a couple ways to speed up the rescaling of the stage when preparing for different aspect ratios. From the Properties panel, the width and height of the stage can be updated in near real-time allowing users to see the result instantaneously. In the Document Settings, there is a new option to scale content with the changing of the canvas size. This amazing feature gives developers a faster way of setting up files for multiple outputs with less manual lifting.
Another optimization option that developers can leverage is the ability to cache the images for faster rendering. The majority of systems are made to render bitmap images faster then vector content. In support of this process, symbols within the library can be tagged on the stage for “Export to Bitmap” when the final file is created. Even though they will be exported as bitmaps at final release, you will have all the power of vector based symbols until you export the final file, at which time the bitmaps are converted.
The Document set up screen has been refreshed to allow users to prepare their environment at the beginning rather then after the file has been established.
One new feature that has less to do with mobile apps, but more in common with animation, is the new pin option for inverse kinematics. Previously, joints structures would have to be moved as a group to keep the rig intact. With the pin option in the inverse kinematics properties checked, any specified bone stays attached to the position that its pinned too. This keeps placement consistent as you move your character across the screen.
A really small, but helpful feature is the enhanced layer options. Older versions would not allow animators to copy and paste duplicate layers the way After Effects (and Premiere Pro) users have been able to, with all assets, keyframes, and animations included. This is now available in CS 5.5 so artists can duplicate layers to later make changes from a common base. Seemingly insignificant until, for example, you have to animate a bunch of stars zooming across space in a similar trajectory, but varying sizes.
Pinning a bone in inverse kinematics allows artists to keep a consistent fulcrum on designated areas without pulling their character out of whack.
Performance
Flash has had a strong track record of performance and stability under most conditions. Long animations usually lag down the program, but smaller animations and applications run pretty smoothly. But that has been pretty standard within Flash. It should be stated that aside from program performance, the optimization options greatly increase quality of playback of .swf and Air files. This is invaluable not only for the end-user, but very helpful to the developer who has to constantly test their work.
The publishing window has been streamlined to show more information on one page rather then clicking through several tabs like in previous Flash versions.
Value
Flash CS 5.5 has a lot of really cool features, but it’s targeted at a specific end purpose. These updates are near indispensable for clients that want to develop for wide range of media devices. Being able to market your production for everyone to see with less tedious manual drudgery to prepare it is the necessity of all developers. For any Flash users of the last two releases, that is not developing for mobile devices, there may not be enough new features to justify the upgrade. But for those who own CS 3 and before, I would highly suggest jumping on at this juncture.
Final Comments The effort brought forth by Adobe for Flash CS 5.5 is not only focused, but substantial for the mobile development initiative. There’s a lot here that would be very useful to artists and developers a like who want more options to organize large projects (like the World of Depleted Creative Community that MFM is spearheading with creatives around the world) and better optimization. For a single user that has no desire to publish on anything beyond a standard computer screen, there probably is not a lot of benefit to making the upgrade. Of course, the problem with that thought process is you seriously limit your user base, which is the opposite of people getting larger viewership. And when it comes down to it, Flash is all about being able to show media to someone else. Ultimately, making the choice to move up half notch to 5.5 will make developer’s lives a lot easier to reach more media devices then ever before.
Ease
of Use
9.0
Depth
of Options
10.0
Performance
10.0
Value
vs. Cost
8.5
Overall Score
9.4
Michael Muwanguzi is a graphic artist and web designer currently living in Los Angeles, CA. Apart from working on print ads, web-related advertising, and 3D design work, he is currently working on new film production work and is designing a 3D adventure game from scratch.
Another year has passed and Adobe, in a move that hails back to the pre-CS line, has a brand new advancements in their product line in the form of a .5 release. For a software that is web related, a big push has been made to give developers a stronger toolset to manage projects that need to perform on a wide array of displays and operating systems. With Flash CS 5.5 and Adobe Air, getting applications and video content to every type of mobile device has never been easier.
