I Love Adobe Flash CS4!

Where do I start. I guess I’ll start with the new GUI. It is fabulous. Gone are the floating palettes and accidentally clicking through to the desktop. That was probably one of my greatest frustrations in my PC-to-Mac switch some years back. It is now one connected, but fluid, interface that has six preset layouts to choose from. Each layout caters to a slightly different audience, and I quite frankly will probably use two or three of them on a regular basis.

Here is an example of the “Designer” layout:

I love having the properties palette along the left like the above picture. In a way it feels a bit more life After Effects, which I don’t think is a bad thing. I will probably be in “Developer” view the majority of the time and it has a nice layout as well. It puts less emphasis on the tools, and removes the timeline all together. Removing the timeline was a no-brainer.

Another improvement to the interface seems to be a fix to the bug in the tabs. I’m sure others noticed the frozen tabs that sometimes occurred after you compiled and then came back and tried to click on a different tab. I would always have to click on the top of the app and then click the tab to actually get it to come to the front. Glad to see the bug fixed.

Users will also notice a greater refresh speed when moving and resizing things on the stage. I can really whip around symbols and it feels remarkably lifelike. Screen updates seem to take no time at all. (I admit I’m on a screaming graphics card though). But, they weren’t lying in their announcement webcast that it’s fast!

I don’t know how to explain it, but it just feels like Flash has been put together better this time around. It’s like CS3 was a lite version and CS4 is the professional one. The icons, buttons, scrollbars are all so much crisper and easier to navigate. It’s really awesome.

3D

This is obviously one of the eye-candy upgrades that people were looking for. I haven’t put the 3D through its paces yet, but it certainly opens up a new realm of possibilities. The rotation feel is not unline Maya in its smooth feel. This is certainly a relief as I hate tumpling around objects with a clunky 3D program.

Aside from the obious rotational aspects of the 3D feature it also has perspective angle camera. This should help in creating a more believable environment and was more than I was expecting in the first release. It’s safe to say that you will see an explosion of 3D effects, both good and bad, in the coming months.

Settings

One of the first things I noticed when setting up was the new Advanced Settings dialogue box. You’ll notice that is a bit of an upgrade and allows for more customization. This will probably be welcome to the hard core coders or people working on larger projects and/or teams. Here’s a screen shot:

Under the Drawing section there is a new “IK Bone tool” option. It allows you to Auto Set the transformation point. Under Text there is now the option to show font preview. It’s pretty much like Illustrator. It shows you actual look of the font in addition to its name.

Bone Tool

The bone tool obviously has some very specific uses, but I can recall two projects that I’ve worked on in the past that really could have benefited from this very tool. If you’ve ever rigged a character before you’ll have no problem jumping right into Flash’s bone tool. This was another one of Flash’s new splashy features. I will definitely find myself using this in the future.

Conclusion

I’ve only been playing around for an hour or so, but so far I’d rate the new Flash an A. I need more type to actually work with it before giving an in-depth review. I’d recommend downloading the trial and playing with it yourself. I was quite sceptical of this whole CS4 release, because I didn’t know what was going to be all that great about it. So far it’s pretty amazing.