Friday, September 16th, 2005 |
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What, you didn’t read the 30 blogs before this? |
When a Macromedia product announcement (or almost any announcement for that matter) comes out you know just about everyone blogs it. Well, to the cliff we go my fellow lemmings …
Flash 8 has been released. Actually Studio 8 has been released, but I’m probably not going to see the entire Studio lineup. We don’t use any of the other products at work, only Flash. I like Fireworks, and although I’m no designer I have used it to make people think I am 
Plus I think it does what it was designed to do better than anything out there.
Anyhow, to the meal: Flash 8 is totally worth the upgrade for me. As soon as I saw the Library panel stay put, a tear rolled down my cheek. Ok, not really, but I really was elated. The whole UI acts like it should.
Instead of going on about the features, which I’ll do at a later time, I’d like to share my IDE setup.
I have played with a few different panel scenarios to help my workflow, but with Flash 8 I feel as though I have found my ultimate preference. I work at home and at work and I have different setups: work> dual monitor at 1280×1024 (1280×2056), home> 1600×1200. For MX and MX04 I tried to optimize my workspace for each scenario. Although I had become used to the differences I know that I won’t have to live with that now that Flash 8 is here.
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Stage view |
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Actions panel view |
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Actions panel expanded |
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ActionScript file editing |
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And of course one of my favourite changes: The Library panel Now to the features … The Library panel now has a dropdown list so you can select the file for which you’d like to see the assets, open a new instance of the panel, and pin an instance to a particular file. This gives you the ability to make the panel act like it used to, or save space by only having one instance and selecting the file from the dropdown. I love aspects of programs like that, where you know someone pulled a feature out of their ass and everyone oo’d and aw’d at the lovely golden egg. |
I know at work we’ll upgrade, since we need to stay current with the technology we base our product upon, but after I used Flash 8 for an hour or so I told Tim (my boss … he hates being called that, but he is) that we need to upgrade. I’m a sucker for good UI. I’m not saying Flash 8 is the ultimate UI, just that Macromedia listened to their customer base and made the changes that the Flash IDE seriously needed. I know developers are crying for more features, but I think a lot of developers will be happy to use Flash when they need to. For anyone who needs to work in the Flash IDE and has worked with MX04 or prior versions, you’ll be ecstatic!
Thanks Macromedia!
Now … on with Zorn!
Btw, if you want to share your IDE setup please post a comment with a link to a pic, or describe as necessary. If you aren’t using Flash as your AS editor, feel free to post your UI preferences as well.
wow, never used actions panel on top, always had glitches when its on bottom! perfect!
one thing i never understood is why people dont like IDE AS editor? i dont use much AS class files, so maybe i never needed an external editor, but it seems a hassle to me to switch between IDE and external editor :/
It can be a hassle, which is why developers have been asking for so much from the Flash IDE. I really think a lot of these people wouldn’t have switched to another tool if the IDE was even starting to focus on improvements in the editor. However, Macromedia IS responding to requests, not by trying to tack on a few features, but by building a developer app from “the ground up” (Zorn).
I do work with external AS files a lot, and AS2 more and more.
Before Flash 8 I was using EditPlus for my AS editing. Why?
1. Source control. This isn’t done well with FLAs.
2. Editing text files is typically faster than launching Flash to do the same. Yes Flash must be launched in order to publish an SWF but then there’s MTASC.
3. Coding features. While EditPlus doesn’t have code-folding like SEPY it’s customization is pretty powerful. It’s also little things like producing a function list from the open file, advanced window control (sorting, tiling, etc.), find matching brace, bookmarking sections of code, adding/removing multiple lines of comment signs, cliptext, text filtering, good find and replace … you get the idea.
So, Flash 8 still doesn’t have any of these features (except for slightly better find and replace), but that integration really does count for something. Plus the codehinting and help.
Because I need to work in Flash as part of my job I REALLY appreciate the difference in this release. This is why I’m going to take a much better crack at doing my AS work in Flash 8.
they did not fix the “TOOLS” panel. boo!
I too prefer to work on my AS files from inside Flash. The number one feature i LOVE about the Flash editor is the “Code Beautifier”, or format code, or whatever you call it. I haven’t played with other editors too much, afraid to let go of the branch i suppose, anyone know if other editors have a format code feature? Unfortunately, using it has always made nested long-format comments indent with every execute, sometimes sending them completely off-screen. Which in turn meant, for AS2, discouraging JavaDoc style documentation. Before now, I have had to use tons of // to hold my code form. Which reminds me, it would ALSO be great for the code formatter to have a preference on whether or not to collapse lines that are totally blank….
I´m working pretty often with external AS2 Classes (in the Flash IDE). What anoyed me with MX04 was the fact that if you have an Actions Panel open, and then select an AS2 Class File Tab, the Action Panel remained open and you had to close it manually to see your AS2 source. When switching back to your fla you had to reopen the Panel. That was really a pain. I have not tried Flash 8 yet, but if they have corrected that then this feature alone is worth upgrading for me
It doesn’t close the Actions Panel automatically, afaik. But in my setup, I just get the AS panel out of the way, and you don’t notice the other greyed out panels.
Like I said in the post, in my 2 monitor setup that was REALLY annoying. My new setup doesn’t take advantage of the 2 monitors, but because the panels aren’t broken anymore I don’t really need 2 monitors for Flash.
What MM should have done, perhaps, is have the Actions panel mirror the content in the “stage editor”. That would at least give you the choice of where you want to edit your AS. They would just need to grey out, or disable in some way, the areas of the AS panel that don’t make sense to be there.
“The whole UI acts like it should.” .. I almost agree. #1 peeve for me is that you cannot grab the properties panel from anywhere on the panel - you must grab it in the top left corner. Seeing as this is the thing I move the most..it’s annoying. If NOT having this ability speeds up the IDE in general, then I understand why they did it. It’s funny how many times this usability has changed from version to version.
Secondly, the tabs within the inspectors eg. info/transform/align cannot be rearranged without breaking them off first.. that’s also very annoying. I’m just too used to having my order of info/transform/align since Flash 3 so I want it to stay that way.