First Look: Flash MX 2004

Flash sure has come a long way over the years, from its humble beginnings as a novel Web animation program (that wasn't even a Macromedia product) to today's juggernaut interactive authoring suite. And while it seems like only yesterday that Macromedia released Flash MX, it's time yet again to roll out the red carpet and welcome another version of Flash into the fold. Did I say version? I meant versions, as we now have two, two, two flavors of Flash to collectively deal with.

Flash 5, which came along in the late summer of 2000, was a milestone in terms of Flash's appeal to two separate, but increasingly intermixing, user bases. Designers and artsy-types continued to go for the animation, and developer folk got on board for the sudden maturity of ActionScript. For some, this marriage of the technical and the artistic was akin to the fabled falling of one's chocolate into another's peanut butter, resulting in a new breed of Flash designers that straddled the line between design and programming. With Flash MX, Macromedia unveiled their vision of Flash becoming the (pronounced "thee") tool of choice to develop rich Internet applications, combining the data flexibility of back-end server functions with all the funky-fresh things the Flash plugin was capable of, which, for the first time, included native video functionality.

Despite the advent of the "tweener" type of artist/programmers, Macromedia rightly figured that many Flash users who gravitate towards the design end of the spectrum sometimes don't give much of a hoot about the hardcore programming and data functions that the users on the development end of the spectrum do (and vicey-versey, as they say), and thus, two versions of Flash were born: Flash MX 2004, and Flash MX 2004 Professional.

So what does a split version of Flash really mean? I'll try to make this as simple as possible. Flash MX 2004 Professional is for you if:

• You need to tap into Flash's back-end hooks and data management.
• You are part of (or supervise) a team of Flash designers and need project management.
• You author for wireless devices.
• You need more and/or better video options than what Flash MX (2002) provides.

For everyone else, regular ol' Flash MX 2004 will probably be more than enough for what you're doing in Flash. Well, enough history and generally unenlightened pontificating. Let's get to some of what's new and improved in the two versions of Flash.

Both versions offer...

Tweaked interface. If you're a Windows user, you'll notice the look and feel changes right off the bat. The interface widgets are different, which is neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned, but there is the nicety of a tabbed document window (fig. 1), which beats the heck out of the way Flash used to handle multiple open documents. Mac users will be happy to know that Macromedia hasn't shoehorned the revised look onto the Mac version; instead, they've kept within Apple's interface guidelines for Aqua applications (fig. 2). Unfortunately, the Windows document tabs aren't present on the Mac. Incidentally, the sound you may hear is not me booing Macromedia over that. I'm yelling "Boo-urns." And so is Hans Moleman.

Figure 1

Figure 2

There are a few new panels in Flash MX 2004 (hereafter simply FMX04), and if you're anything like me, you like to keep a lot of them open at once. I've noticed so far that FMX04 eats up a lot more of your precious resolution than its predecessor, so be prepared to get creative with what screen real estate you do have. With FMX02, I was/am able to comfortably fit a subset of frequently used panels into the 1024x768 screen of my PowerBook; unfortunately, a workable setup under FMX04 under the same resolution has thus far eluded me.

A few interface changes of note include:

New "new" menu (fig. 3). FMX04 packs more than the simple ol' .fla file as your only document type, so it would make sense that you get a choice of what type of Flash document to create right off the bat. Common templates also come as part of the deal, which you can access through the New menu's Templates tab (fig. 4).

Figure 3

Figure 4

Integrated help. No longer banished to your browser of choice, FMX04's help files are constantly accessible through its very own help panel (fig. 5).

Figure 5

Publishing profiles. Most of the time I like to publish my Flash projects in SWF format only, which always means a trip to the publishing panel to manually turn off the default HTML option and set my SWF options the way I want them. No longer. You can now retain frequently used settings in a handy-dandy profile (fig. 6).

Figure 6

The history panel (fig. 7). Once revolutionary, now commonplace, FMX04 finally incorporates its very own history panel. Taking a page from Adobe's book, you can save actions from the history panel as commands in FMX04's Command menu. Speaking of which...

Figure 7

The command menu. Saving history palette actions as commands is only the first step. Macromedia has added an application-level, Flash authoring environment-only scripting language (called, creatively enough, Flash JavaScript) that lets users who are so inclined write their own actions. You can also download commands others have written from the Macromedia Exchange site.

Text improvements. The way Macromedia has improved Flash's text handling options almost qualifies it as a must-upgrade in my book, because, lets face it, people are finicky about how they view text. Customers always seem to want to make last minute text changes or tweak a font here or there, and while FMX02 had a lot of nice options for font customization at runtime, I always thought it could do so much more. FMX04 certainly delivers here.

First up, there's support in FMX04 for stylesheets, or CSS. This is pretty huge. You can use CSS tags either internally in your Flash document, or load external CSS files in at runtime and apply them to text fields. Now, you don't have access to every tag under the CSS spec; think of FMX04's CSS support as being roughly on par with the way Flash has traditionally allowed a subset of HTML tags when formatting text. And it's not exactly a feature for the casual or newbie ActionScripter, as FMX04 implements this feature as one of those infamous ActionScript Objects that tend to give the beginning scripter fits. Still, though, this feature is a tremendous timesaver for anyone who needs that extra layer of flexibility in the way Flash presents text.

The next text feature of note is aliased text. Not antialiased text, which Mac OS X and Windows XP users are by now likely intimately familiar with, but aliased text, which is a feature some have been begging for Macromedia to implement for many moons now. Aliased text is text that has had its source font "messified" with so that the edges of the font outlines stick to precise pixel borders (fig. 8). While the sample image in figure 8 might make one wonder why on Earth one would ever want to do that, aliased text can have dramatic effects on text legibility at smaller font sizes.

Figure 8

Scripting. Flash users come in all shapes and sizes, so to speak, so scripting improvements in FMX04 may interest some and bore others. Regardless of whether you care about ActionScript or not. FMX04 has some definite advantages over previous versions. First and foremost is the introduction of ActionScript 2. What is AS2? Well, directly from FMX04's Help file:

"ActionScript 2 is an object-oriented language that follows the ECMA script language specification and supports inheritance, strong typing, and the event model."

So what does that mean? Honestly, I haven't the foggiest. I'm not a hardcore programmer. I learned what I know about JavaScript by noticing that it looked a lot like ActionScript, for Pete's sake, so ActionScript aficionados may continue laughing at me. So, in true Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer fashion, your ECMA compliance and event models frighten and confuse me. All I know is that it's formatted a little different from AS1, which Flash's Script Editor (AKA the Actions panel) handles most of anyway.

But as much as I tried to disavow my geekiness in that last paragraph, my inner nerd still manages to get the better of me in the end, as I am excited about a few little niceties that make scripting in FMX04 a better experience than in FMX02:

Script pinning (fig. 9). If you have a frame holding a frequently accessed function, for example, you can click the pushpin icon and have it stay open even as you go to work on other scripts. Very handy.

Figure 9

Word wrap (fig. 10). So simple, one wonders why the Actions panel didn't have it before now.

Figure 10

Global search & replace (fig. 11). Although not directly accessible from the Actions panel (for reasons that escape me), FMX04 implements a global S&R panel that allows you to find instances of any text across every facet of your Flash file, scripts included. Long overdue.

Figure 11

Behaviors. FMX04 brings behaviors, long available in other Macromedia products, to FMX04. Behaviors in the Flash world are pretty much components that have been made accessible through a menu, and control otherwise hard-to-implement functions such as playing back external movie clips (fig. 12).

Figure 12

Accessibility. I tend to look at the blanket term "accessibility" as applying to a number of categories in Flash. Here in the States, "accessibility" might instantly cause many developers and designers to think Section 508 compliance. For those unfamiliar with it, Section 508 is the set of guidelines the U.S. Government has outlined (and, for federal applications, mandated) that computer-based informational programs (including Web sites) must adhere to in order to be accessed by those with visual, auditory, mobility, and other impairments. Whew! That's a mouthful. FMX04 builds upon FMX02's strides in this area, offering support for the Microsoft Active Accessibility spec and providing ActionScripts that help Flash communicate with screen readers. Additionally, new features like CSS support (discussed earlier) and Flash's new plugin architecture (discussed later) make it somewhat simpler to streamline your content for Section 508 compliance.

Making it easier to deploy 508-compliant Flash content is just part of the overall concept of accessibility in FMX04 (at least as I'm defining it). There are a ton of developers (of which I am certainly one) who get asked with a fair amount of regularity to create Flash content in multiple languages. FMX04 incorporates a couple of things to help streamline the process when more than one language is the order of the day. The new Strings panel (fig. 13) allows you to define a set of languages available in a movie and assign different strings to various text identifiers, and Flash automatically publishes a set of XML files (fig. 14) for each language. FMX04 even attempts to determine the user's language preference from the host OS and automatically serves up the appropriate language. Another globalization feature is FMX04's improved support for Unicode text, allowing you to embed fewer fonts if that happens to be your bag.

Figure 14

Figure 14

The last part of my so-called "accessibility trifecta" has to do with the fact that you somehow have to get your lovely Flash content into the hot little hands of those you intended it for, which we'll call deployment. Macromedia has always been sensitive to the fact that even in the face of Flash's seeming ubiquity, Flash is still an add-on technology when all is said and done. Included in FMX04's Publish panel are a new and updated set of HTML publishing templates (fig. 15), plus FMX04 is slated to ship with an updated Dreamweaver behavior if you prefer to add your HTML there. Also worth a mention under the deployment banner is that for those of you that use the Bandwidth Profiler, FMX04's version of this handy tool finally incorporates content that is streamed or externally loaded at runtime. Yay!

Figure 15

Miscellany. As much as I like to categorize, sometimes I'm left with some stuff that defies the often arbitrary labels I tend to assign such things, as was the case here. Let's just get to the list of what we'll affectionately call "other:"

Bitmap shifting. The bane of many a Flash designer's existence. I've run a few tests, and it appears that the long-standing bug (or "feature," if you want) of annoying sub-pixel bitmap shifts has finally been solved. I'm keeping my eye on this one, though. I've suffered many a sleepless night in the past working around this one, so I'll remain wary for the time being. A big ol' YMMV (your mileage may vary) completes this point.

Timeline effects (fig. 16). This is one of those new features that Macromedia is crowing about, and one that may be of dubious value to some and just plain invaluable to others. Timeline effects allow you to implement common effects like motion blur and drop shadows on-the-fly with any symbol (and non-destructively to boot).

Figure 16

Native PDF and Illustrator 10 import. This is Macromedia throwing up their hands and finally admitting to themselves that people are still indeed using Adobe products, so might as well support them natively.

Third-party plugins. This feature was teased a bit in FMX02, with the Flash authoring tool opening itself up to a limited extent by allowing third-party developers to write custom import filters for their Flash-compatible wares. FMX04 goes whole-hog, providing a plugin architecture for the aforementioned developers to create products that can generate Flash content directly from within the authoring environment itself. Macromedia already maintains a list of those developers and their products on their Web site.

Performance. Macromedia is claiming that FMX04 will offer anywhere from 2x to 8x improvement in playback, especially in the area of scripts execution and video content. My decidedly unscientific tests have confirmed these claims to some degree, with the most dramatic results coming on the Mac side of the coin. Movies that ran glacially slowly on the Mac are now running in the latest Flash player almost as quickly (if not as quickly) as they do on Windows. That's a huge leap forward.

Pro-only features

As I mentioned earlier, FMX04 comes in two varieties, the second of which carries the "Professional" label. ( So does that imply that the "other" version of FMX04 is for amateurs?) Anyway, there are a few user types that will definitely want to take advantage of what the pro version has to offer, the highlights of which I present to you now:

Developer stuff. FMX04 has a slew of features that might only initially appeal to those that spend their professional lives eating, breathing and sleeping ActionScript. However, even if you're not Mr. or Mrs. Heavy-Duty-Hardcore-Programmer-Type, these features might still, over time, add a lot of value to your Flash experience:

"Alternative" authoring. The Pro version of FMX04 packs a non-timeline method of authoring content called screens (fig. 17). Not that I would personally know, but this method of working is apparently familiar to those who come from programming languages like Visual Basic. However, there is the added bonus of screens-based authoring being an extremely visual way to author projects in a hierarchical fashion, such as presentations and the like.

Figure 17

Project management. FMX04 Pro offers a project panel, which lets you collect multiple Flash documents into a single project (fig. 18). This feature is ideal for when you might have more than one author working on a Flash document.

Figure 18

External scripters rejoice. There are many coders out there who have adopted some sort of text editor as their main environment for writing ActionScript, and FMX04 Pro has answered that particular call by offering a "script-only" mode when you choose an ActionScript file as the file type to work on. Granted, that's a pretty expensive text editor, but if you're upgrading anyway, you've got another workflow option for writing ActionScript.

Video stuff. Video was one of the marquee additions to FMX02, and with the '04 model, video in Flash is really beginning to shine. Macromedia has greatly improved the FLV experience, and those who may have hesitated to really push the limit with what Flash could do in the video realm due to FMX02's limitations in that area will definitely want to take a serious look at FMX04. Video improvements include:

Direct FLV export from your favorite NLE (fig. 19). FMX04 will ship with a plugin that lets you output video directly from any program that supports QuickTime output.

Figure 19

Improved built-in encoder. Both versions of FMX04 offer a much better out-of-the-box experience when importing pre-existing video. There are many more options available (fig. 20), and the quality of the final clip is very much improved.

Figure 20

External FLV playback. No longer do you have to import FLV files into Flash and then output them along with whatever movie you're working on (or as SWF files to dynamically load later). FMX04 (both versions) can play back external FLV files directly. And these FLV files will be progressively streamed to boot, which is another huge feature.

Media components. The Pro version of FMX04 will ship with a set of media playback components (fig. 21) that definitely make the rather ActionScript-heavy chore of the aforementioned runtime playback of external FLV files a lot easier to implement.

Figure 21

Live video. MX04 lets you use a live video feed as a video input source at runtime, opening up many possibilities in the Webcasting arena using only the Flash Player as the client playback tool.

And, in summary...

Well, armed with enough info yet? Good! If not, I'll grant you that there's a ton I likely left out, so please don't take it as a personal insult if I didn't happen to touch on the feature or area nearest and dearest to you. Overall, I don't consider Flash MX 2004 (regular or Pro) to have those groundbreaking features Macromedia would love for you to think that it does, but that's not to say that FMX04 won't be a very worthy upgrade.

More on that later....

This "first look" article was based on pre-release versions of Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004. We'll take a second look at these two packages once we have the final, boxed versions of the software and can adequately evaluate the retail versions, focusing on performance and other features that could not reasonably be addressed at the time of this writing. Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 are available now for $499 and $699, respectively, with upgrades running $199 and $299, respectively. Both support Mac OS X and Windows. For more information, visit http://www.macromedia.com.

Filed under: Feature on September 15th, 2003

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