Archive for September, 2008

September 23rd, 2008

Flash CS4: The photo tour of features

by Jen deHaan

After spouting off about the benefits of the new motion model in Flash CS4, I thought I’d take a bunch of screenshots of Flash, most of which are showing new features and such. For all of the following photos, click the thumbnail to look at the full size photo.

More after the jump.

September 22nd, 2008

The new way of tweening in Flash CS4 (or: New motion in Flash CS4 makes your animations better, faster, stronger)

by Jen deHaan

So now that you’ve heard all these great CS4 announcements, lets get into some constructive details about Flash CS4 (whoo hoo, I can finally talk about what I’ve been working on!). But before we start, this is the first time I’ve written in detail about a non-released product, so bear with me and please comment about whatever is really confusing or assuming you have the product already, below.

There have been sneak peeks of some of the upcoming features in Flash thanks to conferences and keynotes, and you may have seen that one of the big new features (and to some of us on the feature, *the* big new feature) is a new way of creating animation. So yeah, tweening has changed. Finally. In Flash version 10. No more arrows on purple blackground. Um, now it’s blue with diamonds. And a whole lot better in many ways.

Update: articles on Adobe Developer Center for the new motion model:

* Motion Migration Guide for Flash CS4

* Animation Learning Guide

More after the jump.

September 4th, 2008

(Flash CS3) Masking using ‘donut’ shapes within movie clips or with AS3 – it’s possible, and not too bad either

by Jen deHaan

You may have tried creating a shape that has a hole in it for a mask in Flash, and it may not have worked. Or maybe it did work and sometimes it didn’t, and you grew some extra gray hairs and threw your laptop at a wall. Or maybe you’re thinking “what the hell is she talking about now?”. I’ll start from (almost) the beginning [if you're not sure about making masks in Flash, read this super old tech support article.. it hasn't changed].

More after the jump.