TecKMagazine - Adobe Flash CS3 Review

Adobe Flash CS3 Review

Written by Don Lee

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

Adobe Flash CS3 sports a tremendous amount of changes and upgrades but I was curious if all these changes would make this product worthwhile or if it is just more window dressing. Flash has become an important part of the Web 2.0 specifications especially with its video playback capabilities.

I installed this product hoping for some more streamlined productivity because I want Flash development to be a little quicker and less tedious. Here is what I discovered about Adobe Flash CS3.

As with all applications in the new Creative Suite 3, Flash CS3 has closer integration with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. This means that you can move your Photoshop and Illustrator files into Flash without losing your layers. When you try to import your file, if there are incompatibilities with the import, there is an incompatibility button in the import window that will list the problems with file. After I tried to import my first Illustrator file, the incompatibility button explained that Illustrator file was in CMYK mode and that it wasn’t supported in Flash. I needed to changed the file to RGB mode and the issue was resolved. This is a very nice and extremely useful feature.

For those who really take their Flash seriously, you will be happy to hear that Adobe has implemented ActionScript 3.0. You can also recreate your Flash animations into reusable code that you can implement into other Flash-based projects.

Adobe Flash CS3 Review

With Flash CS3, Adobe has empowered the user with more user-friendly features but more importantly, they have brought a tighter integration with two of their most popular applications (Photoshop and Illustrator) into the mix. Because of the demand has grown tremendously for mobile content, the company came up with the Adobe Device Central. Here you can test your Flash project for a variety of mobile devices to ensure its compatibility. You can choose from a number of manufacturers and devices.

Another great feature is the ability to export Flash content as a Quicktime video. This is a pretty wild feature and I was very surprised by it. I even embedded a sample Flash movie that I created and exported as a Quicktime movie.

In case you have been living under a rock, you are probably aware of the growing use of Flash to display video. Flash CS3 has added some sophisticated but easy to use video tools such as cue points, video importing and encoding, closed captionaing, deinterlacing and component skins.

One thing about Flash that has always bothered me was the program’s drawing tools. In Flash CS3, the new Pen Tool provides users with the same artistic capability as you would find in Adobe’s Illustrator application. With full support of Illustrator and Photoshop files, this brings a new level of high quality creativity to the program. I’m glad that Adobe worked towards creating an integrated work environment instead of trying to build bits and pieces into a single application.

Adobe Flash CS3 Review

Even with all of the new features in Flash CS3, I would hope that ad agencies, design firms and anyone else who uses Flash for website advertising realizes that they need to include the “wmode=transparent” in their code. I have seen too many websites with ads displaying over drop-down navigation menus or other strange displays. It is surprising how often this option gets ignored when people are exporting their content.

Flash CS3 has improved in so many ways and has moved beyond being just a basic animation tool for the web. The application’s video and drawing tools alone make this a very important release in this product’s history.

Overall, Adobe Flash CS 3 is more than an upgrade. This is a must-have application for all web professionals. I really enjoyed and appreciate Adobe’s efforts in making Flash a more user-friendly product and I hope they continue to build on this trend because I feel it’s crucial to attract more mainstream users to the platform.
Adobe Flash CS3 earns 4.5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended.

You can click here to download a 30-day trial of Flash CS3. You can also visit the official Flash CS3 website at http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/ . You can also click the following links to purchase Adobe Flash CS3 for Apple Macintosh or Microsoft Windows computer systems.

About Adobe Flash CS3
Enjoy a fast, fluid workflow with Adobe Flash CS3 Professional software, featuring a streamlined user interface, advanced video tools, and impressive integration with related software.

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