The Future is Here

Whats new in Flash Pro CS6?

Finally Adobe CS6 is out… There are so many new features in the Adobe package.  I would like to go into a few new features that Flash Professional has to offer.  Honestly I have to say that some of the new features mentioned in various sites I find myself saying, “Sorry, what?”, so I hope this all makes sense.

Flash Professional features new support for generating sprite sheets for improved game development, it has the ability to deliver apps with a pre-packaged Adobe AIR captive runtime for a better user experience.  It also has a capability to export as HTML5, which means you can export animations, images and sounds, both from the stage and from the library, into clean JavaScript format. There is a new mobile simulator that lets you emulate tilting and rotating a phone (affecting the accelerometer and the screen orientation), as well as touch gestures like pinch-to-zoom.  Without going into detail Flash Professional also has come out with new debugging features.  From my research I have found that most of the new features are focused on mobile and HTML5 development except for the integration with Starling and the Stage3D library for 2D assets. 

All sounds so interesting, so now I am going to do some more research on what else Adobe CS6 has to offer.

More on Flash...

As a second year student we are learning ActionScript.  ActionScript is a language that is used inside the Flash software.  We are focusing more on the coding side, which has opened up a lot more doors.  Last year we were limited to design and and basic code snippets that Flash provides but this year we have really seen Flash come alive.  Our assignment we are currently busy with is a search game.  The DTP students designed the game as part of their assignment, and for our assignments we were given those games to make functional. 

We have just scratched the surface in terms of learning ActionScript and I am excited to learn more about Flash/ActionScript.

ADOBE FLASH PROFESSIONAL CS5

I'm supposed to tell you a bit about Adobe Flash Professional.  What is Flash?  Adobe Flash Professional is an industry – standard software or tool used for creating interactive content, including animation and other  applications for web and various other devices.   When you know how to use Flash Professional to its fullest, Flash becomes fun and exciting with so many possibilities right at your finger tips.  To use Flash you need to know how or learn to think outside the box, to be creative.  This is where planning and generating ideas is so key to creating anything.

I am currently in my 2nd year of Graphic Web Design and Web Development, in my 1st year I learnt how to use Flash, further down you will read about my painful experience with regards to using Flash, but for now, I will stick to the positive side of Flash.  This software opened a lot of doors to creativity - a new way of thinking and generating ideas – the possibilities with Flash  are endless.  This is where I learnt more about storyboarding and I realised the importance of planning properly.  There was also a level of coding involved when creating transitions,etc between various pages which I really enjoyed.  The effort that needs to go in to learning how to use a specific programme to its fullest is endless, there is always more to learn. 

In my Flash assignment for college, 1 of the sections we had to do in our assignment was a reflection essay where we were given the platform to share around the obstacles we faced, how we overcame them and kind of vent our frustrations.  I took this opportunity to vent about Adobe's CS5 Flash software with great delight.  I don't know if anyone else has had the same issues as our whole class where the software kept hanging, not responding, files going corrupt,etc.  In particular, the Bone Tool was a big issue in some cases, where whatever settings you had applied or where ever you had used the Bone Tool, at a later stage it would disappear, so what happened was we lost marks in our Flash exam because later when the file was opened by the lecturer it was gone. 

My personal opinion is that the software should've never been released with so many issues.  I thought to myself how can any software package be released that has  issues in the software, I had to constantly keep reminding myself to keep backup after backup of my assignment just in case the files got corrupted.  It made working with Flash and working on my assignment painful instead of having that fun and exciting experience, which is what it should be, you should want to explore the software and what it has to offer.

Okay I'm done, “I promise not to vent any more about Adobe Flash Professional.” - Jackie Bonarius.