VERDICT: A new interface, drawing engine and even programming language – but surprisingly little new power.

Under Macromedia’s development, Flash came to dominate the Macromedia Studio authoring suite with each release pushing back the boundaries of end user web experience. So what power does this first version developed under new owners Adobe unleash?

First impressions are encouraging, as Flash CS3 Professional is the only one of the former Macromedia programs which has been upgraded to share the new CS3 interface. By combining the absolute flexibility of floatable palettes and palette groups with the streamlined efficiency of collapsible docker windows and customisable workspaces this provides an excellent, productive working environment. For existing Adobe users coming new to Flash it also makes life easier but, for existing Macromedia users, the gain is less and comes at the loss of some familiarity.
It’s not just the interface that has been reworked along new Adobe lines – so has the entire approach to drawing. This is immediately apparent with the introduction of the familiar Bezier-based Pen tool that is common to just about all Adobe design programs. In addition two core new tools have been introduced for creating the most basic of shapes, rectangles and ovals, the difference being that the fill and outline of these new “primitives” are now inherently linked so that you can’t inadvertently select one without the other. The primitives also offer more editing options from the Properties panel so that you can quickly create and later fine-tune rounded rectangles, arcs and rings.

The reworked interface and design building blocks should help productivity

Again such core changes might take some getting used to for existing users of Flash, though the old tools are still there as options (if this is confusing you can quickly remove them from the current workspace). However this time the advantages are not in doubt. Flash’s old drawing system – where fills and outlines had a life of their own and overlaps of the same colour automatically merged into a new shape - was wilfully idiosyncratic and a major obstacle to productivity. In fact the main criticism must be that Adobe, with all its graphical expertise, hasn’t done as much as it could to update Flash’s drawing capabilities.

This criticism is partially answered by the new integration between Flash CS3 Professional and Illustrator CS3 (both of which are included in the Premium editions of the Web and Design CS3 bundles). You can now open AI files directly and, when you do so, you can see the full layer hierarchy and specify how individual layers should be handled. Symbols created in Illustrator CS3 are also fully supported including instance names and intelligent 9-slice scaling and the latter is now reflected directly on the stage. More powerfully, Flash Professional CS3 now shares Illustrator’s more accurate vector graphics engine so that importing artwork is smoother. Even better, this means that you can simply copy-and-paste objects directly from Illustrator so that you can quickly and conveniently take advantage of all of its advanced features such as DTP-style typography, brush strokes and transparency handling. Longstanding Macromedia users will miss Freehand which offered greater animation capabilities but, once you’ve got used to it, Illustrator certainly offers greater creative power.

New integration with Illustrator CS3 will help produce more creative designs

Vectors are key to Flash’s rich and efficient web delivery, but support for bitmaps is crucial too. Here the bundling of Bridge CS3 for image management is a major boon as is the associated Device Central CS3 (see review). If you’re buying Flash via one of the CS3 bundles, so is the enhanced integration with Photoshop CS3 Extended and Fireworks CS3. However while importing Photoshop PSD files now offers advanced control over how each layer should be imported, the import control for Fireworks’ PNG is more basic. This is especially disappointing as the new support for Fireworks CS3’s multiple pages and 9-slice scaling would otherwise make it a natural design partner.
Alongside its vector and bitmap handling, video support has recently become another must-have Flash capability thanks to its pervasive playback (Adobe claims 96% of internet-enabled desktops). After the major advances in the previous version 8 release the changes here are relatively minor with a redesigned interface for both the internal Import Video dialog and for the standalone Adobe Flash Video Encoder used for batch conversion. You can also now export your Flash movie to QuickTime MOV format with nested symbols and ActionScript fully supported so that you’ll see everything just as you would in the Flash player which might occasionally be handy for non-web-based delivery.

Flash CS3 Professional offers a completely reworked scripting language, ActionScript 3.0

The changes to video handling are relatively minor, but that’s not the case when it comes to adding interactivity to your projects. By default all new files are now targeted at the new ActionScript 3.0 language. This is a complete rewrite of ActionScript 2.0 designed to bring it into line with current object-oriented programming practice and the ECMAScript standard. A number of benefits ensue starting with far more robust and helpful debugging and the ability to handle larger projects with intensive data handling. Most importantly, end performance is more efficient with Adobe claiming that some (no doubt carefully chosen) cases of ActionScript 3.0 code execution are up to ten times faster.
Clearly a stronger programming platform offers general longterm benefits but what about specific immediate gains? The first sign of these are the updated range of user interface components such as buttons, datagrids and video playback controls. Thanks to their ActionScript 3.0 underpinning these UI components are more streamlined with less of a download overhead than their predecessors. They are also easier to customize. Double-click on a Button component, for example, and a screen with all available states is shown – double-click on one and it opens for editing. It’s certainly an advance, but the range of components is still limited and skinning could still be a lot easier.
Another new capability is the option to convert an existing animation to ActionScript 3.0. Select a tween-based animation track and the Copy Motion As ActionScript 3.0 command and a programmatic description of the animation is copied to the clipboard ready for pasting into the Actions panel. The resulting programmatic animation is more lightweight and flexible than the tween-based version – but I can’t help thinking that neither approach is really satisfactory. Flash is desperately in need of a modern property-based timeline like that found in AfterEffects.
Apart from processing speed, the new ActionScript 3.0 architecture doesn’t bring any obvious must-have end user features in its wake, but it does bring some immediate downsides. Most obviously there’s a new learning curve for authors to get to grips with – though at least the Actions panel’s ScriptAssist mode has been updated to help ease the transition. In addition there are some important issues of interoperability with existing ActionScript 2.0 SWFs. Most importantly, any project based on ActionScript 3.0 will only be viewable by users of the Flash Player 9 and above which currently seriously limits your potential audience – though this situation will rapidly improve. The bottom line is that, if your project can live without the performance gains, you are probably better off doing without ActionScript 3.0 – and without Flash CS3 Professional come to that.
The Flash platform remains a key part of Adobe’s vision for the future of the Web, and imminent developments, such as the current “Apollo” project to enable offline as well as online handling, will shortly usher in some exciting new capabilities. In the meantime, after Flash’s long history of breakneck development, Flash CS3 Professional is a consolidation – and a bit of a disappointment.

EASE OF USE 3/6
FEATURES 4/6
VALUE FOR MONEY 3/6
OVERALL 3/6