Just to give equal air time to my apparently scandalous post proclaiming how much I liked Flash CS4, let me say that it is not perfect and there are some things that bug me about it. Still, overall, an awesome release, but just to prove I’m not an Adobe robot, here we go. Note, these have to do with the OS X version. Not sure about Windows.
1. It takes a while to start up. The splash screen comes up and stays on top of everything while it launches, rendering your computer relatively useless while you wait for it to finish. No way to click on it or otherwise make it go away.
2. I love the new single window UI, but something odd happens all too often. Maximize the window, create a new FLA, then Cmd-S to save. A save dialog pops up from the bottom of the screen. Escape to close that window. The whole UI slides down about 1/4 way down the screen and you have to re-maximize it. Grrr.
3. I mentioned this before, but the live stage preview thing really irks me. Essentially, there’s a Flash player running in the stage full time. Just create a new FLA and your CPU jumps up to an unacceptable level for a program that is sitting there doing absolutely nothing. Up to 12% for me. CS3 in the same situation is under 1% CPU use.
4. Window management needs a bit of work. It’s not bad, but I have one workspace set up with just about everything closed but the Actions, Output, and Compile Errors panels, with the Actions panel taking up about half the screen. That’s my “Code Monkey” workspace. And another workspace with tools and components and align/info/transform/color, etc. etc. showing. When I switch back and forth, about half the time the Actions panel in the Code Monkey workspace has minimized or is at least much smaller than I set it. Can’t get it to stick the way I want it.
5. Library Panel. Various weirdnesses. If I close the library and reopen it, I often get something like 4 extra library panels opening up. WTF? Also, I feel that in the library list, the selected library item is not highlighted nearly obviously enough. It’s really subtle. A slight shade of gray different from the unselected items.
6. Focus issues. I really often run into a case where I switch to another program such as Mail or Adium to check something, then click on Flash to go back to it. But Flash doesn’t always get focus when you do this. I’ll start typing something, thinking I’m typing into Flash, and instead I’m sorting my mail, or typing into an Adium window, or doing something random in some other application. Repeated clicks in the Flash UI absolutely refuse to give it focus. Only by Cmd-Tabbing to Flash does it get focus.
I suppose I should officially log these as bugs with Adobe, but I’ve been utterly unsuccessful in logging into the public bug base. Never sends me a confirmation email, then says I’ve already got an account, but my password is wrong, ask for new password, it never arrives. It’s a long sad story. Hopefully someone at Adobe is listening and can either fix my bugbase account or log these things as bugs for me.
But again, overall, I love CS4. With these things fixed, I would love it even more.
I could be missing something, but I’ve noticed the Actions panel doesn’t have vertical handles when you mouse over the top of the actions frame. The bottom does. Some how my Actions panel is too tall for my laptop screen and so I can’t resize it vertically. I can click the dark grey title bar to turn the panel pack into a button but expanding it back out still does the same thing. Luckily I rarely script anything on a frame.
I’ve also noticed some significant lag when undoing when working with Armatures. I assume this is to do with the live preview.
I’ve found that from Flash 2004 onwards, the IDE has been extremely buggy across various versions of windows. Not had a chance to use CS4 yet, but CS3 has major issues with any item you un-dock and use as a panel – e.g. making the errors output full screen on a secondary monitor. It never stays in the right place when you re-load flash.
And why does the help panel open full screen on my second monitor everytime I load flash CS3? What are you trying to tell me, Adobe? lol xD
(This is all in *shudder* Vista)
Oh, bummer. I’m still on CS3 but I was really hoping they’d take care of #1 and #6. The splash screens for Photoshop and Illustrator are able to sit behind other apps… I don’t understand why Flash has to sit on top of everything.
Something that happens to me in CS3… occasionally I’ll click on a tab and instead of bringing that document to the foreground it will disconnect it from the Flash IDE completely. So I’ll have a big white tab in the foreground and the timeline/workspace I’m trying to get at will be stuck, floating in a fixed position behind the IDE. Have you experienced that in CS4 at all?
Will – I had that problem when I was using CS3. I was using a free-floating actions panel, and every time I started up Flash, it would become really tall and go off the bottom of the screen. Not happening in CS4 luckily.
I also have had problems with keyboard focus in Flash. It seems to be a bit better in CS4, but often when I switch to Flash from another app, I cannot use keyboard shortcuts without playing around with it for ages. I think Flash CS4 has solved a lot of CS3 interface bugs, but it is certainly not perfect.
excuse me, you use the Flash IDE for AS?
Phillip, not for large projects, but experiments, spiking ideas, most of my artfromcode.com stuff, yeah.
I’ve been using CS4 for OSX since I installed it last Friday.
1. Yes, it does take a long time to launch, but I can’t think of a single Flash release (besides 8) that did not take longer than its predecessor to open. By the middle of the product cycle, the latest and fastest CPUs will be able to open it in a reasonable amount of time. 😉
2. This doesn’t happen to me.
3. I haven’t noticed an issue but I am on a 2.8GHz Quad Core Mac Pro with 4GB RAM. Maybe my 2.33GHz MacBook Pro would notice it more. Maybe they should make it an option under Preview mode (where Full == Player).
4. There are all kinds of issues with the panels on OSX (and Windows). On OSX, if you turn a panel into a standalone palette and minimize Flash, the panel doesn’t go away. In Windows, this works fine.
Speaking of Minimize, Apple+M does not minimize the Flash application! There is no keyboard shortcut in Flash assigned to Apple+M so there is no conflict, it just doesn’t work. This needs to be fixed!
On both systems, the transform panel doesn’t have its maximum height constraint properly set and has issues when grouped with other panels like Properties that other panels like Info and Align do not have.
5. I haven’t seen this issue, yet. I agree with the selected library item comment.
6. Haven’t seen focus issues like this, yet, either.
I’d like to see the following issues addressed:
1. Command+M to minimize.
2. Unbreak the Info panel on Windows and Mac.
http://www.stevensacks.net/2008/10/31/flash-cs4-for-windows-breaks-the-info-panel/
3. Dimension Lock breaks badly when you use the drag value feature.
http://www.stevensacks.net/2008/10/31/flash-cs4-dimension-lock-broken-when-sliding-values/
Like you, I have had nothing but issues submitting bugs with their system.
I just confirmed my CPU usage on OSX. When CS4 is open but no document is open, my CPU usage is around 1.7 – 3.0%. When a document is open it’s 2.5-3.5%. Not much more. I’m guessing the Quad Core has something to do with it, but I’m not sure.
problem number 6. is a big pain in the a$$ and i’ve experinced it too.
i think it occurs even when jumping from space to space.
i set flash to open in space 2 and when i jump to an application in space 1 and then jump back to flash it somehow loses the focus and i need to jump back and forth to get it back.
annoying 🙁
I just pressed Cmd + H to hide Flash, but it didn’t work! Pressing ‘Hide Flash’ in the Flash menu didn’t work either. Thought I should add that to the comments, since this is not the first time this problem has occurred.
Where is the public bug base for the Flash IDE? I know bugs.adobe.com has listings for Flex, Blaze and Flash Player… but not the IDE. I have a few I’d love to log as well…
@James Cmd+H works for me.
maybe in the future nobody want to buy 《make things move》。because cs4 to help People complete。
I’m curious if these are the types of things Adobe fixes, or do you have to wait until the next version? I’m not so familiar with Adobe’s updating policy for inconvenience bugs.
Mike, Adobe / Macromedia historically has not done updates to the Flash authoring tool. Flash MX 2004 was a big exception, which got 2 updates. It was also a historically flawed release initially. Point releases on a large, expensive tool like that are a tough call. Do you charge for them and piss off the community? Or spend massive amounts of time fixing bugs and doing QA and delaying working on the next major release for no profit, but only goodwill from the community? I think things have to be pretty bad to warrant a point release. While there are some things I’d like to see changed, I don’t see anything that makes me think they’ll be doing a point release for Flash CS4.
KP – I have now experienced the focus issue, as well. Annoying.
I’m in the process of writing a blog entry about the new property panel and how I feel it was theory that did not hold up usability-wise and is counter-productive to workflow. I think somebody was attached to it and would not let it go and now we’re stuck with it. I want my old property panel back, and I want it back now. 🙁
The CMD+H (bug) is only found to be an issue some of the time.. and only to Leopard, it seems. When it happened to me I re-assigned the command via the Mac’s Keyboard shortcuts manager.
Another issue, for me, is you can’t scroll with the mouse wheel in the Font drop-down. Anytime I do, it just jumps ahead and closes.
There are a lot of animators complaining about Flash CS4 being really slow when it comes to doing any timeline animation that isn’t anything trivial, that the other versions of Flash handled fine. Which is ironic when this was supposed to be an animation/design release. Some people are returning CS4 and sticking with CS3 just because it’s unusably slow. On both Mac and PC.
I have been really put off by this and haven’t upgraded yet. And suspiciously there are no demos to try yet, so I won’t be taking the risk myself. I was really looking forward to CS4, and usually love upgrading and learning the new features. But if it’s going to get in the way of animation work flow then I don’t think I can upgrade.
http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?t=780172
Is there anyone here that does heavy design/animation (lots of layers, symbols and keyframes) that can confirm or dispel this?
Ranoka –
Yes, the motion editor is unbelievably slow. It is the slowest keyframe editor I have ever used, and has all sorts of usability issues. It is definitely not ready for primetime. In fact it has been a major let down so far.
here are a few of the issues I’ve experienced:
1. The scrollwheel works in the timeline window, but does not work in the motion editor.
1a. The “motion editor” dissappears when playing the timeline, and doesn’t reappear after playing (pressing enter) until you click on the tween object in the layer again.
2. Moving the playhead in the timeline does not always resync up the current frame in the motion editor. But it appears to do it from the motion editor to the timeline.
3. It is incredibly difficult to move keyframes in the motion editor without changing the keyframes value (you can move side to side, but it will nudge up or down a few decimals of a pixel… even while holding down “shift”) They could improve this a ton by adding some keyboard shortcuts to move the selected keyframe to the right or left
3a. When attempting to move a keyframe, it takes about 4 seconds after clicking and holding down before I can actually start dragging it around.
4. It is even more difficult to remove frames out of a new tween layer. My current workaround is to place a blank layer above the tween layer, and click into the blank layer, and drag down into the tween layer to highlight the frames I want, then right click and “remove frames”
5. Inserting blank frames into a tween layer is equally as difficult as removing.
6. This one really sucks… I often will create timeline based animations in an empty “scratch” fla, and then embed those into a movieclip that I can move into my project once it is optimized. The first time I tried this, the tweens appeared to copy, but the actual values of the tweens were corrupted and the animation was all out of wack. I discovered a workaround to the problem by highlighting all the frames and copying and pasting the frames, instead of copying and placing the movieclip containing the frames… ugh. Something tastes like spaghetti ;-)…
7. And a real winner is the ability to just change the endpoint of your tween, and it will remap all the keyframe positions based off their relative position… So you can easily make a tween slower or faster… The problem is, I could not get it to be consistent when extending my tweens, i.e. sometimes a keyframe would move from frame 9 to frame 14, sometimes it would move from frame 9 to frame 15.
8. This one isn’t related to the motion editor, but is a huge pain in the arse for a des/dev – the “full” preview mode no longer works. When you go into a nested symbol, it is not possible anymore to have the parent objects display as normal, they will always be “grayed out”.
In the end, it is right in line with what Adobe always does. They talk about a killer feature, but then they implement it too poorly to be one. So… the users wait 2 or 3 years for the next major release when they get it right…
Fortunately you can create “a classic tween” which I haven’t tried yet, but I assume you could do this if you wanted to keep your old workflow.
Well I never used the motion editor or really any of the new tweening stuff, but I have heard other similar stories. I’m surprised to hear it though, as I know some very well known animators were testing it all along.
Thanks radscientist for your full explanation.
I’m not sure I would be able to work like that, and the Motion Editor was the one addition I looking forward to the most! It’s a shame to hear how much of a pain it is to use it.
I think any release that hinders workflow and reduces productivity is a bad one, no matter how many shiny new toys there are. If you can’t painlessly do the fundamentals then it’s pretty useless. And if I’m going to avoiding the new stuff ‘cos it’s slow, then I might as well stick with what I’ve got and save myself the extra pain.
Since Marodobe don’t do free point releases (accept for MX 2004, oh boy what a release!) we’ll probably have to wait till CS5 for a stability release or something.
One way I noticed for hiding the startup splash screen (on mac) is to show the desktop (F11) and then open a new window in safari or whatever you want to do. Though some stuff like clicking the app icons in the doc will bring back all windows (the splash screen included) so you would have to open say safari press F11 and then cmd+n and open a new window.
Keith,
I’m sorry to say this, I really am, but after battle testing Flash CS4, I am extremely disappointed. I’m going to be writing up a blog about all these issues, but here’s just a taste.
The new Properties panel is riddled with issues. Besides being a workflow killer, where you spend more time battling with it than using it (i.e. it slows you down), there are stupid bugs with it, like if you draw a box without an outline and set its width to 1, the width is then LOCKED in the Properties panel and if you try to tab to the field it skips it. You can adjust the width in the Info panel just fine.
And there’s the bug that the new click and drag feature doesn’t calculate locked values correctly and which is a tool whose novelty wears off almost immediately when you realize how much slower it is than actually typing values (think drop downs for entering month, day, year vs just being able to type in the numbers, only there are no invalid values here).
There are issues with the scrolling which are nightmarish. The color picker having a click and drag value changer is a huge mistake, pretty much useless (who would really drag those values), is buggy and causes workflow problems. The second Font combobox, while exciting with its promise (I was really stoked about it at first), in practice is buggy and unreliable. This is just a taste of the issues.
I absolutely hate using the Properties panel now because it slows me down SO much. It used to be a great shortcut, and if I needed full functionality, I’d use the explicit panels, but now, I have to use the explicit panels for everything to get anything done, and it’s much slower to do so.
As just one example of the terrible effect it has on Flash development workflow through inconsistency:
The order of the W,H,X,Y fields in the Properties panel is a departure from the Info panel, and the way the fields have been arranged SINCE THEIR INCEPTION. In the Info panel and all previous versions of Flash Properties panels, the order is W, X, H, Y. In CS4, the Properties panel is X, Y, W, H. As you can imagine, this causes major workflow issues. I now have to THINK about what values I’m typing in depending on which panel I’m using, instead of just instinctively knowing the order. I’ve used Flash for years now, so I’ve learned until I forgot the order of those four fields. By changing the order in the Properties panel, they’ve added inconsistency in their own application and slowed down development workflow even more.
There are a lot more issues with it which I will get into in my post (obvious Library bugs, Tools panel bugs, Timeline bugs, etc.), but suffice to say, the new Properties panel is counter-productive and was not well thought out.
Damnit! I was so excited when I first opened CS4! It’s still way better on Mac than any other version, but this new Properties panel and these bugs in the IDE are killing me. It actually makes me miss CS3. I can’t believe I’m saying that.
Hi Will,
I’m not sure why the Actions Panel is too big for your screen, but there is still a way to resize from the top-down in CS4. It’s not as intuitive, but you can do the following:
1. Collapse the Actions Panel into floating icon mode.
2. Click on the Actions tab in icon mode to open the Actions Panel.
3. Resize from the top-down. I think the hit-area for the resizer is smaller than in CS3.
You can do this for any panels that are too large to fit in your screen.
HTH,
Nivesh
@Nivesh – you totally saved my *ss here. It wasn’t about a laptop, the Actions panel somehow got too big on my 24″ iMac – so that was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a lot for sharing!
Hi Steven,
RE: 4. There are all kinds of issues with the panels on OSX (and Windows). On OSX, if you turn a panel into a standalone palette and minimize Flash, the panel doesn’t go away. In Windows, this works fine.
This is standard panel management behavior for Mac’s. For example, if you open the Downloads panel in Firefox (Tools -> Downloads) and then minimize Firefox, the Downloads panel will remain open.
Thanks,
Nivesh
I too like the update, and also have a few grievences. The window focus issue has been with me since at least CS3…it’s a pain that has conditioned me to always click an Adobe dock icon in order to return to the app. The project panel seems cooler buy still too limited.
Most recently I encountered a namespace bug where local instance variables are being mistaken by the compiler as imported packages. So when I import com.bit101.MyView, and also instantiate a var bit101:Boolean=true. The compiler reports that the package bit101 cannot me converted to a Boolean type. Seems some wires were crossed. I might try reinstalling.
Is there anyone who can confirm this error? I’m wondering if perhaps my installation was somehow corrupted.
import mypackage.MyClass;
var mypackage:Object = { test:’WhyConfusePackageWIthLocalVariable?’ };
trace(mypackage.test);
//1202: Access of undefined property test in package mypackage
It’s not a bug. And your installation is not corrupt. You have a variable with the same name as a package. When you say mypackage.test, which one is the compiler supposed to look in – the object or the package? It’s ambiguous. You expect it to look in the object first, but apparently it’s looking in the package first.
The solution is simple: don’t use package names as variables.
Lee,
I’ve been having namespace issues as well. And it will come out of nowhere for me. 2 out of every compiles error out on me. I’ve found that I have to just restart my computer everytime that starts to happen. But I’m getting:
5005:Unknown error optimizing byte code.
And in the location is just simply:
,Line1
Has anyone else noticed how freakin’ slow it is to compile? Especially when you are trying to compile FP10. This is close to being a showstopper for me.
@ kp: Yeah, at some point, I became lazy with naming packages, and got away with it in CS3. The solution is defining a full path.
import com.mypackage.MyClass;
var mypackage:Object = { test:’WhyConfusePackageWIthLocalVariable?’ };
trace(mypackage.test);
//Hello World
From Adobe: This is not a bug. We allowed this in CS3, but it was actually unintended. In CS4, we follow the ecma specification which state that imported package names shadow names of definitions in the same scope when used on the lhs of a dot operator (ie they look like package references). Workarounds include wrapping the reference in parens.
oops
import com.mypackage.MyClass;
var mypackage:Object = { test:’Hello World’ };
trace(mypackage.test);
//Hello World
How to make Flash CS4 help panel use LOCAL help files:
Delete or move this file: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Help\en_US\Flash\10.0_ExtendingFlash\helpmapBaseUrl.txt
and this one:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Help\en_US\AS3LCR\Flash_10.0\helpmapBaseUrl.txt
And relaunch the Flash CS4 and voila. Now u have local-help panel.
Cheers. ^_^
I’ve been starting to get into CS4 and see lots of great features, but the help system I think really has taken a few steps back in usability. Aside from not making it easy to switch to local files (@Jloa: I tried what you said but I’m still somehow getting to adobe.com), I also have problems because my Internet is mediocre so load time can be extended.
Also, a big beef I have is that that third-party help files seem to be inaccessible — I tried finding them in the Extension Manager (Help > Manage Extensions…) but I was out of luck. Hopefully I’m just overlooking something. Do you know where they may be accessed?
CS4 is as slow as a dog. CS3 was pretty slow with certain things, especially when you were copying or moving things around in the library. I always guessed it was something to do with checking if there were duplicates of names or linkages (export classes) and was hoping it would be fixed / sped up in the new release.
How wrong was I?! I bought the upgrade (full suite) on the pre-order as I was excited to start using CS4, if at the very least for it’s SWC support, and really feel like I’ve had a slap in the face. Opening items in the library can take up to 3 seconds, even moving between items in the library (arrow keys or single click) is that slow! And this is on my new system – Quad 2.6gHz 4G ram Vista 64bit! And it takes up to 20% CPU when doing this too 🙁
I’m guessing some of this is because of their new live preview feature (something to do with using Flash to render what you’re seeing so you get accurate results or something) but this is ridiculous. It slows my work down to a crawl, especially when trying to set up assets for a large project, which is becoming more and more what I use Flash IDE itself for as it becomes less and less useful anythign else (using FlashDevelope / haXe etc).
I’ve also found that if you guide a layer, that layer shows up in the library preview, but not the stage (as far as I can tell it should not show up on the library preview, or at least that’s how it has always worked).
In the properties of the library the “Type” selector is now a drop down box? Why? Are they trying to save space? It now takes 2 clicks to change it, and they’ve removed the contect menu for type as well so it makes it REALLY slow.
I really feel like I should be getting my money back as I’m now still using CS3, and guess that as soon as I want to FP10 specific things I’ll be better of using either the Flex compiler or something like haXe (no I’m not a haXe lover but I’m feeling I’m being forced that way just so things aren’t so freakin’ slow).
Nivesh: thank you very much for that resizing actions panel solution. I surely would not have figured that out on my own.
OK. My details about the library won’t exactly correct. The library is slow if it is long, as in large in height. The size of the preview is not what is doing though, just the size of the list of items in your library! WTF.
Oh, and the color selectors changed. You used to be able to click and drag from the color selector, to a point to sample then let go and that colour would be selected. At anytime before you release the mouse button you could press escape to cancel the colour selection! Useful. Good. You could also just click once, then click somewhere else.
In CS4 if you click and drag and release it’s just like you’ve done the single click, except that your selector disappears (goes from eyedropper to pointer again). It also only does a colour sample when your mouse stops moving (annoying to find the right colour). This makses selecting colours WAY slower.
Also, the tools panel, if aligned not perfectly (as you change the size of panels) goes blurry. Yep, blurry.
And while I’m at it why’d they bind the “z” key to the “Bind” tool instead of zoom (which is now “M” for Magnify) which as far as I know is the default in all their other programs! How many times do you really need to use that useless Bind tool anyway?
I’m not just flaming. I’m warning people. I want to yell and scream saying “I’ve paid good money for this dammit” but who’s going to listen?!
OK. More to complain about. I think I’m just using this as a place to store all my complaints until I can get them to Adobe really.
This is the first release that is slower. That is not a good thing.
I now cannot open a large complex file (complex in terms of vectors). Things that were slowin CS3 are stupidly slow in CS4 (5 seconds VS over 1 minute now). Great. Thanks Adobe. Really, thanks!
Don´t know why, but everytime i try to change the font size, it goes all by itself to 2500 pt =/ don´t matter the number i put there, just goes back to 2500pt.I am using flash cs4 now.
And more. You cannot press F2 to rename symbols in your library anymore, as it is globally taken over by the show Output Panel now. In CS3 it would ignore the F2 to show output panel if you were in the library. Hmmm … now you have to right click and then click “rename”. Very very slow for my workflow. I should stop this now I can tell.
I’d be submitting bugs, but I’ve had the same problems as mentioned and it doesn’t seem to work!
We just upgrade to Flash CS4, we’re doing heavy duty with timeline animation and we found it’s very hard to control the keyframing, the frame selection was confusing and we’re having a hard time dealing this CS4.
For the motion editor, well, seriously, we found flash CS4 motion editor and easing method is more easier. Of course, the new CS4 version provided more channels but the problem is, it cant ease the frame which we wanted to change it’s easing.
I hope Adobe will settle this issue as well.
I certainly agree with everything in the article, but I’d like to add my own personal gripe. While the project panel has been turned into something that’s actually incredibly useful, the lack of mousewheel scrolling in the project panel drives me crazy.
Using CS4 for a client project and I have to say the program is a dog. I miss flash 8.
CS4 crashes it is slow and I am on my 3rd rebuild of the fla file as the original gets corrupted and the action script quiets working.
I am using a Quadcore intel with 4 gigs on Windows Vista 64bit. I can not imagine using it on my laptop.
The whole CS4 Master Suite seems like a beta release. Every program has issues out of the box. They need to do some major work on the products. I did not spend my hard earned $’s for beta software.
I agree with your comment about the unnecessary and absolutely annoying start up splash screen overlaying the entire OS. Why on Earth do they not have ALL Adobe apps act and work like each other?
What I LIKE: Cleaner interface, Making AIR apps (sweet!)
What I DONT: #include “filename.as” does not work any more Not in AS2…. No idea why. I have to import the full code. – Splash Screen blocking EVERYTHING making the computer useless until it’s done. Key strokes are still not cross-app same – Like, showing rulers, or importing.
Thanks for the post. Glad to know I’m not alone!
Update:
Flash CS4 crawls to a hault when I run it and firefox at the same time.
There seems to be something a plugin ect. in firefox that tanks Flash CS4 I can’t run both on a intel quad with 4 gb ram.
If I want a browser open at the same time as flah I have to use IE.
Thanks Adobe great product (not).
Well here is what I think about Flash CS4. In flash 8 I could create animation, buttons, create whole flash movie, without any problem! Now in CS4, I can´t even create an simple button without knowladge of Action Script!!??
What is actually wrong with this Software world, making us users life harder?!?
So I went and sadly buy my selfe Swish, since there can I still create a simple Flash movies withou creating diploma in Action scripting first. Have no time or will to spend whole days, years (as every year some new script versions) within learning Script to be able to create simple button in Flash movie… It´s like Adobe wen´t huge step back here… Imagine buying new car yet, must first Program it to be able to drive it, and to do that you have to learn the program first… Wierd this Adobe view of their costumers, mot to mention the Potential newbies which apparently they dont see at all! Just another sad story?
‘why’d they bind the “z†key to the “Bind‒
Tarwin Stroh-Spijer… Im pissed as all hell about the bind. I have LITTLE to no use for the Bind tool. Nor do I foresee having one anytime soon.
Flash CS4’s panels are crap. I have to scroll though properties because they built DOWN, and not out… I wish Flash was more like Illustrator, only with animation. Flash has always failed at a lot of things. Dare I mention Flash’s Pen tool? Its crap, has allways been crap, and no one seems to care.
I say… Illustrator receives animation capabilities, and a decent scripting environment.
For me Flash CS4 is just about crashing constantly. I am scanning the web for solutions. No I don’t have corupted fonts and no removing the preference file won’t help. I cannot even open a flash file in CS4. So frustrating. All these problems with panels and such, would love to test it all if only I could open a file… Good old days of Macromedia are gone…
Wow, it turns out the first time I open CS4 for the last week (been back in CS3 so I can get work done) I find more problems. How’s this one:
When you name a MovieClip (or instance of TextField etc) on the stage and you then press ENTER it used to select the name. This meant you could Copy/Paste what you’d just written. In CS4 it just deselects the field, as in the field loses it’s focus completely. Not only do I not get the text selected, I can’t even hold SHIFT, press HOME or CTRL+LEFT and then Copy/Paste, but I now have to grab the mouse again, click the field before I can do anything. Raskin (either of them) would have a fit!
Here’s a fun one I just came across. When I test my project, Flash CS4 is including the bandwidth profiler when it calculates the Stage Height. That’s an hour of troubleshooting I’d like to have back, here I thought I just couldn’t add. 😉
oh where to begin…
I just upgraded to CS4 after someone I was working with was using CS4 and I could not open his files when they were saved back to CS3. I honestly don’t understand why the option is there if it doesn’t work, but it cost my agency 2 hours (plus the other agency’s wasted hours developing in CS4) as I had to rebuild the file in CS3 and did not have 3 hours to upgrade before the deadline.
I appreciate the SWC and AS library compatibility with Flex as well as the new Type panel (since as a developer I had to deal constantly with complaints from designers about how their vanilla type styling was irreproducable without the Adobe fonts they were using)
However… I believe Adobe needed to understand how a tween worked in Macromedia Flash before they re-worked tweening in Adobe Flash. Creating animations in Flash with the timeline is a lesson in wasted time now. Where I would create two keyframes and tween between them in the past, following the traditional pen and paper model. Now I have to create the tween like some kind of object and manipulate it with a new very unusable panel. Now I have to consult the motion editor to create end states, move or remove keyframes (a task I now have to do half a dozen times where it used to be just once and without a separate panel). Sure I can change the duration of a tween object, but the keyframs can’t be dragged from the timeline. I could go on with the compiler problems I’ve been having, but I know Adobe doesn’t care about legacy Flash users. I just wish they would accept that they can’t do animation and make Flash the way it was before–functional. All of their animation and video software sucks (think Premiere vs Final Cut, AfterEffects vs Motion or Combustion, anyone remember LiveMotion? ). I have begun suggesting DHTML/AJAX to my clients. Lucky for Adobe that Microsoft has their heads so far up their asses that Silverlight will never become the industry standard Flash has become (unlucky for us who rely on the tool). The problem is Adobe quickly forgets that their decisions have nothing to do with Flash being the standard either. If they keep this up, in ten years people will say “remember Flash?” like they say “remember ‘skip-intros’?” today.
In closing: If it ain’t broke…
In CS3 it was possible to tween blur and other filter settings. Try using CS4’s “Classic Tween” to do that…! Not so classic after all. X(
i love flash.
i really like flash CS4.
i LOATHE the motion editor.
i avoid it as much as i can since it only make more work for me.
i now much prefer to animate using tweener, fusekit, and classic tweens.
the motion editor has no place at my job. it is a waste of time and effort.
i’m very disappointed in adobe for letting this ‘feature’ take the spotlight, when it belongs in the garbage.
I installed flash CS4…. and tested it…. I had no problems BUT…… it is REALLY REALLY SLOW…. so I went back to my flash CS3 🙁
the problem with flash cs4 is the new adobe GUI…. it is really bad source coded!!, it would be nice an option to disable it and return yo the classic or perhaps the microsoft GUI wich obviously runs fast!!
ohhhh “macromedia” developers…. we “flashers” miss you so much!!!! buy flash again!! “we need macromedia flash”
mmmmmmmm …. you delete the posts!!!!!
What I’ve said is true…. flash CS4 is ruined by adobe!!!! it’s the slowest version of flash ever!!!!!
Go on…. delete my post……
I suggest u to grow up!!
Juan, all comments from new commenters are held in moderation to guard against spam. I don’t have time to instantaneously approve every comment the second it comes in. So relax, chill out, lay off the exclamation points and insults. Thanks.
hey Juan, pipe down man – some of us have day jobs that don’t allow us to pay constant attention to our blogs and maintain comments etc. Keith is least likely to censor anyone. Me, however, I’d be more likely to delete your comment 😉
Paul, this reply is in regard to your comment:
You stated:
“However… I believe Adobe needed to understand how a tween worked in Macromedia Flash before they re-worked tweening in Adobe Flash. Creating animations in Flash with the timeline is a lesson in wasted time now. Where I would create two keyframes and tween between them in the past, following the traditional pen and paper model. Now I have to create the tween like some kind of object and manipulate it with a new very unusable panel. Now I have to consult the motion editor to create end states, move or remove keyframes (a task I now have to do half a dozen times where it used to be just once and without a separate panel). Sure I can change the duration of a tween object, but the keyframs can’t be dragged from the timeline.”
I’ve recently had to learn how to do a few simple animations in Flash. My last animation experience was in Macromedia Director, so you might be able to imagine the headache that learning to do simple timeline animations such as tweening and keyframing was for me! I did figure out how to do some of the things that you are claiming cannot be done, and I’ve so far been able to avoid the motion editor all together.
1) You can move a keyframe on the timeline… you have to ctrl+click the frame (on the layer) of the keyframe, then you can left-click drag it to another spot on the timeline.
2) To tween on the timeline, I found it works best to reduce your symbol to 1 frame, right click on it and select “Create Motion Tween”, then drag it out to the desired length. After you’ve done this you can ctrl+click on a frame (e.g. the last frame) and then right-click and add a keyframe wherever you need it.
I’ve been able to create simple animations (fade-ins and outs/zooms/position animation) and done a little bit of scripting without too much trouble. I’d take good old Director and Shockwave back in a hot second, though.
I love flash 8… I like the Macromedia’s Style~~~
Flash CS4 is failed.
I bought CS4 long time ago since pre-order, excited as many of you of their new features and hoping all the debugging compiler new tools will make my coding experiencie so much accurate, the moment I started working it things seems to be unusable cause of the slow slow and processor consuming issues, I had to run back to cs3 which is so much faster compared to cs4, today I just downloaded the Updates from Adobe to CS4 suite let’s see if it works I might post back after trying to work cs4 again 6 months after decided to move back to cs3… I want my money back!! Let’s see…
Command click on the file name in the title bar to show drop down path to file no longer works…rubbish!
Please say its not true?
I am finding Flash CS4 on Windows generally slow and quite buggy. I can run all sorts of high performance programs but Flash acts like it is running on a 486 🙂
I just discovered you can avoid the splash screen by opening Flash CS4 in its own “Space” using Leopard’s Spaces utility. Flip back to another Space and voila, no more splash screen.
Flash CS4’s CPU usage on my Macbook Pro 2.16 Intel Core duo is ridiculous. With nothing open it uses 3.5% 25 threads and 271mb Real Memory. The CPU usage in CS4 grows with every file I open it’s crazy! I have 5 files open doing nothing and Flash’s cpu usage is 35%! Good thing I don’t work with my laptop on my lap I am surprised it’s not glowing red it gets so hot running flash. Adobe needs to address this issue ASAP, add a preference to disable whatever (live preview?) is causing flash to eat up the resources. Never had these issues with cs3.
I flat out hate the new interface for all of the CS4 products. Whoever decided that the panels should toggle between minimized to button mode to full size is a total dumb fuck!!!!
I can’t stand the new Flash CS4. I’ve tried using it about 4 or 5 times and just end up giving up in frustration – they’ve chnaged all the basic things like creating a fading in and out motion tween and I’ve now no idea how to get it to work. Absolute pile of crap.
Great Job Adobe!
100% dog shit, with flies out-of-the-box.
Recently downloaded the trial version, and I’m still getting these problems (on a high speed mac pro) and its almost a whole year since Adobe brought out CS4. What are they thinking??! Flash CS4 is a pile of ****, Everything happens really slow, from testing moving, or just dragging keyframes around on the time line (several second lag till they show up in their new place). This is not good, I was considering buying CS4 but everything I have read about it has me worried to pay the money for bogus software that if my experience with Flash CS4 is anything to go by will REALLY SLOW my work process down and get really frustrating. Oh Crap… What do you do when the software maker of the software you rely on puts out updates that destroy the basic usability of the software? And some of your clients insist on using the new versions?? Oh crap x1000 . Someone please bring back Macromedia.
What REALLY blows my mind is the number of posts talking about this and the complete lack of visible response from Adobe.
I am working with a tial version of Flash CS4. I wonder if it is buggy.
I have created some simple motion tweens and that was moderately straightforward. What I cannot do is adjust their start and end frames (i.e. make them go a bit faster or slower). Apparently I should Ctl-right-click and drag. I have tried all manner of click/drag combinations and it just won’t select the little black dot.
I am not encouraged to buy this product.
I hated CS4 UI from day 1 but have just tried to do a timeline animation and OH MY GOD what have they done? Rubbish
I was also horrified to try and do a lot of quick keyframing moves that have been around since flash mx…. not there in CS4.
When you need to freeze all the layers at a certain timeline point and keyframe them,
in CS3 you could simply shift click a vertical row through the layers, right click and Convert To Keyframe.
This is gone in CS4, I have to individually click on each layer. It’s utterly obscene. Twenty two layers, one at a time !
Most of the quick keyframing shortcuts have been mangled in CS4. WE SIMPLY CAN NOT USE IT.
Adobe, please cease all work on CS5, and make CS4 worth all the money shops and individuals have to spend on it. and…
DO US ALL A FAVOR AND DONT MAKE YET ANOTHER UNIQUE FILE FORMAT. ENOUGH ALREADY.
We all see CS3 as the last stable keyframe capable environment and everyone is tired of FileSaveAs Are You Sure.
Listen, we’re sure we want file compatibility without having to worry about it.
When we all come to worship the usability and efficiency of the product we’ll all know that.
In the meantime, please restore the ability to do CS3 style keyframing,
and leave the file formats intact so we’re not constantly shuffling file versions. I CANT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH.
Adobe, if you bring out CS5 and it’s yet another file format…. … we will not buy it.
we love you. please please love us back. we just need the thing to work.
you can’t terminate features that make it a usable product, to create new features. It simply has to stop.
Fast keyframe manipulation made Flashing possible.
thank you.
ergo jihad
Me also am not bying CS4 thanks for yore notes.
Have any resolutions to the keyframe animation issues been made? It seems sad that the origins of the tool have been diluted by the wants of a crowd of hardcore developers. I suppose I still have my CS3 and older versions. CS4 is just a pain for classic designer tasks.
CS4 is like windows vista, a terrible mistake.
Number 5. Brutal.
#5 *is* brutal. As far as I know, you can’t permanently close the “extra” library panels that pop up. What I’ve done is move them all into a single detached Panel. At least that way, they’re all contained for easy closing.
it may help some guys. i have also constant crashes. no wonder apple doenst want to have it on the ipod and ipad…. here the post of someone else…
It appears I have fixed this. I have also called and notified support about the
results of my findings.
When using a font on your system that is corrupt Flash doesn’t ignore it, like
it did with CS3. It actually will make Flash act the way it did for me. What it
was doing was, when any text box was clicked on or a movie clip with a font
inside was pressed, Flash crashed. If you created new text you couldn’t select
anywhere on the stage and it leave the text properties info.
After about 20 hours working on this and trying various types of installs I
figured out it must be a font problem because it only happend with text boxes.
Going down to just system fonts the problem did not exist.
It was actually happening on a CS3 file I had created previously.
After using just system fonts I was able to open the file and click on text
fields. I slowly began adding fonts again and found the coulprit. It was a font
from a client converted from a mac font to a pc font. My font manager software
refferred to it as “Open Type TT”. The extension of the file was .ttf. After
deleting these two files everything worked fine.
They files have been in this client folder and have been used for over a year.
So CS3 would ignore them and not give you any problems where CS4 will crash.
I also make the experience that Flash CS4 is really buggy. I work on Mac OSX and I have a lot of really big troubles in my daily business which is really time consuming … Not only that it crashes at least every hour, I also have cases where sometimes textfields are moved 5px up and others (containing the same font) don’t. Everytime I open the file and publish it I have to check whether some texts are moved or not … this is horrible and did not happen (with the same font) in CS3. (OK, crashing might also be an issue of Snow Leopard, but not only!)
Besides my business I teach design students in Flash and it worked well in CS3. Last term we changed to CS4 and I see problems with the interface and the concept itself. Example: Students understood the concept of keyframe animation (formtween, motiontween) in CS3 much easier than they do with CS4 (motion tween, form tween, classic(?) tween). It seems that Adobe wants to change to the motion panel used in Aftereffects, but this will not work. The concept is different and it is not consistent in Flash – it is really hard to explain why … besides that it is confusing when students insert a value into the property window (e.g. Alpha: 0) and it has changed to something different (Alpha: 6) when they go back to that frame/instance … I did not believe it but I saw it with my own eyes. I do not understand and I cannot explain 🙁
I hope that these things will be changed in CS5 and there will be a lot more QC in this process at Adobe, but I think that this is a consequence of having new program versions that often … it seems that they just want to earn money. I would switch back to CS3 if I could …
Well, I have CS3, New in a box, trying to decide what to do with it. Sell it and buy the CS4 package, or unwrap the CS3 package and use it to learn with and do production work. Given the amount of negative responses I’ve read here, and account of the fact that I’m still using a G5, I think I’ll stick with CS3. Perhaps CS5 will be better with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard System X.6. Thanks for the feedback, folks! This blog/website has been the useful, honest and comprehensve review of Flash CS4 thus far. I’ll bookmark it for future use for sure.
trying to find how to drag keyframes on the timeline and found this post, couldn’t see an answer but figured it out anyway.
So FYI you have to command-click the keyframe first, then you can drag it.
Hi All,
I was having the extra Library issue whenever I used any custom workspaces, I just switched to “Classic” and so far I only get ONE library when I use CTRL + L, thankfully- because it has been really bugging me.
Here’s where I found my answer: http://groups.google.com/group/macromedia.flash/browse_thread/thread/957fbb1a0b3b26ed/b076bd6b33de7e80?lnk=raot
“What workspace are you using? When I set mine to “Animator”, the the Library
becomes unusable. But if I switch to another workspace layout, the Library is
fine. Try switching to another Workspace layout and see what happens with the
Properties panel. ”
Meanwhile, it’s obvious Flash CS4 is riddled with minor but annoying bugs.
let’s hope Adobe changes the Macromedia-inherited policy of never releasing
patch updates to Flash.