I have a new blog on my website at blog.anselmbradford.com

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I received an email about Adobe TV, and thought maybe others might want to watch too! Some of the channels are: Photographer, Designer, Video Professional, Developer, and Programs

http://tv.adobe.com/

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This one is for real in San Diego: http://www.adrocknaphobia.com/post.cfm/coldfusion-jobs-in-san-diego

This one says it is real (but was posted on April 1st). Work for the NFL: http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2008/4/1/Work-for-the-NFL-ColdFusion-Job-and-no-not-an-April-Fools-joke

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A few employers looking for Adobe and web related skills:

Buzzword, Adobe’s online word processor built in Flex is hiring: http://www.colettas.org/?p=229

Silicon Valley start-up PBWiki has a number of positions open: http://pbwiki.com/content/jobs

Combining Flex with GIS mapping… BlueRaster: http://www.blueraster.com/careers.cfm 

Interactive agency Blast Radius:  http://www.reflektions.com/miniml/template.asp?pagename=br

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I started using Flash around 1999 and have always found the drawing tools lacking compared with Photoshop and Illustrator. Since Adobe Flash CS3 is the first release of Flash since Adobes acquisition of Macromedia, I was interested to see how it would handle integration with other Adobe products. It was no surprise thenbut nonetheless a delightto find that Flash CS3 provides the smoothest integrated workflow with Photoshop and Illustrator of any Flash release. Primary among these improvements is the import menu, which allows native Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator documents to be imported seamlessly into Flash. I tested this feature by importing an Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Illustrator CS2 document onto the stage of an empty Flash document. The import menu provides a comprehensive suite of options for smoothly converting a .psd or .ai document into the Flash workspace. Library symbols and instances can be created during the importation process, creating a manageable and organized workflow. This by far is the most powerful feature of this new version of Flash in my opinion. Instead of trying to recreate the power of Photoshop or Illustrator within Flash itself, each program in the Adobe CS3 suite is left to perform the task it is best at. Photoshop and Illustrator for producing raster and vector graphics respectivelyand Flash for producing smooth animation and interactivity, using the graphics the latter two programs created.

Another major feature of the integration of Flash in the Adobe family is the functionality of the application’s tool panels. These now follow the visual style of other products in the Adobe CS3 suite of products. While the appearance and docking behavior of the panels themselves is certainly nice, I still see room for improvement in the functionality of certain panels. The Timeline panel, which also holds the layers for a Flash document, is lacking in usability behind what can be found in Adobe Photoshop. Simple commands like dragging a layer to the Insert Layer icon, which would duplicate the layer in Photoshop, are not present in Flash as of yet.

Since my experience in Flash is slanted toward the programming side of the applicationas much of my development work is done in pure ActionScript-based projectsI was curious to look at a new scripting addition present in Adobe CS3: Copy Motion as ActionScript 3.0. My first impression of this feature is that it is a bit of a gimmick. The feature allows the user to copy a set of motion, shape, filter, and blending mode changes from an object and paste them as ActionScript code that describes the motion and transformations on that object. While certainly an innovative and intriguing way to store this kind of information, the real-world applicability of this feature leaves me pondering its usefulness. It’s nifty, but that’s about it. The code for the motion is stored within XML, which is elegant, but perhaps not the most efficient method of storage and retrieval for this kind of information, as XML creates overtly verbose code. However, outside of the actual code created, the ability to copy and paste motion does actually seem quite useful. Using this feature, the transformational changes of an object on the stage can be copied and pasted onto another object on the timeline, which exactly duplicates the motion and changes done to the first object. Additionally, the transformations can be copied in whole, or selectively, such as just the changes in the x and y coordinates or the blending mode changes of the object. This could be quite a time-saving workflow improvement for when a series of elements need to follow similar visual animation sequences.

As might be expected of this release, it is apparent that many of the development resources of Adobe were put into integrating this version of Flash into its existing product line. Now that that step has been addressed, I look forward to seeing more drastic improvements on the features set of the application itself in future releases. Flash continues to be a solid niche product, and the continued integration between it and other Adobe products is an exciting development. Harnessing the graphic capabilities of Photoshop and other Adobe products in an interactive environment will be an exciting step into effortlessly creating a more robust and immersive web experience.

Reviewer: Anselm Bradford
Software Reviewed: Adobe Flash CS3 Professional
OS: Mac OS X 10.4.11
Hardware: MacBook Pro

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