Flash CS4 and its Capabilities – Part 1

Not long ago the world has got a chance to see the new version of Flash Player 10 Adobe, this time it’s a release candidate. This means that really soon the Flash player of more than 90% Flash users will be automatically updated to a new version and Flash developers will start a new stage of creating the interactive web applications. But what’s more important for most of Flash developers is the Adobe’s next step – releasing Flash CS4 – a new version of developer’s environment that will allow everyone use the new player’s capabilities. The most important ones of these capabilities are:

– 3D Support

Every object now has new properties – the “Z” coordinate and the 3D rotation angles – rotationX, rotationY, rotationZ that will allow to transform the objects into 3D and to save all of their properties. If it’s a movie clip with animation or a video – not a problem to transform it as any kind of content can be transformed. Moreover – the content gets transformed AND can be interacted with. And since these are not outer libraries or add-ons and everything is done only with a player the productivity remains very high.

– Advanced Text Layout

Text Management is a very important aspect, now you can create text with multiple columns and it will move from one column to another and you will be able to operate it as a whole. Besides it will also be very interesting to see the feature of adding objects into the text – images, tables etc. The producers also claim that in a new version thy have improved the work with system fonts, they now support everything that previously was available only for embed fonts – rotating them for a desired angle, changing transparency, anti-aliasing.

– Custom Filters and Effects

I’m sure many of us remember of the Adobe’s innovation called Hydra – a new language made for creating custom graphic filters. Even back than it was obvious that in a nearest future there will be a chance to use them directly in Flash. Now the time has come and even though with a new name and with another editor called Pixel Blender Toolkit this feature is available. By the way the same technology is used in filters and effects of Adobe After effects CS3 and it allows making really cool stuff with images. With Flash Player 10 you will be able to activate those filter at runtime and apply them to the objects at the scene.

So far so good, isn’t it? There’s more to come soon – it appeared to be that we have too much to say for one post. Therefore there will be a second one in a day or two. Be sure to check back to find it. See you soon.