Showoff! (Macromedia Flash 5)

Name: tommybut

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Product:	Macromedia Flash 5
Date:	01/06/01 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great drawing capability, Smooth animation, actionscript makes interactivity easy

Disadvantages: expensive

Many of you have probably already heard of Macromedia’s Flash since 96% of the Internet population has downloaded the player. For those 4% who haven’t heard of it, Flash is a way for webmasters (or flashmasters) to produce dynamic animations or games with ease. Flash 5 is the latest to come out and I’m lucky enough to have it (and be able to use it!).

There are many differences between Flash 4 and Flash 5, most of them are simply added ActionScript (the programming language used when creating interactive features) commands and faster downloading times, but never-the-less, it makes a huge difference. Flash is the best animation tool for the web, mainly because it’s easy and file sizes are kept to a minimum because images are vector based. However, it doesn’t come cheap. A rather expensive $399 or £299 will separate the men from boys when it comes to giving a website a makeover.

Flash’s unique drawing tools help you to create killer cartoons from scratch with the ability to make them walk, run, shake hands and even talk with advanced lip-synching. You create movies using frames, just like you would any other cartoon or movie. You can set frame rates so importing movies from other media (camcorder, for example) will not look any different in Flash.

ActionScript can help you to create interactive games like quizzes or slot machines. It can also let you put CGI, PHP, ASP and SSI into the movies or games to create high-score tables or collection of user data.

Flash is a highly powerful piece of technology and is worth the price for any budding graphic or cartoon designer.

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