Getting Started > What's new in Flash MX |  |

What's new in Flash MX

New features in Flash MX enhance the approachability, creativity, and power of Flash. Designers who require a higher level of control and integration with industry-standard design tools now have an unparalleled creative application for creating media-rich content.

Powerful new features build on this creativity, giving application developers access to new capabilities that make Flash MX a robust and exciting application development environment. Developers can work with advanced scripting and debugging tools, built-in code reference, and predefined components to rapidly deploy rich Web applications.

For all Flash users

The ability to save Flash MX documents in Flash 5 format lets you upgrade now and still collaborate with designers who are working on Flash 5 projects. See Saving Flash documents.

Accessible content that can be seen and heard by persons with disabilities is now easy to develop, expanding the audience for Flash movies and applications.See About accessible objects in Flash movies.

Korean and Chinese language support reaches audiences in more of the world. Features like vertical text fields and Unicode support make it easy to create Asian-language content. See Creating text.

The Answers panel connects you to the latest technical updates, extensions, components, code samples, training materials, and documentation. See Using additional Macromedia resources.

For the designer

Flash MX enhances creativity by providing designers with a higher level of control and expanded integration capabilities with a rich set of design tools. New features help designers quickly create a broad range of content. Instead of focusing on how Flash works, they can give more attention to their designs.

Timeline enhancements such as folders for organizing layers, improved pointer feedback, and the ability to resize, cut, and paste multiple frames make it easier to use the Timeline, helping you work faster and with less effort. See Using the Timeline.

Enhanced editing of symbols in place makes document creation easier by letting designers work on symbols in the context of their movies. New controls above the Stage make it easier than ever to edit symbols in place. See Editing symbols.

Library improvements eliminate production bottlenecks by simplifying the creation and manipulation of library symbols. Moving symbols or folders between Flash documents or creating new library symbols is now as easy as dragging and dropping. See Working with common libraries. The new Resolve Library Conflict dialog box simplifies adding library symbols to a document that has an existing library symbol with the same name. See Resolving conflicts between library assets.

Shared library assets improve Flash movie authoring by letting you share library assets with other Flash documents, either while authoring, or when a movie is played with the Flash Player. Shared runtime libraries help you create smaller files and easily make updates to multiple documents simultaneously by letting your document show library symbols and shared objects that are stored on an intranet or the Internet. Shared author-time libraries improve your work pace by letting you track, update, and swap symbols in any Flash document available on your computer or network. See Using shared library assets.

Workspace enhancements make the Flash MX workspace more manageable and easier to understand for new and veteran designers. The most commonly used features now appear in one context-sensitive Property inspector, eliminating the need to access many other windows, panels, and dialog boxes. See Panels and the Property inspector. Other frequently used features now appear in easily collapsible panels that dock and undock as necessary to conserve screen space. Designers can even save custom panel layouts to personalize their Flash workspace. See Using panels.

New starter templates included with Flash MX simplify the creation of new documents by eliminating many of the common tasks required to start a new document. See Creating a new document and opening a new window. You can also create your own templates from documents. See Saving Flash documents.

Color Mixer improvements make creating, editing, and using colors and gradients easier than ever. See Working with solid colors and gradient fills in the Color Mixer.

Complete lessons that address the new features in Flash MX make it easy to become familiar with its powerful tools and features. To get started with the lessons, choose Help > Lessons > Getting Started with Flash.

Video support expands the creative possibilities for Flash movies by letting you import video clips in a variety of formats. See Importing video.

The Free Transform tool opens new possibilities for your creative expression by letting you combine the effects of multiple object transformations at once. See Transforming objects freely.

The Envelope modifier lets you easily create otherwise-difficult graphic objects by letting you warp and distort the shape of the bounding box that surrounds them. See Modifying shapes with the Envelope modifier.

Pixel-level editing adds precision and polish to your work by letting you align objects with pixel-level precision in your Flash documents. Precisely place objects or points of objects where you want them to appear in your final movie. See Pixel snapping.

The Break Apart feature makes it easy to make creative edits to individual text characters without having to convert the text to symbols, simplifying the creation of complex designs and animation. See About transforming text.

The Distribute to Layers command quickly and automatically distributes any number of selected objects to their own layers. See Distributing objects to layers for tweened animation.

Movie clip mask layers let you create animated masks by placing a movie clip on a mask layer. See Using mask layers. You can also use ActionScript to create an animated mask with a movie clip. See Using movie clips as masks.

Enhanced sound controls enhance the production quality of your movies by letting you synchronize movie events with the start or end of sound clips. See About the onSoundComplete event.

For the developer

The powerful Flash MX environment includes enhanced scripting and debugging tools, built-in code reference, and predefined components you can use to rapidly develop rich Web applications.

Enhanced ActionScript gives you the ability to dynamically load JPEG and MP3 sound files at runtime, and lets you update your files at any time without having to republish your movie.See Placing artwork into Flash and Importing sounds.

Anchor points enhance navigation in Flash movies by letting users use the Forward and Back buttons in their browsers to jump from anchor to anchor. See Using named anchors.

The improved ActionScript editor makes it easier for new and veteran authors to access the full potential of ActionScript. See About scripting in ActionScript.

Code hints speed content development of ActionScript by automatically detecting what command the user is typing and offering hints to reveal the exact syntax of the command. See Using code hints.

Flash components accelerate Web application development by providing reusable drag-and-drop interface elements for Flash content, such as list boxes, radio buttons, and scroll bars. See Using Components.

The improved debugger combines the debugging capabilities already in existence with an ActionScript debugger by allowing you to set breakpoints and single-step through the code as it executes. See Testing a movie.

The object model integrates movie clips, buttons, and text fields into the ActionScript object-oriented scripting language. See Working with Movie Clips and Buttons and Controlling text with ActionScript.

The event model makes ActionScript event handling more powerful and easier to understand. The event model now allows for more sophisticated control over user events, such as mouse movement and keyboard input. See Controlling when ActionScript runs.

The Live Preview feature for components makes it possible to actively view changes in user interface components within the authoring environment. See Working with components in Live Preview.

Enhanced text support allows for detailed control using ActionScript over every property of a text object, including its formatting, size, and layout. See Working with Text.

The new drawing API enhances the object-oriented programming power of ActionScript by offering a set of shape-drawing capabilities through the MovieClip object, allowing for programmatic control over the Flash rendering engine. See About the MovieClip object.

Strict equality and switch statements allow for concise definition of flow control statements such as if, then, and else, further increasing ActionScript support for ECMA-262. See the entries for these statements in the online ActionScript Dictionary in the Help menu.

SetInterval and clearInterval functions allow designers to set up a generic routine that will be called at periodic intervals throughout the lifetime of a movie. See the entries for these functions in the online ActionScript Dictionary in the Help menu.

Conversion of String, Array, and XML objects to native objects increases performance by optimizing the Number, Boolean, Object, String, Array, and XML ActionScript objects. Performance in the Flash Player is increased as much as 100 times. See the entries for these objects in the online ActionScript Dictionary in the Help menu.

SWF compression uses existing Z-lib compression code to improve download times for complex Flash content. See Publishing.