Very disappointed in MX 2004
I develope in Flash 5 because it has a better audio compression than Flash MX. I don't why it should be different but it is. I get great 24K streaming on audio but I had increase it to 32K in Flash MX to get the same quality. So I didn't buy Flash MX and stayed with Flash 5. Now with Flash MX 2004 out I thought I would try again to better my developement but to my supprise I am unable to load anything created in Flash 5. Does this mean I can't used anything I have made in the past? Are all my Lib's are useless? At what point did backwards compatiblity go out the window? Did I miss something somewhere?
If this is the wave of the future with flash I can't see upgrading ever. Plus as I read the comments from others I see there are many other problems which would leave a bad impression on buying other products from Macromedia. I think they are wanting us to buy a product still in beta but my money will be spent on a finished product with backwards compatibility.
As an everyday Flash developer here are my reasons not to upgrade
I dont know if these problems are OS X only but here it goes.
The library: Horribly slow. I just move it to another monitor and it blanks out, beach balls and takes 20 seconds to reload. Even small libraries. Sort changes same thing. drag and drop between libraries, same. These things were a tad slow in MX now they are productivity killers. There is a file rename bug too. The file name disappears when you try to rename it. It reappears on second click.
Similar slow down with undo's go back a few and wait wait wait. Also, there were separate histories for undo's for each symbol and on the stage and scenes. This was a little out of the norm and funky but I LIKED IT it was a great feature. Its very confusing now. I hate it. You find yourself jumping all over the FLA.
No marked speed increase.With the exception of Publishing. SWF file sizes are smaller in some situation by a lot which is GOOD.
BUGGY in general. Lots of lock ups. No pattern to them. I walk away to get something to eat and come back...POOF.... flash is no where to be found.
I know a few companies that are just now approving the use of the Flash 6 plugin or publishing for Flash 6. Autodesk for one. I work for them. How many people are going to install the Flash 7 plugin?? What incentive do they have?
I am running OS 10.2.6 gig of RAM on a dual 867. Clean system. Everything else runs perfectly.
I love Macromedia products but I am very concerned about these problems. I have 22 days left to decide but right now the answer is no.
Re: As an everyday Flash developer here are my reasons not to upgrade
Quote:
Originally posted by cwflash
I know a few companies that are just now approving the use of the Flash 6 plugin or publishing for Flash 6. Autodesk for one. I work for them. How many people are going to install the Flash 7 plugin?? What incentive do they have?
Thanks for the feedback. I'm running a G4 Cube (600MHz I think) and a PB 12" 800MHz and haven't noticed these problems. I remember hearing about the file naming issue that showed up on a small number of Mac users' systems - but I haven't been able to reproduce it.
As for your question above, I really have to give the same answer I've given for EVERY SINGLE previous release of the Flash player. There are a HUGE number of improvements in the new player, and people will adopt it. Flash Player 6 was downloaded an average of 3 million times per day and gained over 90% penetration in about a year. Flash Player 7, once installed, will actually auto-update itself from then on - a very cool feature that I've been waiting for for a long time.
I'd suggest you do a little more trouble shooting w/ your install and perhaps ping our support people for assistance.
Regards,
MD
guys didn't you undestant this before...?
As far as I'm concerned Flash 5 was the best compromise between semplicity and actionscript functionality.
What I've seen going on after that is a Microsoft-like company politics...
Flash was already a very commercial software, but in it's semplicity it had the great idea: very "limited but elastic tool = creativity is the only limit", but then so many things happened, Flash started to spread into so many different usages (where you should actually use other software), and Macromedia tried to make it simple for dummies.
What is the use to make it simple for dummies? Flash is (*was*) a professional tool, we earn money using it...a lot of money sometimes, so it should be assumed that we invested time and efforts in learning how to use it.
Today any jerk can learn how to build impossible-skill-level applications with components and a communication server in a few minutes.
Components are crap, they have been designed to give life to a new market, from Macromedia and other fishes that have started selling components.
If you think about it, it takes longer to develop a component with the ability to easily change theme and look, than just using movieclips and manually correcting the graphics....the only case I find components usefull is if you work in a big team and a developer has to pass easy-to-use stuff to the designers, which don't know a darn clue about how to assing a scrollbar to a textField (I actually took 6 months to understand how the hell you could make the scrollbar component work with a textfield...and when I did I happily continued building my own scrollers..).
As regarding Flash MX 2004: I haven't tried the advanced features yet, so I don't know how the av encoders are but I must say that the whole application is A LOT HEAVIER, probably due to all the crap functionalities intended for jerks, just like the timeline effects...this is funny:
(I installed MX2004 on my Athlon system, which is set up to go slower, for stability issues, so it's a bit like a machine from 1995).
In the authoring environment I try to create a motion tween and that's when I understand that know I have to play around the submenus now to use that very used command...
I mistakenly run into the timeline effects, so I give a look... unfortunatelly the first one I got was "Blur".
...While waiting for about half a minute bofore anything happened, I thought "wow, is there a featuring filter in the renderer....cool".
Then I saw....what a sh_t...does Macromedia think that now the main target of this product is people who don't know how to do this themselves? And I bet that all of you here would know how to make it cooler and lighter on the cpu at the same time.
Nevertheless....when I clicked on "cancel" the whole thing f_cked-up.....I had to wait 68 seconds before I could start working again!!!! I could see the timeline panel scrollbar resizing and moving in a spastic way....I thought "my God, the whole history is being repassed".
It's obvious, Flash is not intended for the ones that know how to use it well....because unfortunatelly we are the small group...and out there, there are many people that buy it for fun, or to give it a try...and haven't ever opened it before.. we are not the main target, so we are practically countless in the marketing decisions.
Microsoft-politics are this: give it to the masses... it has a good side too...Internet wouldn't be in all those houses if BillGates didn't bring unprofessionality at this level.
Two more things:
my Flash Player 7, on the Athlon machine, is about 70-80% slower than release 6 while playing FP6 movies with PNG transparencies..
I didn't see any difference on my XEON machine, because it works too fast anyway.
The last thing:
Who is it, in Macromedia, that works on the corporate site?
Because if Macromedia doesn't have people who know how to use Flash, then how can they think about developing such tool?????
I remember when FlashMX was still in "awaiting"...and the big flash movie on the home page was showing the new features, obviously emulated with Flash5, for FP5...one for all, the draggable mask.
Every one here knows how to build a draggable mask with Flash5 compatibility right? It's not a matter of advanced coding but just a bit of creativity and logics... well anyway there are some issues you must keep in mind in order to prevent the maskee from flickering around when you drag the mask...it's all related to the actionscript execution order, and to have everything updated at the right time.
Well I did it perferctly, as many other developers on the web....whereas on the macromedia.com "banner", as you tried to drag the mask, you could see the maskee spastically jumping around and flickering.
This was the clearest expression of the ignorance, unprofessionality and worthless job that the Macromedia.com sitekeepers are doing everyday.
Anyway, I am happy to know that we are here keeping us warm....as it's getting colder out there, and we can't stop it.
As you said before, Macromedia has built a system to defent it's interests, knowing that we, the power-users, would have not accepted the new Flash-for-jerks style.
We can't fight with that...it's the issue of all companies that have grown too fast and think they can get unlimited power.
Macromedia is finished and they yet don't know.
The system is going to break sooner or later...it's just a matter of time, and how much patience the end-client have.
Peace to all of you, and don't be sad, maybe we will find a new interesting software to develop sites with.
As for to know, try reducing the amount of stuff you do with Flash and gain expertiese in XHTML, PHP, ASP, JS or whatever you like the best.
Learn how to survive if Flash crashes.