Whats New?

You can upload and download files from the flash movie directly. I like that part. You can also load external gif,png files, which was so far not possible.

Regarding the blending modes it was possible in flash MX. All you need to do is create duplicate Movieclips and play around with color, x, y and alpha and you have blur or dropshadow. I am not so particularly thrilled by that alone.

One thing is true though that the effects are more realistic now.

I like every upgrade including MX2004, which I think was a big jump forward in scripting and regarding components.

So in summary if it were only for the blending modes Flash 8 is not for me. I bought it because of the whole package offered but regard it as just another more advanced version of flash. I still think the jump from 5 to 6 was the most spectacular so far.

I am looking forward to see performance improvements with xml parsing for example.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MikeMD

I don't think we should stop progress, but all those glowing, fire effects we still will do in a 3D app and import as a sequence of .pngs. And there are examples of those done with gradients and duplicated movie clips. I'm sure there will be some use for new effects, but it's far from any real progress.

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You can't do real "additive" blending no matter what in older versions of Flash. People don't seem to understand the difference between alpha blending and true additive/subtractive blending. The fire effects for example: People seem to think the big deal is "particles", but that's not what I'm getting at. The big deal is being able to overlay bitmaps and have them blend in an "additive" way. (I guess you have to see it to understand it. I'll make some demos... )