<<< your input on next version of swish please >>>

[ddunn26]

I agree with most of the above, but want to add one more ... start utilizing that Tip Of The Day feature. That could possibly help to unclog this forum.

Complaints? For $50, I better not have any

Dale

[Duir]

I think what most attracts new buyers to programs right now is automating or making smoother the "program creation-to-Web" process

Everbody wants a web site and the majority either don't the time, have no interest in learning or can't be fussing with the current complicated processes to creating nice web pages with Swish for example.

So I would like to see some "gloss" [I used the same word in the Flix forum ]:

* Save Swish in web page templates

* Save Swish in players with play, pause, rewind controls.

On the downside ~personally~ is the drawing tools. Do they really get used that much? Not that they're not good, but the average Swish user is unlikely to be an artist or into drawing. S/he is likely to be into video. So ...

* How about better video-import (with no loss in audio!), along the lines of Flash MX?

My 5p
Duir.

[dinkledorf]

Biggest Annoyance:

Program Lockups - intermittent,
but, ANNOYING

(I realize they can only be resolved
as they are confirmed. Just keep
working on improving overall program
stability.)

Wish List:

1) COMPREHENSIVE Scripting (including debugging and syntax tools, examples and tutorials, and translation where necessary eg: In Flash (4/5/MX the syntax is ? in Swish the syntax is ?)
2) Library (as Velez has already suggested)
3) Customizable defaults (background color, font, etc)
4) A "don't remind me again" option
5) Sliders in addition to UP/Down Scrollers on numbers entry
6) More Global editing options on the Timeline
7) Shape Tweening
8) Menu optimization (Fade In/Out NOT Fade In, Fade Out
Slide In/Out NOT Slide In, Slide Out - there may be
others which can also be similarly optimized)
9) Multiple object alignment and distribution tools
10) Sound Synchronization and sound editing
11) Reserved for future suggestions as they arise ...

Addendum: Tip of the day - seconded

Strive to continue to Keep It Simple. It's what attracted
and sold so many of us, me included, on Swish over Flash (and many of the other 3d Party Flash Software).

If you have to leave something out to maintain the overall
simplicity - leave it out. That's how strongly I feel about it.


[Edited by dinkledorf on 03-11-2002 at 12:12 PM]

[Damaso]

Excluding a certain files on defragment process, shall remove

[Damaso]

Also, when looping sound, there should be a fade out/in effect at a certain frame of the movie.

[steelrat01]

A new feature i would like to see is the ability to make games like snake and shooting target games and to be able to use the keyboard to control certain things in the movie.

[Spaghettio]

Wish List

1) MacOSX version!. Pretty Pretty Please!! Come on when you guys first released Swish Ver 1, I bought it, used it on virtual PC. The support site used to say that a port of the program was coming to the Mac soon. What happened??

2) Support for png24 images, maybe a trace .eps?

3) Text box scrollers like in Flash MX

4) More Keyboard Shortcuts!

[david petley]

Originally posted by Duir

On the downside ~personally~ is the drawing tools. Do they really get used that much? Not that they're not good, but the average Swish user is unlikely to be an artist or into drawing. S/he is likely to be into video. So ...

Wha??? I use the drawing tools more than most other stuff in the program.
What is your image of the average swish user??

I would actually like improvements in that area though.
An eraser tool, a slice tool, draggable guides (I have been asking for this since V1.0)
I haven't read all the other suggestions yet so if someone has mentioned this stuff already, my apologies.

david p.

[wt]

Thank you for giving us this opportunity. I am evaluating Swish and have posted questions in the Swish Forum several times due, mostly I'm sure, to my confusion with basic concepts.

My suggestion is that you might have a look at the nature of the questions in this forum to see where people are getting most frequently confused and produce a "concepts" document.

For example, see my "Tell-Target with Play-Sound not working" post. I'll bet I've made a stupid oversight but I've tried and tried, including reading the manual. So there must be some basic concept that I'm not getting.

Thanks again, Roger. Swish is great!

Bill

[ddunn26]

I think this would be helpful:
To be able to 'add to' a line. Say for example I draw a complex line with the Pencil, and I accidently unclicked halfway through It would be nice to be able to pick up where I left off. Is that possible?

Dale

P.S. TOTD TOTD TOTD TOTD

[roger_onslow]

Originally posted by SouthJersey53
Some of these were mentioned before, but I wanted to add my "vote" to them, plus a couple of "new" wants:
1) Place action should just happen - no need for pop-up.

That sounds fair .. then you'd double-click on the place effect if you really want to change settings. Also could probably now popup the settings dialog for a Move effect if one is already in frame preview mode

2) On fade-out autmoatically remove
3) ability to slide grid (adjust left or right to align with on object) and/or be able to scale grid lines to "percent" % instead of just pixels.

are you saying you want guilde lines that you can place and move?
For percent are you saying you'd like to be able to have grids at (say) every 10% of stage width/height rather than even 20 pixels?

4) e-mail notification when a new build is realesed explaining what changed

that's more part of our admin/support rather than the program itself .. and I know that is something we're looking at doing. Also thinking (in the future) of having SWiSH automatically check if a newer version is available and letting you know (have to be wary of people who then think it is spyware).
5) When viewing scene, be able to chose where on time line to start instead of always having to start at frame 0 (testing purposes)
[b][quote]
You can already select a range of effects and have that play. And if you want you can work-around by placing a dummy object (like an offstage rectangle) with a dummy move effect the you can size to cover the number of frames you want to preview. I know its not as nice, but is a way to do it currently if that is what you want.

[bpaulsen2000]

Hi,

Brand new user of Swish here.

1)flash type drawing and painting please. Just the "line"
tool to allow user to cut a circle in half would be
a big help.
2)some easy way of resizing an imported swf file as a scene.
there's probably a way to do this, but haven't figured it
out yet. Just to clarify, if scene sizes don't match,
seems you're out of luck without recreating everything.
3) Not too sure, but localhost testing of loading swf
within a frame (even with target specified correctly
doesn't work).

Sure hope the product maintains its simplicity as it grows.

[wt]

I suggest Swish should only let actions be programmed that can be carried out.

For example, I shouldn't be able to put Tell-Target "/somesprite" -> Play-Sound "Ding.wav" on an object's On-Release event unless I have already imported the Sound into the sprite's timeline. Or at least Swish should give a warning when it generates the swf, like "hey, buddy, you haven't got a sound in this sprite so how the heck am I supposed to play it for you!".

Right now, when I do the above with nothing in the sprite's timeline, Swish merrily generates the swf even though there is no sound imported into the swf (as seen in Test/Report). This sort of thing should be caught, or the necessary timeline events automatically inserted.

I think this "intutive", hand-held approach would be in keeping with Swish's intent of bringing Flash development to the masses.

Thanks,
Bill

[hockyfan]

Wow, I just gotta give a thumbs up to Roger O on addressing all of these issues so well.

Just a quick qu.--any (guess) of the date of this next version?

[roger_onslow]

Originally posted by wt
I suggest Swish should only let actions be programmed that can be carried out.

For example, I shouldn't be able to put Tell-Target "/somesprite" -> Play-Sound "Ding.wav" on an object's On-Release event unless I have already imported the Sound into the sprite's timeline. Or at least Swish should give a warning when it generates the swf, like "hey, buddy, you haven't got a sound in this sprite so how the heck am I supposed to play it for you!".

Right now, when I do the above with nothing in the sprite's timeline, Swish merrily generates the swf even though there is no sound imported into the swf (as seen in Test/Report). This sort of thing should be caught, or the necessary timeline events automatically inserted.

I think this "intutive", hand-held approach would be in keeping with Swish's intent of bringing Flash development to the masses.

Thanks,
Bill

That sounds like a bug to me.

SWiSH won't let you play sounds that aren't imported (and so in the movie) .. that's why you have to import a sound to add it to the list of imported sounds in the movie before you play it.

The sound itself doesn't live in the sprite (no definitions live in sprites .. they need to be defined outside .. that's the way of SWF files).

But what you are describing sounds like a bug .. the sound SHOULD be there and should play.

Can you please send me a SWI file (please make the sound small) and I'll check it out (I'm just working on sound options for the next update at the moment .. os its good timing). roger.onslow@swishzone.com

[roger_onslow]

Hang on .. on that last point.

I know what that is. And it is addressed in the next update.

The thing is that there is actually no such things as a Play Sound action in a SWF file. It is a different sort of tag.

Because it isn't really an action, one cannot put it in a Tell Target or and If Frame Loaded etc.

Similarly, you are limited to what mouse events can trigger a sound.

SWiSH tries to hide this complexity by making PlaySound and StopSound look like normal actions (so you con't need to know that it is something diffrent).

In the next update, you won't be able to select a Play Sound from within a Tell Target or a conditional action (like if/else etc) .. those options will be disabled.

After that, the problem will be people complaining that Play Sound is disabled. Its tricky when there is necessary underlying complexity (we are limited to SWF format constraints). But we try to make things as appear as we can.

[wt]

Roger,

Thank you. I am a programmer myself. I understand the trade-offs.

So, to effect a PlaySound to a Target, should I use Tell-Target -> Goto-Frame-and-Play to a sprite that already has the sound imported but stopped?

Will that be the "official" solution as of the next update when "Playsound" is removed as a Tell-Target action?

Thanks again for such phenominal support.

Bill

[roger_onslow]

There is no point at all in doing a Tell Target -> Play sound.

Just play the sound anyway.

Telling a target to do it won't make the sound play any differently.

So basically, the best work around is not to do it that way in the first play because it doesn't really make a lot of sense.

NOTE: If you've used Load Movie to load a SWF that has sound .. then only IT can play the sound. So in that case you'll need to tell the loaded movie (or a sprite within it) to go to a frame where the sound is played. It is not psosible to refer to sounds in a loaded movie from outside that movie.

That's just the way of SWF files.

[roger_onslow]

Originally posted by wt
Will that be the "official" solution as of the next update when "Playsound" is removed as a Tell-Target action?

Unless you're refering to a sound in a SWF you've loaded, then the solution is just simpel not to use Tell Target.

If you're importing a SWF that has sound, then you'llneed to set upthe SWF so there is (say) a named sprite (movie-clip) in it that has the actions to play the sound.

Then you can Tell Target the sprite within the loaded SWF and ask it to (say) play (say) so it dispalys the frame where the sound is played.

[Jerry T]

Ive just gleamed over this thread so have no idea how many times any of my requests have already been mentioned...........or not mentioned.

Not necessarily in order

1. Streaming audio
2. Shape tweening
3. The ability to lock objects
4. .avi, .mov, .mpg to .swf conversion
5. drag and drop
6. collision detection

All I can think of right now

What I hate

Objects inside a sprite do not stay centered. If you need to zoom in the scrollers disappear and you cant zoom in on objects within the sprite.

~Jer~