What’s new in Adobe Flash CS3

By Piotr Podsiadly | Published 23/05/2007 | Very beginning

Short overview of new features

Adobe Bridge and Version Cue
Organize and browse Flash and other creative assets using Adobe Bridge, an independent file-management system that you can launch from within Flash. Through Adobe Bridge, you can automate workflows across Adobe Creative Suite components, apply consistent color settings across Adobe software, and access version control features and online stock photo purchase services. A Welcome screen provides centralized control of settings, as well as ongoing access to tips and tutorials in Adobe Design Center.

Bitmap Symbol Library Item dialog box
The Bitmap Symbol Library Item dialog box has been enlarged to provide a larger preview of the bitmap.

Multicolored bounding boxes
You can change the selection color of specific types of elements to identify each element easily.

Adobe Device Central
A new way to test content created with Adobe products on emulated mobile devices, Device Central lets you select a target device from the beginning of the development process, and gives you a clear idea of what a device’s limitations are.

Active content detections
To eliminate the need to first activate Flash Player so that users can interact with Flash content, Flash publishes HTML templates that you can use to embed Flash SWF files. Using these templates, embedded SWF files are activated seamlessly without the need for an additional mouse click or other user activation.

9-slice onstage preview
Because 9-slice scaling now provides onstage preview, you can see changes and adjustments to 9-slice scaled movie clips on stage.

Filter copy and paste
You can now copy and paste graphic filter settings from one instance to another.

Copy and paste motion
Copy and paste motion lets you copy a motion tween and paste (or apply) the frames, tween, and symbol information to another object. When pasting the motion tween to another object, you can choose to paste all properties associated with the motion tween, or choose specific properties to apply to the other object.

Copy motion as ActionScript 3.0
In addition to copying the properties of one motion tween and applying those properties to another object, you can copy the properties that define a motion tween in the Timeline as ActionScript 3.0 and apply that motion to another symbol, either in the Actions panel or in the source files (such as class files) for a Flash document that uses ActionScript 3.0.

Pen tool enhancements
The Pen tool has been improved.

The Pen tool now behaves similarly to the Illustrator Pen tool to provide a more consistent user experience across Adobe software
The cubic-to-quadratic conversion is now more efficient, resulting in better accuracy and fewer points.

Adobe Photoshop import
You can now import Adobe Photoshop PSD files directly into Flash documents. Most Photoshop data types are supported, and several import options are provided so that you can find the best balance of image fidelity and editability within Flash.

Adobe Illustrator import
You can now import Adobe Illustrator AI files directly into Flash documents. Most Illustrator data types are supported, and several import options are provided so that you can find the best balance of image fidelity and editability within Flash. See “Import Adobe Illustrator files” on page 140.

Primitive Rectangle and Oval drawing tools
New Rectangle and Oval drawing tools let you create rectangles and ovals whose properties (such as stroke or corner radius) you can edit at any time in the Property inspector.

Enhanced Quicktime video support
QuickTime export is intended for users who want to distribute Flash content, such as animation, in the QuickTime video format. This release improves the quality of the exported QuickTime video file, which you can distribute as streaming video or on a DVD, or import into a video-editing application such as Adobe® Premiere®.

Save and load cue points for Flash video
Save and load functionality has been added to the Cue Points tab to allow you to save the cue points added to one file and apply them to another. You can generate a cue points XML file based on known time codes and import it into the encoder before encoding, eliminating the need to manually add each cue point through the Flash Video Encoder user interface.

Script Assist mode for ActionScript 3.0
Script Assist mode has been updated to include support for ActionScript 3.0.

Improvements in ActionScript
Flash has a new, improved version of ActionScript. ActionScript 3.0 offers a robust programming model familiar to developers with a basic knowledge of object-oriented programming. ActionScript 3.0 facilitates the creation of highly complex applications with large data sets and object-oriented, reusable code bases. While ActionScript 3.0 is not required for content that runs in Adobe Flash Player 9, it allows performance improvements that are available only with the new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2). ActionScript 3.0 code can execute up to ten times faster than legacy ActionScript code.
The older version of ActionScript Virtual Machine, AVM1, executes ActionScript 1.0 and ActionScript 2.0 code. Flash Player 9 supports AVM1 for backward compatibility with existing and legacy content.
To learn about ActionScript 3.0, see Programming ActionScript 3.0.