Some interesting Snippets of information from Richard Galvin here – analysing some of the past enhancements that Flash CS3 gave us, and looking forward to reveal some of the features being worked on for CS4.
Added in CS3:
- Photoshop importer – although this currently has no ability to maintain a link with psd content and update Flash content automatically
- Illustrator-like Pen Tool fix (calculates the cubic bezier path in the quad-based drawing API of Flash)
- Colour coded bounding boxes relating to object type on the stage
- 9-slice scaling preview on the stage
- Copy filter button
- Copy motion tween as actionscript
- Export motion xml (to allow editing and reloading at runtime or in Flexbuilder)
- Runtime errors separated from output panel
- Checkboxes in export options for strict compiling and exporting hidden layers
Being added in CS4:
- A new workspace including a vertical property inspector (similar to Flexbuilder’s)
- Tween Tool on stage allows auto keyframe generation when attributes of an object are changed
- Object Attributes can tween independent of each other
- Tween motion path can be manipulated using bezier handles similar to the Pen Tool
- Tween paths can be copied and replaced separate of objects on the timeline.
- XFL – new export format in CS4 that saves an xml version of an FLA contained in a zip file along with a library of asset sources (images etc.)
- Hydra filter files (.aif) can be loaded and applied at runtime.
Not much online info available on this one (hence the speculative logo…) – but i suppose you could always check Richard’s blog for news updates. Can’t wait to see what else they come up with!