Will there ever be patches for Flash 8?

Question

I just wondered if Adobe intends to issue patches for Flash 8
instead of just Flashplayer. I reported bugs over a year ago that
were taken up as existing and have not heard a word since. Does
anyone know what is happening?
Brian

Answer 1

Walter,
thanks for the reply. Yes - truly irritating!
Although some can't be classified as true "bugs" but are
clearly usability issues.
I can add to that list with a few of my own - i will pick
one:
Properties Panel, the field that displays the frame number of
a nested animation in a Graphic
symbol. It is only wide enough to show 2 digits, so any
nested animations 100 frames or longer will
not show the entire number of frames - very annoying when you
spend a lot of time typing in frame
numbers to control graphic symbols and nested animations.
I have included the items from your list that are not already
on mine and will do what i can to see
that the next version of flash solves some of these issues.
And yes - not having the ability to export movie clips and
effects to video format is the biggest
bummer for flash 8 - i knew it during the BETA and know it
all too well now. But I haven't regarded
it as a total loss - i choose to find work-arounds and
thankfully www.flashants.com has a tool
called SWF2Video - it has saved me on many flash to video
projects that included graphics that had
to have bitmap filtered effects.
anyway - i appreciate your reply and if you have anymore
gripes - send em my way please.
-chris
--> **Adobe Certified Expert**
--> www.mudbubble.com
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Walter Elias wrote:
>
quote:
Originally posted by:
Newsgroup User
>
> What is it about Flash 8 that is not working for you?
You haven't mentioned it
> yet I don't think.
>
> ******************************************
>
>
> 1)
> I use Flash heavily to produce television animation. I
use a TV-safe color
> pallette which has several hundred colors. Now try this:
add some colors to
> your Flash color pallette. Bring it to more than 100
colors. Then try selecting
> a new color in the Color Mixer or clicking the color
swatch on the Tools panel.
> Guess what? The swatches go off the screen. There is no
way to access any
> swatches other than the lower 60 or so. You can't resize
or drag that pallette
> window. This was untrue in earlier versions of Flash. I
can't tell you how
> badly this slows down work for me and all my fellow
animators. The
> ex-macromedia tech people told me they flagged this as a
"critical" issue.
> Seems to me it would be simple to revert to the earlier
methods of handling the
> swatch windows and release a patch.
>
> 2) Apply timeline ActionScript to an object. Then on a
later frame put a mask
> on the timeline and apply it to that object. The
ActionScript controlling the
> object stops working. Same in reverse: if there's a mask
that is removed, the
> timeline AS stops working. Workaround: repeat the Action
Script at every frame
> where a mask starts and stops. This was also a bug in
Flash 7. Macromedia tech
> support worked with me for several weeks on this, and
finally rated this to be
> a "critical bug".
>
> 3) Put any movie clip on the timeline. Do not give it an
instance name. Add a
> keyframe later in the movie. On that later keyframe,
give the movie clip an
> instance name. Then put some ActionScript on the
timeline that refers to that
> movie clip's instance name. It won't work. You have to
go back and apply the
> same instance name to every instance of that movie clip
anywhere on the
> timeline, even before the AS appears. Otherwise it won't
work. Can you imagine
> the agony of having produced a complex animation with
hundreds of keyframes,
> only to later decide to apply a script to several movie
clips. You have to go
> back and apply instance names to every one of the
hundreds of previous
> instances of those movie clips, or the script won't
work.
>
> Is that enough? Shall I continue with all the irritating
little user interface
> bugs? Such as the Controller window, which you used to
be able to tuck away
> beneath the Tools pallette, without sacrificing screen
real estate. But now it
> can only appear above the timeline, which means you have
to sacrifice a bit on
> the size of the stage. When doing animation, every pixel
of viewable area is
> important!
>
> I could go on and on. Most of the bugs I found are
simple to fix, since most
> of them were not bugs in Flash 7!
>
> To be very honest, even though I'm a designer and
animator, I find the
> 'graphic enhancements' in Flash 8, like the filters, to
be mostly useless. If
> my clients didn't require that I use Flash 8 so that I
can send files back and
> forth with them, I'd do like a huge number of animators
I know and go back to
> Flash MX (version 6), the last stable, elegant and truly
user-friendly version
> of Flash.
>