by Joel Howe
22-May-2009
With Adobe’s release of the Flash CS4’s 10.0.2 update last week, my life has gotten significantly less stressful. Armed with this comprehensive update, I can say to users of earlier versions of Flash: "Come on in, the water’s fine!" Flash CS4 is still not perfect, but with this update the balance shifts as the feature and productivity gains found in CS4 outweigh the lingering issues.
Woe is Me!
This next bit may sound like complaining, but it is intended to strike familiar with others who tried Flash CS4 and were wise enough to retreat back to the relative safety and stability of CS3. I pride myself on being on the leading edge of the animation and media tools I use, but with my early adoption of Flash CS4, it turns out that I was on the bleeding edge. My productivity suffered significantly, and my stress levels spiked. Flash projects felt like they were in danger of their very existence, with Flash CS4 crashing hard and often.
Things culminated with a monstrous BSOD, which I have to say, was a shock. It literally had been years since my last blue screen, a testament to the stability of Vista x64. Upon reboot, Flash CS4 was crashing on opening files, had a non-responsive Properties panel, and seemed to be mortally wounded. Fortunately an uninstall and reinstall of Flash from the Master Collection DVDs got me back up and running.
Was it worth the wait?
Now the update is here, and I have been working on the same files that were almost unbearable to use before, and they are remarkably stable now. So my frustration and anxiety have been replaced by enthusiasm and confidence, as Flash is back! Certainly I can say that Flash should have been this solid in November, but I suppose I could have saved back to CS3 at any time. I guess the benefits of the entire CS4 suite (Photoshop and After Effects in particular) were too good to give up, but I also had this vision that an update would be released as soon as I installed CS3 again.
Speed Up your Actions Panel, Give Up Line Numbers
The Flash CS4 Actions panel is still remarkably slow after the update. It lags when selecting text or typing and was to the point where I was using Notepad++ to edit external ActionScript files. It appears that, in my case at least, that the cure is to turn off the Line Numbers! You can use Control-Shift-L or the Actions panel’s Option menu, but it should bring your longer ActionScript files back to life! I know you shouldn’t have to work without line numbers, but given the choice between speed and line numbers, I will take speed and another three columns of text in the panel as well!
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