Flash Team

Well... Since you ask... :)

A "search" feature for the library would be invaluable. Slap me if there is such a thing. :S

It would be nice to have more sound features (effects wise I mean). "Live/real-time audio filtering?" --like bitmap filters, but for audio... whatever. It's just that sound is so flimsy, and frustrating to work with in Flash. Esp if you want to make it more interactive, and interesting. Its kinda buggy too (designer wise). For example, working with projects that involve importing large ammounts of audio files, often when you import an .mp3, the imported audio instance (in the library) will miss a large portion of its end... etc.

Would be nice to have "mask-able gradients", like AE does. I know you can do that via AS but it would be nice to do it via the authoring environment as well... you know, "non-code"... or have I overlooked that feature? Slap me if so.

You know how the Brush Tool "smoothes" your lines? It would be nice to be able to turn that off. Drawing in Flash 4 was the nicest... to me at least. It's really nice to have that option there, but it often gets in the way, and messes things up.

Would be cute to actually incorporate a "pixel-drawing" tool. :) There's an extension I use all the time that's a really awesome time saver, but it would be cool to have something like it, that's more "enhanced", that comes with the program.

Would be nice to be able to import video (into the authoring environment) without having to compress it. To avoid loss of quality. Hope that makes sense.

Oh yeah! And 3d... ok I'll shut up now. :D

Cheers!

Since you're a part of Adobe - how about we have some nice photoshop (hidden) shortcuts? Mainly things like double click the empty workspace for "open file" window, drag a layer to "new layer icon" to duplicate it, etc.

The thing I really miss is indestructible keyfrme easing - ie. whenever you finish editing a key with easing it will let you re-edit it again later.

And lust, but not least - how about a Photoshop GUI? j/k ;)

Duplicate layer

Being able to draw textfields acuratly - eg.. 200px wide by 100px high... not having to guess until its close enough (201.5px by 99.67px).

Text field Bullet points (I assume this is fairly straight forward because you can use bullet points via actionscript and html)

Better dual screen support. - dock library on right of actions window (currently I can only dock stuff vertically on second monitor).

Triangle tool. (or just change the polystar so you can specify sides)

Actionscript window to allow multiline strings.. eg..
var myString:String = "This
is
a
new
line";

These are just a few of the things that anoy me :-)

i hope that the :
- feauture put text around path (like fireworks)
will be allowed in flash .
- import options for images .. if we can see a import options that allow us importing (images with backgrounds) with transparent background .

and that's all for this moment

thanks

Being able to bookmark movieclips and make clip comments on a document basis.

MaTT

Fix the crash!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The instruction at "0x3008a420" referenced memory at "0x109bffe8" The memory could not be "read"
beginBitmapFill cause the crash!!!!

The biggest two things for me are OpenGL (& 3D), and better handling of video. What I mean is that playing On2 video is so CPU intensive that as designers, we
a) can't display full-screen, or even large screen area,
and b) we can't really use all of the cool things like alpha masking because a lot of our users' computers might explode.

IK bone system would rock.

Two things:

1. Improved copy+paste from illustrator.
- gradients and transparencies that don't convert to bitmaps
- text that doesn't default to the zero/zero registration point with all the kerning messed up

2. Ability have a symbol and a folder in the library with the same name.

Support for Intel macs for a start..

[MD] This is in the works for the authoring tool and already one for the Flash Player. You can go to the Flash Player download page to get the final version of Flash Player 9 for MacTel. [/MD]

Columns would be nice, too: I don't know if it is already possible but how can you check if text area is full - then you could move the rest of the text to a next text area..

One thing that bothers me a lot is when you make a movie clip centered to for example top right corner, Flash automatically makes a "alternative" centering to the middle of the object, so the centering is in a wrong place..
This could be a option in the preferences, so you can turn it off if you want?

Other thing is not-precise coordinates, for example if you give to a object some coordinates - for instance, (200 , 300) - you can get (200.1 , 299.9)
Would be nice if you could define how many decimals you want to use - also in the preferences. I have many times wondered that would be nice to work with 0 decimals.. Only full pixels, not half-pixels and so on..
(now you have 200.0, so it would be 200)

storing easing curve presets would be really really nice ;)

I guess the thing that bothers me the most is the fact that if u are not skilled in AS you are virtually handicapped in many aspects, I mean, you don't have access to the underlaying power of Flash.
I'm a graphic designer and even though I have a standard knowledge of the AS syntax, it's not what I like doing and I like to spend my time designing and not writing.
I obviously understand the flexibility of the scripting method and I'm not implying that this capabilities should be obscured, I think it's great for those who know how to make the most of them, but there should be the possibility of accesing interactive and aesthetic features through a GUI, like in flash8 were you can apply filters without having to code them. I always thought the removal of the so called script assist mode in the actions panel in MX2004 was nearly criminal. This exactly the opposite of what I'm talking about. Make Flash a powerful design tool just as it is for developers.
The other thing would be revamping the timeline. The AE way of handling things in this aspect could be a good model.
Thank you!

1) The ability to press the spacebar when using the timeline to get a hand cursor. You can then left click with the mouse to drag the timeline around. Up, down, left, right etc... just like Photoshop. This would be useful when dealing with large timelines with many layers and folders.

2) Allow nested movieclips to be visible and play when exporting out of the Flash IDE as QuickTime or AVI.

3) Have a dropdown menu listing all the markers in the current timeline (like Director has). Selecting a marker from the dropdown menu would take you to that marker. Very useful when dealing with long timelines.

4) The ability to jump to the nextMarker() or previousMarker() using ActionScript. Again, this is similar to commands found in Director Lingo.

To be able to attach or link a symbol behind to one in front of it, so if there is one between them, you won't have to replace it each frames.

I'd like to see some additions to text layout. The ability to wrap text to a path, or inside a shape other than a rectangle would allow for layouts that HTML can't match, or at least not easily.

I'd also like to see you recreate the 3D/lighting in After Effects, which I see as more as 3D with 2D shapes. The ability to manipulate movie clips in three dimensional space would be great.

I'd also like to see continued improvements to what was done in Flash 8. For instance, the ability to easily copy and paste a filter effect from one clip to another, rather than manually entering the numbers or being forced to save it as a preset.

I would love some bloging features or a standalone program or just to make it easler to set up a blog in flash plaese do this plaese

thank you

Audio updating would be a delight (soft fades on an arc, effects, etc)

Internal 3d camera for 2d objects much like 4G software's 3D Cam.(https://www.4gsw.com/)

Better export to video support. A fix for larger files crashing in Flash on export. An actual render of the SWF to video, so movie clips & actionscripted events are captured as well.
Exporting to differnet pixel ratios (TV or PC)

Preset templates for animating to either a widescreen TV or standard TV format.

I posted this before, but it didn't seem to take. If this is a duplicate, feel free to remove.

I'd really like to see some enhancements to text layout, specifically the ability to wrap text to a path, and define textfields that are shapes other than rectangles. This would allow for layouts that HTML can't match, at least not easily.

I'd REALLY like for Flash to be able to add underlines, bullets, and numbering right in the IDE rather than having to define htmlText.

I'd like to see some features of After EFfects ported to Flash, specifically the 3D/lighting features and motion blur. Built-in motion blur is really handy, and the manipulation of 2D objects in 3D space is really nice visually.

well seeing as your asking......

"mask-able gradients" - here, here...

A special anchor for MC's that allow for more powerfull tween.... For example you take two MC's and then join them at an anchor point.. they can both rotate independantly round this shared anchor point (which holds them together) ... so then you tween them to new poisions and the hold at the anchor point even though they may rotate and stretch independantly.

For example an arm made up of two parts(MC's)... fore arm.. and top arm. You anchor them at the elbow. then tween the arm bending and they hold together at the anchor point... maybe this could be acomplished on one timline if they were anchored. I hope this makes sense... its a pretty unique and powerfull idea.

I hate the way I can easily sample the stroke colour for my fill... but not the other way round because the drop down colour menu for stroke over laps the fill pallete... (when in the toolbar)

I think when you select a MC on the timeline it should auto highlite in the library... to make it quicker to find things.

Now that youve merged with adobe... how about being able to bring PSD's into flash that automatically split themselves across layers.. for quick scamp versions of animations... So the layers and layer sets you had in PSD are mirrored in flash

Same as above for illustrator

Timeline hiding... dont know how you would achieve this... but the same way dreamweaver lets yo close down chunks of code... would be nice for bigger timeline based animations if yo could just turn off / hide them particular timelines.

ooh would also be nice if the above feature could be implemented horizontally over timeline.. So you could close down and hide chunks youve already animated accross..

Both these features could be turned on or off in an advanced timeline button... so not to confuse novices or regular users that dont want these features

Id like to see illustrators blend tool come over to flash

When exporting to quicktime, as and movie clips dont work... There are various workarounds... but these arent always clean as youd like, and you cant always predetemine that the lcient wants to convert your web animation to quicktime. So at least get the MC's exporting..

You should be able to choose whether BG colour is determined by html code or flash... Ive had issues with this. Maybe a checkbox that exports BG colour as a bottom layer on export to save having to create a BG layer.. lazy i know but its the little things

warp distort on mc's

you got space for a duplicate layer icon

would be nice is the AS editor if you could select the classes you want to import rather than having to type them out.. remember, check spelling of.. etc. bu thats straying from this..

shape tween on right click in the timeline?? why isnt it there?

hmmm thats all off top of my head... im sure theres more things ive pondered over.

Well i think if i can edite the video inside the FLASH AUTHORING TOOL will be fine

like the adobe aftereffect so we need some more filters for videos and like the photoshop too

I secont MaTT's request. Better management features for MC's would be nice.
Also a really handy animation feature would be: if the Transform tool could "Distort" and "Envelope" MC's, not just ungrouped drawn shapes... and then you could tween those changes, etc.
-Kio

Animation:

1. You could develop a 3d-2d camera, resource like the "The Tab Animation Software". Is 2D but simulates 3d just un depth

2. Morph with symbols and not just broken-up graphics.

DESIGNER friendly actionscripting. Like mentioned above, a GUI for tweening movement, alpha, filters, etc. I can hold my own with AS quite well but I work with other designer who want to use Flash so badly. They look at what's involved in AS and suddenly get nauseous and lose interest.

Better native library of templates, buttons and graphic resources.

An extensive code library in the form of snippets or behaviors would be really useful for speed in production. Presently it's very spartan in content. Not having to write common functions, dynamic text, email, preloaders, etc. from scratch. Simplify installing custom or third-party classes to the library.

Photoshop/Illustrator Smart Objects. It's in CS2. Why not Studio?

3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D. OK?

- erasing tool with alpha
- patterns like in photoshop
- deleting layers whith delete button
- more adobe illustrator tools
- 360` blur

Rename labels in timeline where they appear. Not having to all the way to the inspector. (think director markers)

timeline undocked from the stage

property panel can be resized vertically, and the toolbar horizontally

Thank you guys so much for being so forward with your userbase, and giving us such strong input. It's nice to know that we can say things here and we can be certain they will be read and as many as possible will be implemented. Thanks again guys!

My thoughts:
1) When a user wants to create a symbol, they get a "Create Symbol" window that allows them to specify qualities of their new symbol. It would be nice if there was a checkbox for "New Layer for Symbol." That would allow the user to check the box if they want a new layer automatically created for that symbol, or if the symbol would just be added to the current layer. If this feature could have a memory so that if you like your movieclips to always receive their own layer they would, that would be great.

2) An addition to the preferences that would allow the user to set whether or not an item dragged from the library would automatically recieve its own layer or not would be great!

3) An addition to the preferences that would set the number of decimal places that we want when placing items on the stage. That way I can choose to lock everything to whole numbers. Possibly the addition of a right click menu that would allow a user to select an item and "unlock from snapping" and "relock to snapping" would be a nicety as well, so if in the very rare situation where someone actually wants to not have some item on exact pixels, they can have it.

4) The ability to distort and envelope items (images, movieclips, etc).

5) A 3D ability like that found in AE.

Thanks again guys you do great work!

shy layers like after effects.
ability to divide tweened layer in two layers like after effects.

an option for positioning objects with decimal or integers in the prefernces window.

ability to save the easing curves for the tweens in the edit menu.

better performance for nested masking animations

- Rotated screen, for better drawing
- Better shape tween (for mask morph)
- when creating a layer, i wish ctrl + New layer will make under layer (as in photoshop)
- option to view mask result without locking the layer

oh i remembered another important thing:

- different onion skin colors for the
before frames" and the "after frames", related to the current frames (same as Mirage's "light table")
- "combined object layers" - layer that union, crop,intersect and punch the other layers beneath. can be very usful for some cases that mask is very crappy solution for them (like, if you want a hole inside somthing, and dont want to produce a huge mask with hole in it, JUST THE DAMN HOLE)

thanks!

Draw on the stage, click instance... find AS3 editor...no... find item in library...no... find keyframe sequence... where is everything? Why is it all not connected?

When something is drawn on stage fill in as much AS3 as possible, link it to a keyframe, link it to the library, this timeline is 3000 frames long!!!

Oh, assets were supposed to be set to load in frame one... err...2... that'll take ten minutes on high speed!!

Hide the complex 'only in Flash' mumbo jumbo and make the editor fill in the Flex quality XML behind the scenes, you guys know more about how it has to be - don't make us learn all these goofy shortcomings of the environment - let us draw in Flash while Flash writes the code.

Let us know when it's as easy as Flash 4, then we'll buy it.

Layout scene in 3D camera views
Create camera moves and pans
Create special effects animation libraries
Animate using inverse kinematics
Connect joints using glue
Add lip sync and sound (map faces toward the phonemes)
Create libraries of reusable assets and effects that can be linked to the animation you are working on
Generate in-betweens automatically with morphing

When creating/drawing an object using a tool from the tool panel, you should be able to press and hold the spacebar to move the top-left corner of the object while still in the process of initial creation (like you can in Photoshop)

> Better than "Guide Layer" toggling on the Timeline. Have some sort of switch that when unchecked will disable the layer... and than includes all code! Also would be an asset to be able to select multiple layers and switch them on and off.

> Colorize layers on the Timeline. Something like how After Effects does it.

> Timeline, while onion-skinning, a line that draws vertically from the 2 onion-skin envelope handles would be handy. Also speed up when the handles are being moved, as currently it chugs the processor.

> Hand Tool for the Timeline (like AE), so we can shimmy around it easier! Scroll-wheel functionality for the Timeline (not currently functional for Mac)!

> Some sort of better zoom-in/out of Timeline.

i saw several times the gradient mask request...
it's in here already guys, just study the erase and alpha blendmodes in conjunction with cacheAsBitmap.

1) Ability to set instance names across multiple instances on the timeline. It's frustrating if your animator never instanced in the first place, or you need to change an instance name.

2) A tool in the Properties/Toolbox that is a Properties Eye Dropper, could have a modified eye dropper icon. This would truly rock. It would be most useful for capturing the XY coords of a clip on stage and applying it to any other clip or instance on the timeline. It could also be used for _xscale, _yscale and _alpha.

Thanks Flash Team!

We have a special requirement for setting the parameter names for v2 components and any future components developed by us(custom). the thing is we should be able to click on the component parameter field (in component's inspector panel) to open the openDialog box and browse to the intended text file, then open the contents of the file in a viewable window and then when i click on any one variable listed in the text file it should be assigned to the parameter field of the component.
To customize the authoring tool for this requiremnt what would the team take to do it?

Hi Mike, I just stumbled upon this blog and am glad to see you guys are being proactive in communicating with users. I looked over the posts and didn't notice any reference to the Cold Hard Flash forums. So, excuse any redundant comments, but there's a whole thread over there compiling feature requests for v.9. Here's the link:

http://bbs.coldhardflash.com/viewtopic.php?t=19&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

The folks on this forum are comprised largely of professional animators using Flash to create traditional character animation for television and film. We spend 100% of our time using about 10% of Flash's feature set. No action scripting, no web stuff, no interactivity. It's all drawing, transforms, and tweening. Understandably, most of the requests are to deepen the functionality of these features.

There are also a few individuals who have taken matters into their own hands and are fulfilling user requests for plug-ins that are seriously expanding upon the default Flash feature set. They're doing some great work, demonstrating just what Flash can become.

Please take some time to peruse the forums and especially the feature request thread. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to see implemented, and most users have articulated their requests in detail.

If you've read this far, I've got one request of my own. The Keyboard Shortcuts function is broken in v.8. I made a custom set of hotkeys to trigger both standard menu commands and custom commands & extensions. Over time (within a single session), the key bindings get lost and rearranged, making the set unusable. Relaunching/restarting does not remedy the problem. This is new to v.8, and does not happen in 7.2/MX.

Okay, make that two requests. Since v.4 & 5, Flash has made some great advances in scripting and interactivity, while the drawing and timeline components have not fared as well. If you scrapped MM’s patchwork of wannabe-Adobe functionality and instead integrated Illustrator's drawing and AfterEffect's timeline, it would be HUGE. I'm sure you guys are already way ahead of me on this, so I'll just leave it at that.

Thanks,
-Greg

What I really like to see in flash is that:

1- When I have a 500 frame animation, I can stretch this animation with all layers to something like 1000 frames, keeping the frame rate the same.

2- I can select and resize relatively all object on the timeline on all layers all-together.

Thanks

Improvement List For Flash
===========================

1. Dynamic Shared Library (placed on server to be used by several applications)
2. Displaying the quantity of frames selected
3. Camera
4. The Color Mixer panel should be increased
5. Correct the following error: when opening a Flash MX 6 file in Flash 8 there is often a preview defect - some
frames get skipped
6. Add more cool brushes
7. Add sound effects, i.e. vibrations, echo, etc
8. Mark the symbols which have ActionScript on them with a different color
9. Improve the Convert Lines To Fills command (there are too many defects)
10.Add usage percentage of the elements in the Library for us to be able to find the less used and duplicate items
11.Add the possibility of searching duplicates
12.More informative definition while (or before) replacing symbols - the possibility of showing the items being
replaced
13.Onion Skin on selected frames (like in Moho)
14.Improve sound editing (place the graphical speaker volume control to the main timeline, like in Adobe Audition)
15.Add the possibility of animating bones
16.Add the possibility of applying styles to symbols (color, stroke lines) as well as the possibility of changing
the width of the stroke line for all composed symbols (making it the same for all nested symbols independent of
their scale)
17.Improve work with points (remove the possibility of appearing additional points on curves)
18.Add the possibility of prelistening to an audio file before importing it to the project

Quick key for duplicate task... sort of a streamlined version of Photoshops Actions! Example to envoke action recording I hit Command-Option-Tilde, I turn an MC color to red, set a blur on it, hit Command-Option-Tilde to stop recording the action. I drag a new movie clip on the stage, select the clip, hit Command-Control-Tilde and it applies the red color and blur to it.

Perhaps this would be good for Photoshop and other Adobe products that use Actions...?

It will be great if you can show the pixel values while dragging and selecting a section of the document. Something like Microsoft Paint Brush.

May be there are alternatives, but I guess it'll be a cool small features to select a certain area quickly.

Thanks.

Good list. Key for me - it's been said before - better integration with Illustrator. Esp:
1. Gradients import not as bitmaps.
2. Custom brush engine like Illustrator, so AI brushes can be imported.
3. Multiple appearances like Illustrator.
4. Less bitmaps on import!
5. Illustrator layer tree, not just top-level layers.

I would love to be able to pin symbols much like you can with certain bits of ActionScript. It would allow for a much faster working environment. Thanks & Flash ROCKS!

I am a student at the Art Institute of Ohio, and I'm writing a paper on becoming an animator. It'd be great if you could e-mail any animator's e-mail address that i could send questions for an interview. thanks.

Bring back separate palettes for frame attributes, symbol attributes, etc. Losing them when 6 introduced that @#$% "smart" object inspector has made everything take more than twice as long.

I don't care if you still have that unified inspector. Just give me the option to have all those palettes again. Click on a frame in the timeline and its info pops up in the frame palette, info on the symbol in it pops up in the symbol palette. I have wasted hours of my life by now in clicking on a frame, waiting a second or two, then clicking on the symbol I want to edit in it, then waiting another second or two for the furshlugginer "smart" inspector to refresh - more, if I consider how often the low level frustration this creates drives me off to decompress.

I suggest this every time I see a 'new Flash features' list. It has not changed since MX. I do not expect it to change in 9. "Doesn't drive you crazy like the last three versions did" doesn't make for a good bullet point on the box to sell to new users. It is one of the reasons that I become a constant stream of obscenities when working in Flash: this UI change has made it nigh-impossible to get into a flowing creative state, because that panel is SLOW to refresh, and I have to carefully refresh it TWICE.

If not for having to run Classic, and having to interoperate with clients who had to have the latest version, I would still be using 5.

Also, stability. Flash crashes. A lot. And still likes to occasionally write out corrupted files, wiping out hours of work. The 'save and compact' option is supposed to do the same job as the old 'save a new version, close window, open new version' dance, but it doesn't seem to clean up the file.

And why does 9 eat up 5% of my CPU when it's idle, with no documents open?

New features? Whatever. I'd just be happy with 'doesn't get in the way all the time again'.

Oh yeah, and what's up with 8's splash screen being always-on-top, at least on the Mac? I usually want to go dig around in my filesystem, or pull up my email notes on what to do, or something, while Flash loads, but ever since switching to 8 I can't because it's vitally important that I be reminded that I'm loading Flash 8. Please flip this bit in the window definition the other way for 9!

Oh yes! Another "ever since MX" bug: Sometimes the keyboard shortcuts for the toolbar just... stop... working. I'm still in Flash, but they've somehow lost focus. I haven't been able to pin down exactly when this happens, or I'd give you a more useful description. Clicking on a tool in the toolbar makes keyboard shortcuts work again, and I think clicking in the stage area does it too.

Related, but something that some people may prefer, is the way any text box in the UI grabs and holds focus, resulting in swallowed tool shortcut keys, and an error message when I finally hit 'return' and get told that '10aaaaea' is not an appropriate value for line weight, or which frame a symbol's set to display at...

So yeah, my big feature wish for 9 is "fix the UI frustrations introduced in MX".

*Better audio controls
*MIDI suport
*Video Captioning within the Flash environment
*Adobe integration (Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects)
*Dynamic text masking made easy
*Gradient Masking
*Z-axis
*Direct Database acces from within Flash
*Change FrameRate without changing total movie duration (ie... an animation that is 300 frames at 30 frames per second will be 10 seconds long. I want to be able to change the frame rate to 24, 60, or whatever and still have a 10 second animation)
*Beter AVI export

Please, please, can we have an "air brush" tool?

I am creative director at Square Circle Media, and I would love to see a vector airbrush tool in the next version of Flash......

i think the current flash UI is pretty clunky. i can never find the right spot on my screen for all the tools i need. it's always a mess. i never seem to have that problem with Adobe apps.

And i think the Library needs to be completely updated. i will have a library with 300+ items. i'd like to be able to click on the library, and press a key and have the library jump to that letter item. y'know? just like the finder/iTunes. i spend a lot of wasted time in my library.

oh! and i want the ability to use my mouse's scroll wheel in the timeline.

-alex-

We want Flash support Hebrew language like other products from Adobe.

1> Anchor points to attach symbols to one another and create skeletal frames.

2> All the transformation tools - such as envelope, and distort - should be usable on symbols the way rotate, size, and skew are currently. All fully tweenable

3> Search field for the library.

BTW. I want to thank you guys for a great release in 8. The blending and filter features are amazing! And thank you for adding back object level undo. It's something that I asked the developers for personally at a macromedia meetup back in the fall of 2003. Its great you guys are listening. I can't wait for 9.

- can we please adjust the brushsize ourselves in stead of choosing between 10 fixed sizes?
- as everybody: better illustrator integration

It would be cool if something like this concept could be adapted to produce basic water effects system.

http://www.cad.zju.edu.cn/home/jhyu/Effects.htm

I am also a user of Moho (now Anime Studio) www.lostmarble.com It is very unique and produces some material that can be exported to Flash. It would be great if you guys could import their files and so optimize the translation which is mixed from their end - mostly because it is just one guy doing it all. I have generated particle effects in it to use in Flash and though these can look great they are often too bloated once brought into Flash depending on the shapes are convereted among other things.

Practically all of these suggestions deal with improving the drawing and animation funcitonality of Flash which has been underdeveloped since Flash 4:

1) A Magic Wand tool that works on vector data- contiguous and non-contiguous. I'd like to be able to finally select every microscopic instance of a color on the page.

2) The ability to change frame rate at any time in a project while preserving timing and tweens (like After Effects).

3) A non-destructive brush tool for those of us who prefer quality over optimization.

4) Better Illustrator integration. CMYK conversion is terrible. Previous versions of Flash preserved layers (why was this removed?).

5) Better support for video output. More codec support.

6) The ability to do video output of movie clip animation and some types of action script programmed motion and effects.

7) Much better resource management to keep track of symbols across large projects. A symbol conflict warning isn't a great help if you are dealing with thousands of symbols and many animators.

8) Tapered end caps to lines. Flash 8 gave us squared or rounded, but I'd like to be able to taper the end to a point automatically. Or add arrowheads.

9) The ability to import SWF or even FLA files directly into After Effects as vector data with transparency.

10) Sub-pixel motion on raster graphics to get rid of the shakey slow tweens.

11) The ability to use the distort tool on symbols, not just raw graphics.

12) More control over speed on motion tweens. Ease-in or Ease-out just don't offer enough.

13) A simple 3-D camera system, like on After Effects or Harmony, would be a godsend.

14) The ability to snap symbols together at handle points would be awesome. The ability to then apply Inverse Kinematics would be a gift from the heavens.

15) Cursor position in the timeline should remain relational as the user navigates in and out of symbols.

16) PLEASE update the audio system!
-Pressing F6 in the middle of a long audio keyframe should split the audio track right there.
- The 'edit' window could also use a major overhaul. Why not resizable? Navigating around large audio files is a pain. Selecting in and out points should be much easier.
- Please make audio synch more accurately. At 24 FPS the audio slips out of synch about 1 second every three minutes.
- Support for 48khz 24 bit audio.

17) The light table feature needs to be updated. User should be able to onion skin a non-contiguous frame, like a reference drawing or a BG somewhere.

18) Adobe: Please do NOT make the drawing tools work more like Illustrator! I LOVE that I can cut and chop artwork with ease. But I would like to be able to use Beziers better. Currently Flash converts Bezier curves into points with no handles (Nurbs?) once the Bezier tool is deselected.

19) The interface technique Adobe devised for After Effects 7 and Premiere is brilliant and I would love it implemented in Flash and across all Adobe products.

20) The new drop shadow and blur effects are nice, but can they not only work on Movie clip symbols? And can we use more than 5 of them without them bugging out? Try using a lot of drop shadows and the whole thing goes nuts.

21) Please do not sacrifice SPEED for FEATURES. The overwhelmingly best thing about Flash is the ability to play the animation at any time without rendering. If true Bezier curve support slows everything down too much, then don't add it.

22) Create a filter API so that third party vendors can more easily create routines to create animated effects and routines from within Flash. Like, y'know, After Effects.

Oh yes- I almost forgot:

- The ability to select a contiguous block of frames and layers on the timeline and then convert those frames directly into a symbol, with registration intact! That would save me an hour a day. (Currently I have to: select said frames, copy frames, create a symbol, go into the symbol and paste frames, select 'edit multiple frames', select all, re-register sequence (and thus screw up any shape tweens I had), exit symbol, delete original frames from parent timeline- and I must do this 100 times a day).

I think I posted this missive to the wrong place so I am posting it again. Please forgive me if this is a dupe. It will be the last time I post it.

1) A Magic Wand tool that works on vector data- contiguous and non-contiguous. I'd like to be able to finally select every microscopic instance of a color on the page.

2) The ability to change frame rate at any time in a project while preserving timing and tweens (like After Effects). 29.9 Dropframe support would be nice too.

3) A non-destructive brush tool for those of us who prefer quality over optimization.

4) Better Illustrator integration. CMYK conversion is terrible. Previous versions of Flash preserved layers when exporting to .AI format(why was this removed?).

5) Better support for video output. More codec support.

6) The ability to do video output of movie clip animation and some types of action script programmed motion and effects.

7) Much better resource management to keep track of symbols across large projects. A symbol conflict warning isn't a great help if you are dealing with thousands of symbols and many animators.

8) Tapered end caps to lines. Flash 8 gave us squared or rounded, but I'd like to be able to taper the end to a point automatically. Or add arrowheads.

9) The ability to import SWF or even FLA files directly into After Effects as vector data with transparency.

10) Sub-pixel motion on raster graphics to get rid of the shakey slow tweens.

11) The ability to use the distort tool on symbols, not just raw graphics.

12) More control over speed on motion tweens. Ease-in or Ease-out just don't offer enough.

13) A simple 3-D camera system, like on After Effects or Harmony, would be a godsend.

14) The ability to snap symbols together at handle points would be awesome. The ability to then apply Inverse Kinematics would be a gift from the heavens.

15) Cursor position in the timeline should remain relational as the user navigates in and out of symbols.

16) PLEASE update the audio system!
-Pressing F6 in the middle of a long audio keyframe should split the audio track right there.
- The 'edit' window could also use a major overhaul. Why not resizable? Navigating around large audio files is a pain. Selecting in and out points should be much easier.
- Please make audio synch more accurately. At 24 FPS the audio slips out of synch about 1 second every three minutes.
- Support for 48khz 24 bit audio.

17) The light table feature needs to be updated. User should be able to onion skin a non-contiguous frame, like a reference drawing or a BG somewhere.

18) Adobe: Please do NOT make the drawing tools work more like Illustrator! I LOVE that I can cut and chop artwork with ease. But I would like to be able to use Beziers better. Currently Flash converts Bezier curves into points with no handles (Nurbs?) once the Bezier tool is deselected. I'd like non-destructive beziers.

19) The interface technique Adobe devised for After Effects 7 and Premiere is brilliant and I would love it implemented in Flash and across all Adobe products.

20) The new drop shadow and blur effects are nice, but can they not only work on Movie clip symbols? And can we use more than 5 of them without them bugging out? Try using a lot of drop shadows and the whole thing goes nuts.

21) Please do not sacrifice SPEED for FEATURES. The overwhelmingly best thing about Flash is the ability to play the animation at any time without rendering. If true Bezier curve support slows everything down too much, then don't add it.

22) Create a filter API so that third party vendors can more easily create routines to create animated effects and routines from within Flash. Like, y'know, After Effects.

23) The ability to select a contiguous block of frames and layers on the timeline and then convert those frames directly into a symbol, with registration intact! That would save me an hour a day. (Currently I have to: select said frames, copy frames, create a symbol, go into the symbol and paste frames, select 'edit multiple frames', select all, re-register sequence (and thus screw up any shape tweens I had), exit symbol, delete original frames from parent timeline- and I must do this 100 times a day).

Pre-defined easing. Flash 8 added more advanced easing, but you had to manually draw the curve you want.

Things like Final Cut Pro, and After Effects have predefined ones in addition to the manual editor. Usually the predefined ones are the ones you use most often.

Rigging!
We need some system to rig our character models!

Tweening every limb bit by bit sucks ass.. we need to be able to rig the character models and have them react accordingly to how we drag one piece at a time.

Like if i move the forearm in front of the character, the rest of the arm and eventually the body and rest of the character should follow in an almost rag doll sort of way.

Also, id like to see the shape tween fixed, sometimes.. more often than not actually. I find that even on small movements i want to shape tween, i will get an irregular blip on the graphic, where a little triangle shoots up on the edge or something.

With Flash video fast becoming the standard delivery method for video on the web, I think there needs to be a way to put some level of DRM on Flash. I have several clients right now that want to distribute and sell video online with DRM. The only solution I am aware of is to embed a Flash player in a PDF file with DRM.

I’m coming from an animation background and I am more comfortable animating in After Effects or yes, even LiveMotion. I would love to see tighter integration with After Effects. Especially support for AE 3D cameras. I want to be able to setup some 3D text and animate other 3D vectors in After Effects and then bring everything into Flash intact.

Finally, since I usually mockup everything in Photoshop first, it would be a HUGE timesaver to be able to import a PSD with all its layers right into Flash.

Greg

My biggest frustration is the lousy playback in Safari. A locally executed SWF set to 30 fps runs really well, but drop it into an html page it get choppy and slow. For an animator, this is practically a deal-breaker. Very frustrating!

- The ability to use the new blending modes and filters on graphic symbols. They aren't any use to me unless I can export the cool new features to video, which I can't do with a movie clip.

- The ability to apply effects and blending modes to entire layers and even 'adjustment layers' like in after effects.

- Ability to export actionscripted and movie clip content to video.

- A more stable way of exporting to video. With the ammount of content I need to export it crashes like there's not tommorow. Also, the ability to render out only a section of the movie to video, instead of having to render the whole .fla.

- The ability to quickly convert all the selected frames (or even everything in the main timeline) to a symbol. Sometimes it's impossible to copy and paste all the frames into a new symbol while retaining all the positions of the shape hints. Sometimes there's too much data for flash to be able to copy and paste.

- An easier way to view all the shape hints on a shape tween without having to insert a new one. Also, at times, shape hints don't do what they're supposed to do at all, making it a guessing game for deciding where shape hints should go. Maybe some sort of morphing system like www.fantamorph.com 's software.

- A rate-stretch tool for symbols. It'd be great if a 30 frame graphic could be stretched accross 60 frames, and all of the tweens inside automatically stretch to fit.

- The ability to work with a camera instead of a canvas that can be animated like a symbol. 3D space would be very handy aswell.

- Some sort of bone system for character animation. Parenting like After Effects.

- Stroke options that are more like Adobe Illustrator's. Illustrator's strokes with a wacom tablet are so perfect and smooth, where as strokes made in flash can look quite horrid at times. Also, the ability to make custom strokes would be cool (or even strokes that could be animated.)

- Ability to distort symbols using the perspective tool. Editable distortion filters that can be animated.

- More blending modes that Photoshop uses such as 'Hue' and 'Colour'

- A more stable way to organise the library. If I want to drag 100 symbols into a new folder in the library, it can take upwards of 10 minutes for everything to be moved, crashing more often than not. Also, dragging symbols with massive ammounts of data from the library to the canvas has the same effect.

- When changing a symbols type in the library, say, a movie clip to a graphic, it still acts like a movie clip in the timeline, quite a hassle when recieving an .fla from someone who uses Movie Clips where graphics would be more appropriate.

- Double clicking on a symbol to edit it should open the symbol at that point in it's timeline.

- The ability to edit sound within flash, slicing up the actual wav file. Midi support would also be nice.

- There's a glitch where if you flip horizontally a symbol in Flash, you can't use the brush tool inside that symbol.

- Motion Blur. I know this can be done with actionscript, but once again I can't export this to video.

- More after effects tools such as the wiggler.The ability to view certain layers in 'draft mode'. Even if effects could be applied to an swf inside After Effects, and then back into Flash whilst retaining it's vector data. That would be cool.

That's all I can think of for now. If even only one of my suggestions makes it through to Flash 9 it'd make my job alot easier. Thanks for reading :)

I'd almost rather see LESS features in Flash. Split it into two tools...one for developers, and one for animators. (video functionality should be present in both). Otherwise, this thing threatens to turn into the bloated, buggy mess that Director finally became by trying to be everything for everyone. It's almost nearly doubled in price since I first bought into the franchise (around Flash 3), and I don't use a tenth of its features.

I'm an animator, and an illustrator. I want a simple vector drawing tool that doesn't get in my way. Flash is very good at this. I'd love to see it actually replace Adobe Illustrator in this capacity, as illustrator is a horrendous drawing tool, at least from the standpoint of someone with real art training. (For example, what good is a brush tool that only shows you the results AFTER you've made your stroke? And who ever thought the gradient mesh was a usable tool?) From an artist's standpoint, Flash is a far easier vector drawing tool to use than Illustrator, and I find myself using it more and more for this.

If someone could actually come up with a decent vector airbrush tool, I'd do everything in vectors.

I would like to see a standardized system of color palettes among all the Adobe products which would make moving custom palettes around easier.

I agree that the kinesthetics need to improve, too, for animators. Shareware like Moho have had bones for ages...why not Flash?

Limiting layering blend effects (like multiply, screen, etc) to movie clips makes this attractive bit of functionality useless for anyone wanting to export video. Why can't we use these effects with other symbol types?

Whatever you do, please try to remember that just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.

I would like to see symbols that are deformable by lines (aka Skeletal Strokes), like the Illustrator Art Brush feature, but tweenable. The current workaround for this is to use a combination of art brushes and blending in Illustrator, and export to Flash. It works, but there's no interactivity, and it would be nicer to do it all in one place.

Building on that, it would be even more powerful if the deformation worked on symbols that had their own timeline animation. For example, let's say I have a symbol that is a fish's profile. It is a 12 frame cycle of it snapping its jaws and flapping its fins. On my stage, I have a 24 frame cycle of a short horizontal line undulating in a nice wave pattern. I apply the fish symbol to the line, and suddenly I have nice complex nested animation.

If you could get Layer parenting to work exactly the way it does in AfterEffects, that would be great. Another approach could be to use a point constraint system. For example, you would drill down into the parent symbol (Edit in Place) and put a "constraint hint" on the art, just like setting a Shape Hint. Back up a level and then constrain the Child symbol's pivot point to the Parent symbol's constraint hint. Oh yes, and in this perfect universe, the position of the parent's shape hint is tweenable. Wait, did I just re-describe AfterEffects' parenting using my own complicated, made-up terminology?

And briefly:

*Less hint-reliant, less crashy shape tweening.

*Consistent point counts in shapes. When I modify a line or shape in 7.2, and then re-select it, I get a whole bunch of new stray points. (I hear this is fixed in v.8, but haven't gotten to verify it yet.)

*Bring over Illustrator's gradient mesh tool.

*Adobe-amitizing the toolset will help with stability, but please don't completely eliminate Flash's method of editing segments and corners directly with the selection (black arrow) tool. Once you get used to it, it's actually pretty elegant, and much simpler than constantly switching between the add, delete, and convert anchor point tools.

Thanks.

I posted about a week ago, but haven't seen it on the page yet. In case my comments got lost in transit, here's a recap of what I'd like to see:

1.) Please bring Illustrator's Art Brush feature over to Flash so we can stroke graphic symbols onto lines - e.g. a Symbol Brush.

2.) Allowing the Symbol Brush to support animated deformation of a symbol upon a shape-tweened line. Like using Illustrator's Blend tool over specified steps and releasing to layers to generate the "tweens," but all done in Flash.

3.) Allowing the Symbol Brush to contain animation. There's nothing like this currently in Illustrator, but imagine if you could make an Art Brush from a Flash symbol that contained a 100-frame animation, and you could also bend and stretch it over time as described in #2 above. The only thing like this I know of is using 3d apps to apply Spine IK solvers onto image planes mapped with frame sequences, but the Illustrator Art Brush is so much more simple and elegant. I hope implementing this into Flash isn't impossible.

4.) Please do not get rid of Flash's method of editing corners and segments directly with the Selection Tool (black arrow.) I know this is more of a Macromedia/Freehand UI paradigm, but once you get used to it, it's a pretty fast and easy way to edit shapes.

Thanks

Gifv Adobe-style type tool plx!

For example, i would love to be able to set an absolute value for the line spacing, in pixels, using the Flash properties box.

Thanks!

- More advanced masking tools.

- The ability to select multiple bitmap images in the library and apply a compression setting to all the images selected at once.

- More easing control.

- A set of APIs that are far more simple for non-coders to implement. I'm fine in flash because I spent 3 years learning how to create OO code, but most of my friends have complained that with each release of flash, they feel more and more lost in regards to setting up simple interaction,