Re: FLASH: Re: [FLASH][macromedia] Am I alone in being frustrated at Flash's user interface?

[John Croteau]

Hi Frasier,


> The object and frame inspector both show things that you can't edit -

> actions for instance. I can see the actions, I can select them, I can even

> copy the text into the clipboard, but I can't edit them. Or is my version

> of Flash 4 different from yours?

Must be.

The frame inspector doesn't have anything editable, but I use the Object

Inspector every day and in F4 they have included an apply button so it

is obvious that you can change these values. In Flash 3 you must press

Enter while having focus on one of the boxes.


> 1) moving a selection of a larger animation.

Unusual but works pretty good.


> 2) selecting a whole column of frames at once.

In Flash 4 this is a little tricky because of the new drap and drop

feature.

You still click holsd and drag from one corner to the opposite one, then

release and frames will be highlighted.


But if you click and let go you will set up drag and drop. If you see

the drag and drop little square you need to click again to clear it

otherwise you will be dragging a frame instead of highlighting.



> 3) Setting alpha to be zero on a number of items.

You can't just select a bunch of items and give them common properties.

You can apply some common properties such as size, position, and

rotation but there is definate need for a more flexible UI.


You can apply alpha and invisibilty dynamically and can set up a large

quantity of objects (movie clips) quite quickly if they have a common

root for their instance name, such as Name1, Name2, Name3 etc. You can

alsp apply an alpha property to a complete frame.


> 4) Keeping spot sounds in synch with action while maintaining a voiceover track

If you need two sound to be synced to each other they should be synced

together before importing the sound into flash. This keeps file size

down and maintains perfect sound to sound sync, then lay the sound down

as sound sync.

Even with MP3 compression is is best not to run multiple tracks of audio

inside of Flash except for short sound effects. To combine sounds in

Flash into the same envelop would require a much more complete sound

editing package inside of Flash.


>  Having to set the onionskin range as well

> as selecting the frames is most strange.

Can't disagree, but it is not hard to use.


> #2 and #3 - these can both be done by doing each task individually. Fine

> when I want to set the properties of half a dozen layers or instances, but

> what happens when I want to do more? Surely a double click in the timeline

> could select the whole column, and then the properties dialogue to apply

> whaever change to all selected items? These sort of shortcuts are such

> staples of interface design. In fact I seem to remember from my programming

> days that they appear in Apple's user interface guidelines. (I sometimes

> feel that the designers of several modern packages such as Flash and GoLive

> have never read this important document)

Hopefully in Flash 5.


> #4 is a bit more interesting. I have a man hitting a nail with a hammer

> (yup - really!) and I place a "thock" sound on the frame at the moment the

> hammer hits the nail. That works as expect. I then added a voiceover track,

> set to stream. The "thock" sound now lags the visual by about 5 frames. If

> I set the voiceover to "event" not "stream" the hammer sound stays in synch

> - but then the advantages of "stream" are lost.

Event sounds will get a low priority compared to streaming and mixing

the two with precision within Flash is probably not going to happen.

Running a synchronus and an asynchronous sound track are not going to

mesh well.


-----------                               -----------------------

John Croteau

croteauerols [dot] com (mailto:croteauerols [dot] com)

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