It’s hard to believe that Flash began life just ten years ago as FutureSplash, a simple cartoon-style vector drawing and animation program. Since those early days Macromedia has grafted on advanced multimedia and programming capabilities to turn Flash, and its all-pervasive player, into an all-encompassing web platform. Now to reinforce the program’s development credentials, Macromedia has phased out the old standard Flash and replaced it with a new version of the previously high-end, programmer-oriented Flash Professional.
In fact Flash 8 Professional’s vector drawing power has been enhanced all round to bring it more into line with the likes of Freehand and Illustrator. Using the Properties Panel, for example, you can now control end caps, mitres and joins. There’s also a Stroke Hinting option which ensures that nodes are anchored on full pixels ensuring razor-sharp horizontal and vertical lines. Gradient handling has also been seriously overhauled enabling up to 16 colours to be mixed with full control over overflow modes and focal points. Gradients can also now be applied to strokes as well as to fills.
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