Flash 8 Basic Flash Basic 8 is a subset of Flash Professional 8 and includes all the core functionality needed to design simple motion graphics and interactivity for delivery to the Flash Player. It is the affordable authoring environment designed for the aspiring professional. For developing more advanced, rich interactive content, interactive video experiences, or mobile content, Flash Professional 8 is the necessary tool. With Flash Basic 8 you can: Add life to content Enjoy precise control over designs by combining animation capabilities with powerful vector and bitmap tools. Share creativity with everyone Reach a worldwide audience consistently by leveraging the Flash Player, the most widely distributed run-time client. Engage the audience Build interactive content that pulls the audience in. Encourage reaction using a powerful and advanced scripting language.

Flash 8 Basic Features List

FlashType-high-quality font rendering engine

A revolutionary new font rendering engine that provides clear, highest-quality font rendering, FlashType makes small fonts look amazingly clear and greatly improves readability. Choose from several options for font rendering, each optimized for different use cases. Optimize font rendering with the new custom anti-aliasing feature in Flash Professional 8.

Supports unneeded re-rendering of vector objects by simply flagging an object as a bitmap. Even though the object gets cached as a bitmap, the vector data is still maintained so, at any point, the object can be converted back into a vector again.

mproved text tool

Resize a text field using new, improved text handles. Text fields can be resized by grabbing any of the four handles.

Select from a variety of cap and join types. Apply a gradient to a stroke as well as a fill. Render stroke intersections better with stroke hinting.

Tighter control over gradients such as changing the focal point of a radial gradient and selecting from different overflow modes.

Flash Basic 8 Video Features

Higher-quality video codec

Flash Professional Player 8 adds a new, far more advanced video codec, On2 VP6. This codec provides superior video quality that is competitive with today's best video codecs at a much smaller file size.

ideo import workflow

Centralized video workflow in one dialog presents all available options for deploying Flash Video, whether it is via the Flash Communication Server for streaming video, via progressive download of external FLV files over HTTP, or a number of other options. The new video import dialog also jump-starts great video experiences by instantiating the new, light-weight, easily-skinnable video component and pre-populating it with all required parameters for deployment. (Flash Basic supports embedded video only)

Macromedia Flash 8 User Experience

Script Assist (formerly called Normal Mode)

Normal Mode is back, only it's much better. Script Assist provides a visual user interface for editing scripts that includes automatic syntax completion as well as descriptions for the parameters of any given action.

With multiple files open, the library for each open file will be consolidated into a single panel that acts like all other panels in Flash 8 - it stays where it's put. Navigate between open libraries more easily using the new drop-down list at the top of the library to access any other open library.

Visualize shapes as objects by toggling a new object drawing mode to represent shapes as objects, along the lines of vector drawing tools such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand.

Improved panel management optimizes workspace as the user sees fit. Group panels together in tabbed-panel sets, ala Dreamweaver and Fireworks. Reduce on-screen clutter by grouping most commonly-used panels together. Assign custom names to each panel group.

For projects that require large graphics that extend far beyond the size of the stage in Flash, view objects much further off-stage. To expand the size of the pasteboard, just drag an object close to the edge and the pasteboard will automatically grow to fit.

Switch between "object-level undo" and "document-level undo."

A new metadata property for the SWF file format improves searchability of SWF files by Internet search engines. Now Flash authors can add a title and description to a SWF file, allowing search engines to more accurately reflect the content represented by the SWF file.

Flash Professional 8 vs Flash Basic 8 Comparison Chart

Flash Basic 8 System Requirements for Windows

• 800 MHz Intel Pentium III processor (or equivalent) and later
• Windows 2000, Windows XP
• 256 MB RAM (1 GB recommended to run more than one Studio 8 product simultaneously)
• 1024 x 768, 16-bit display (32-bit recommended)
• 710 MB available disk space

Flash 8 Basic System Requirements for Mac

• 600 MHz PowerPC G3 and later
• Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4
• 256 MB RAM (1 GB recommended to run more than one Studio 8 product simultaneously)
• 1024 x 768, thousands of colors display (millions of colors recommended)
• 360 MB available disk space

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