Create and deliver rich interactive content

Flash Professional CS5 software is the industry-leading environment for interactive authoring and delivery of immersive experiences that present consistently across personal computers, mobile devices, and screens of virtually any size and resolution. Design expressive content, write code precisely and efficiently, and deliver superior-quality video to audiences practically everywhere.

A powerful new text engine, expanded support for mobile and consumer devices, and enhanced coding tools are among the new features in Adobe Flash Professional CS5 software, the industry-leading interactive authoring tool. Flash Professional CS5 offers unrivaled integration with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and After Effects software, creating a design workflow that extends the potential of your interactive content across media formats. Integrated support of Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR, and mobile authoring allows you to easily and consistently deliver interactive content, advertising, and video virtually anywhere.

Flash Professional is the flagship product for designing and developing content for the Adobe Flash Platform, and is an integral part of Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium, and Master Collection software. Combined with the numerous benefits of these Creative Suite 5 editions, the features in Flash Professional provide a comprehensive toolset for design, web, mobile, and video workflows.

With Adobe Flash Professional CS5, you can:

Design with expression. Communicate your vision without sacrifice and create interactive content with typographic precision, design fidelity, and expressive motion. Achieve print-quality typography by using the new Text Layout Framework. Use new spring attributes for the Bones tool to create more realistic inverse kinematic effects. Use new brushes for the Deco tool to easily draw shapes and add advanced animation effects, and add interactivity directly by injecting extensible ActionScript code snippets.

Write code quickly and easily. Quickly and efficiently write code thanks to powerful authoring tools and integration with development software. Use timesaving libraries of extensible code snippets and an improved code editor with custom class code hinting and completion - and use Adobe Flash Builder software as your full-featured ActionScript editor. Leverage integration with Adobe Device Central for enhanced testing and debugging of content for mobile and consumer devices.

Deliver in fewer steps and in more places. Save time and reduce the number of required steps when moving content from design to development and ultimately to delivery. A new XML-based file format enables teams to easily collaborate, and support for the FXG graphics format provides improved integration with Photoshop and other Adobe Creative Suite 5 software. Streamlined video embedding and encoding processes with on-stage video scrubbing means designers and developers can deliver expressive content more easily across personal computers, mobile devices, and screens of virtually any size and resolution.

Who uses Flash Professional?

Interactive designers use Flash Professional to create content with expressive motion. With the new Text Layout Framework, an XML-based file format that enables teams to easily collaborate, timesaving libraries of extensible code snippets, and new motion attributes to control spring with the Bones tool, they create immersive interactive web content and experiences.

Web designers use Adobe Flash Professional to create expressive interactive content with design fidelity. Using timesaving libraries of extensible code snippets, a new XML-based file format that enables teams to easily collaborate, and improved integration with other Adobe Creative Suite software, they create free-form and immersive interactive web content and experiences for delivery virtually anywhere.

Web application developers use Flash Professional to save time and reduce the number of steps required for incorporating data and deploying applications. Using extensible code snippets, custom class code hinting and completion, and Adobe Flash Builder software as a full-featured ActionScript editor, they provide data connectivity for websites and build cross-platform rich Internet applications for delivery virtually anywhere.

Graphic designers use Flash Professional to create expressive interactive content with typographic precision. Using the new Text Layout Framework, brushes for the Deco tool to easily draw shapes and add advanced animation effects, ready-to-use code snippets that teach basic ActionScript, and enhanced integration between Flash Professional and other Adobe Creative Suite software, they create free-form interactive content for delivery virtually anywhere.

Motion graphics designers and visual effects artists use Flash Professional to create interactive content with design fidelity and expressive motion. Augmenting their work by using new motion attributes to control spring as part of the Bones tool and streamlined video embedding and encoding processes with on-stage video scrubbing, they deliver short-form video content, advanced animations, and professional-quality productions for delivery virtually anywhere.

Video editors use Flash Professional to create immersive experiences with live-action video footage, still images, sound, and music. Improved integration with other Adobe Creative Suite software, along with streamlined video embedding and encoding processes with on-stage video scrubbing, helps them assemble compelling stories, pitch concepts, and create short films and animations for delivery virtually anywhere.

Top new features of Adobe Flash Professional CS5

New text engine

Flash Professional CS5 adds support for the new Text Layout Framework built into Flash Player 10, enabling you to use print-quality typographic functionality and take the experiences you create to new heights. Support for the Text Layout Framework provides rich, multilingual typographic control that previously was not available in Flash Professional, as well as a comprehensive set of APIs to manipulate text content, layout, and markup. The new text engine in Flash Professional CS5 also maintains layout and text formatting with greater fidelity when importing content from Adobe InDesign software and other Adobe products.

Print-quality typographic control

Designers have come to expect rich typographic control in applications like InDesign and Illustrator. However, its been extremely difficult or even impossible to set professional-level typography on the web - until now. With the Text Layout Framework support in Flash Professional CS5, designers can take advantage of rich typographical controls.

Global language support

The Text Layout Framework brings advanced multilingual typographic and layout features to Flash Professional CS5. This support includes the ability to display and edit not only right-to-left scripts, but also top-to-bottom scripts, and those that often use a mixture of left-to-right and right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew.

The new text engine offers additional features for East Asian typography, including an East Asian justifier, vertical text support, and Tate-Chu-Yoko, or blocks of horizontal text embedded into vertical runs of text.

Advanced inline text editing

Working with text inside of Flash Professional is now a far more efficient and productive experience. In addition to cut, copy, paste, find, replace, and spell-check functionality and standard keyboard and mouse gestures for editing (Ctrl/Command, Home/End, double-click), a new Selection mode allows text to be treated as read-only, read-select, or read-write.

Advanced rendering support

While offering advanced typographic control to designers is important, you want to know that what you see on your screen matches your viewers experience as well. The Text Layout Framework builds on the history of consistent high-quality playback and display across multiple devices in Flash Player by adding support for transparency and for device and embedded fonts (including anti-aliasing of embedded fonts). A new embedded font format (DefineFont4) provides improved typography features, international support, and reduced file sizes.

Ability to distribute content virtually anywhere

Deliver consistently across screens of virtually any size and use Adobe Device Central for enhanced device testing. The Distribution service available separately through Adobe Flash Platform Services offers free and paid methods for distributing applications to social networks, mobile devices, and desktops. It also enables developers and businesses to track the distribution of and user engagement with their applications, and enables monetization of applications through ad hosting.

XML-based FLA source files

Flash Professional CS5 uses an XML-based implementation of the FLA file format called XFL, offering improved cross-product integration and workflow productivity. This compact and efficient file format both accurately maintains data in a Flash document and makes the individual elements easier to manage and use.

For example, an image that is currently used in a Flash project could be checked out of a source control system, updated, and checked back in. The next time you open the FLA project file, you would instantly see the updated image without having to manually import it into the project.

Code Snippets panel

Flash Professional CS5 provides a new way to quickly include code for things like timeline navigation, actions, animation, audio and video, and event handlers with the Code Snippets panel. By injecting prebuilt code into projects, you can work faster, freeing up more time for creativity.

For example, the sample code snippets allow you to create interactive buttons without extensive code experience. Code snippets also contain helpful comments and clear instructions right in the code and can greatly reduce the ActionScript 3.0 learning curve by helping new users learn how the ActionScript language works. In addition, because the panel is extensible, you can create and share snippets with others, helping to reduce overall production time.

Enhanced ActionScript editor

Increase development speed with an improved ActionScript editor, including custom class code hinting and code completion, and reference your own code or external code libraries more efficiently. Novice developers can start projects and have code hinting assist them as they try to grasp the fundamentals of the ActionScript language. Flash Professional CS5 can automatically write the import statement for libraries, and more experienced and advanced developers can more quickly reference their own code or any external code libraries they are using.

Improved Creative Suite integration

Flash Professional is an integral part of all Creative Suite 5 Premium editions. Flash Professional CS5 adds more ways to work directly with other Creative Suite 5 components for a more efficient workflow, including:

• Edit bitmaps in Photoshop using the new Edit With Photoshop CS5 command
• Export complex graphics via the FXG format, which you can open in Illustrator
• Place finished SWF files into Flash Catalyst projects
• Use Flash Builder as your ActionScript code-authoring environment
• Open content from InDesign with greater text fidelity
• Import FXG files from Fireworks
• Open content from After Effects and retain editing flexibility

Flash Builder integration

Adobe Flash Builder (formerly Adobe Flex Builder) is a professional Eclipse-based developer tool that enables intelligent coding, interactive step-through debugging, and visual design of the user interface and behavior for Flex applications. Rather than having to choose between one integrated development environment (IDE) and another, you can now write your ActionScript code in Flash Builder and then test, debug, and publish your content in Flash Professional.

Spring for Bones

With Flash Professional CS5, Adobe integrates the power of a dynamic physics engine into the Inverse Kinematics (IK) system. This engine allows new users to create lifelike animation with ease, and gives expert users powerful functionality that is supported for both runtime and authortime. Spring gives IK animation movement that is 100% configurable, so you can now get realistic multi-object interactions that dont look robotic and rigid.

Video improvements

With integrated support for content created with Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe After Effects software, its easy to work with video content directly in Flash Professional CS5.

Streamline embedding and encoding processes with on-stage video scrubbing and the ability to define cue points directly in the Properties panel. Now, when you have an FLV playback component on the stage, you can see the video on the stage, whereas previously you had to test the movie. Flash Professional CS5 also includes Adobe Media Encoder, enabling you to convert just about any file format to FLV or F4V.

New Deco drawing tools

Flash Professional CS5 extends the functionality of the dynamic Deco brush tools, enabling you to easily draw shapes and add advanced animation effects. These new brushes include:

Particle System. Quickly create movement for particle phenomena like clouds or rain.
3D, Decorated, and new Grid brushes. Draw stylized lines or create patterns with multiple objects at once.
Tree, Flame, Lightning, and Building brushes. Use specialized tools to add and customize these stylized shapes.

Top reasons to upgrade to Adobe Flash Professional CS5

New text engine - Take control over your text with print-quality typography via the new Text Layout Framework. Work with columns and bidirectional text, and maintain layout and formatting with greater fidelity when importing from other Adobe products.

XML-based FLA source files - Manage and modify projects using source control systems and collaborate on files more easily. An XML-based nonbinary implementation of the FLA format allows projects and associated assets to function as items in a directory or folder.

Code Snippets panel - Quickly include functional code for timeline navigation, actions, animation, audio and video, and event handlers. Reduce the ActionScript 3.0 learning curve and promote greater creativity by injecting prebuilt code into projects.

Enhanced ActionScript editor - Increase development speed with an improved ActionScript editor, including custom class code hinting and code completion. Start projects and grasp the fundamentals of using ActionScript code more quickly, or reference your own code or external code libraries more efficiently.

Improved Adobe Creative Suite integration - Enhance your productivity and workflow when using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Flash Builder. Leverage the FXG graphics file format and integration with Adobe Mini Bridge for digital asset management.

Distribution of content virtually anywhere - Deliver consistently across screens of virtually any size and use Adobe Device Central for enhanced testing. Distribute, track, and monetize applications on social networks, mobile devices, and desktops via Adobe Flash Platform Services. Flash Professional CS5 also includes the Packager for iPhone to publish applications for the iPhone.

Adobe Flash Builder integration - Use Adobe Flash Builder software as your primary ActionScript editor for Flash Professional projects. Streamline your workflow by testing, debugging, and publishing content in Flash Professional while already editing code in Flash Builder.

Spring for Bones - Create more realistic inverse kinematic effects with new motion attributes added to the Bones tool. Strength and damping settings provide more realistic and complex physics movements within a simple and familiar user interface.

Video improvements - Streamline video embedding and encoding processes with on-stage video scrubbing and a new cue points property inspector. See and play back FLV components directly on the stage.

New Deco drawing tools - Add advanced animation effects with a new comprehensive set of brushes for the Deco tool. Quickly create movement for particle phenomena like clouds or rain, and draw stylized lines or patterns with multiple objects.