September 10, 2003
Well, just like a million other people, I went and downloaded the trial version of Flash MX 2004 Pro. After spending a little bit of time in it, and reading through some of the docs (which I must say seem to be a lot better than the ones that came with MX), I can honestly say that I can't wait to actually build something with it.
Here are some of my first impressions in my first 24 hours with MX 2004 Pro:
1) The new file tabs rocks.
2) It's very simple to connect an AS2 class (which must exist in an external AS file) to a movieclip in your library. All you have to do is right click on the symbol in your library, choose linkage, and type in your AS class (including package). No more Object.registerClass!
3) I've already seen the WebserviceConnector in action, so that's pretty cool. I also just played around a bit with the XMLConnector, and one neat feature is that when you select an XML file, it actually allows you to visualize the structure in the component inspector and bind UI elements with specific nodes...all without writing any code. However, at first glance, I can't seem to see how it works for extensible XML structures (ie., if you don't always have the same number of nodes at any given level in the tree).
4) Is it just me or are the new toolbar icons really cool?
5) Gotta love the added compile time checking with AS2 and strong typing. So far, finding errors has been a breeze.
6) The docs that come with MX 2004 Pro are a lot more in depth in terms of explaining some of the stuff on the coding side of things. I think the "Using Components" doc will come in really handy for a lot of people. It's just too bad that there is missing documentation for a lot of the components that come with MX 2004 Pro.
7) Global find and replace...with regular expressions!
8) Noticed that the Combobox and Tree components use animations to expand/collapse, but I couldn't seem to find a way to turn it off (without messing with the class code). Anyone know how?
9) Anyone know what a delta packet is?
Comments Disabled