Presented by Richard Galvan

This one was basically a showcase of the new
Flash CS4 and how they have changed the way animation is done is with a new engine. With the old CS3, the only way to animate a
shape or bitmap was to convert into a symbol, unfortunately you still
can't avoid that step but CS4 does cut it down. As a designer, I find
this new feature a breath of fresh air. Also I've noted that there is
now a popup dialog box that tells you that you need to create a
symbol to animate. It surprises me that it took them this long to do
that, I mean this should have been the first thing included in the
very first version of Flash!

So the moniker being used for the new flash is Diesel. The
claim is to bring Flash back to the designer while still letting the
developers have access to whatever the designer does. You can now
export the animation on the timeline into Actionscript code and xml.
Well most of this is over my head but I know enough about xml and AS2
and 3 to be impressed. Also the idea that we don't need to use
keyframes to animate is just plain cool. All that is needed is to
create a symbol and drag it around the stage and voila - the timeline
automatically updates. A motion path is also created and can be edited.
I do see some issues with multiple paths getting in the way with
complex animations, but layers should take care of that.