Oscar Trelles

Flash Pro MX 2004 Ready for Production

No way. Since it’s release, I’ve been impatiently waiting for the moment I could start using Flash MX 2004 for my day-to-day work and projects, but it seems like (even after the update), the product is not ready yet.

Ever since the release of the trial versions for Flash Pro and the different components of Studio MX 2004, I was very excited about the time when I would start using it for actual work. Sadly, Flash hasn’t been behaving as expected, not even after the dot release, which might have fixed whatever bugs, but not the overall performance of the product. It still takes awhile to launch, a lot more to compile even the smallest movies ever.

Yesterday it was the worst: Flash crashed or closed itself without any warning 6 times in less than an hour. Further more, it appears that this behavior is inherent to Dreamweaver too. Both would never open before trying to launch them 3 or 4 times after a crash, and Windows would never show an alert dialog box or anything at all. Sometimes you would hear a sound or see the programs trying to open in the taskbar, and then nothing… I just hit the pillows earlier than I expected, frustrated.

I thought that there might be an issue with my system, but nothing of these happens with other applications. As a matter of fact, Fireworks has proved to be a lot more robust, compared to it’s previous incarnation and to the rest of the gang in MX 2004.

I don’t think Macromedia should stop other developments to fix Flash, but they sure have to start working extra hours to deliver the product they offered when we opened our wallets.