ArtBistro

If you want to put animation into your website this is the way to go. Many people are able to view flash on their computers. If they aren't it is easy to get a download to view flash graphics and animations.

Good software; however, it seems to lack in a lot of graphical perspectives. It would be nice if it incorporated more tools and elements from photoshop and fireworks. In any case, it is still great software, just takes some getting used to if you come from the two software sets mentioned above. Great for making compact movies and eventually great websites and web add-ons. Definitely a needed upgrade if you are using ImageReady for web movies.

There are so many new and upgraded features now that Adobe has revamped this product! Flash 8 was really great to work with, but this is just wonderful! The animations I'm creating are smoother, the tools are much easier to manipulate and the scripting isn't nearly as difficult. Anyone who uses this should invest in the book that goes with it. All of the steps are there for only twenty dollars. --B

This software can't be replaced by any other, it's just amazing!

I will admit that I am still in the learning process with this software, but so far it has been really easy and a lot of fun.

I think this is one of the best products out there. Once you get used to it's distinct drawing tools philosophy, there's nothing that can't be done as Adam Phillips masterfully showed us over at BiteyCastle(dot)com. I use it to tell stories in 2d through character design, backgrounds, coloring and animation. I also use it to illustrate almost anything. Forget about simple banners with prices that flicker. This tool leads the way for web design.

flash is such a fun program to play around with. i'm not an animator by any means, but i love this program. simple to use.

I am very rusty in this so Ill be training this week on cartooning. I know I can draw characters right ouit of here so ill be doing it this week. Wish me luck dude.

Flash is so hard to learn, but also helpful and effective in creating vivid and interesting illustrations, animations, and even web pages. I just wish the controls weren't quite so anal, and that's not just my inexperience talking. Flash definitely takes a lot of study time and attention to little details that aren't normally so important in other Adobe programs. But it's certainly worth the price! (Students can get the entire Adobe Creative Suite 3 for $450 at some schools, by the way!)

Kittentoss is wrong, well, I don't agree, anyway: Flash is easy to learn. It's just so expensive, and all the free and cheap alternatives don't do a very good job. FlashDevelop doesn't cater to animators or artists, it only provides a way to compile code into a SWF file. Synfig is great, but it's not really as easy to use as the Flash IDE, and it doesn't offer any coding features, so you can't get any interactivity that way. Without any true competition, Adobe is asking for a very unreasonable sum: $699.

Flash CS3's interface is pretty much as good as it gets for me. I love the syntax highlighting and tooltips, and I especially love all the filter effects and color options. When using AS3, you have the flexibility of a real programming language, too, but most people will prefer AS1 or AS2, because AS3 goes a bit too far with picky syntax and exact coding practices. That said, if you want a combination of code and animation, your only option (currently) is Flash.

You can find Flash 5 pretty cheap on eBay, but that doesn't qualify for upgrades, and I'm not sure of how legal it is. However, if you want to use AS2 (or AS3 for that matter), Flash 5 will not do. For AS2, I recommend Flash 8, which can upgrade to CS4. CS3 and CS4 are the only versions to support AS3, but you also have FlashDevelop (free) for that.

Flash may not be the easiest program to learn, but much in Flash, such as tweening and the timeline - is self-explanatory. And, thankfully, shapes won't turn inside-out if one uses shape hints correctly. The reason I'm not rating five stars is because it's too easy, in my opinion, to mess up an animation in Flash. Converting objects to symbols is confusing at first.