

You can crop, add cue points, and pick a skin that users will see while playing the video. As with the other CS3 tools, Device Central previews how your work will appear on skins of the latest handhelds on the market. Adobe is pushing for its software to create work that can be repurposed in various media, so you don't have to start a project from scratch for video, the Web, or mobile gadgets. You can embed cue points to a video that would enable, say, closed captioning in multiple languages. Video enhancements include improved import menus. And as Flash Player 9 is zippier than version 8 (100 times more so, says Adobe), your Flash videos and animation should load in less time than in the past. In our tests, Flash CS3's compiler worked much faster than version CS2. Added integration with Adobe Bridge can help you manage assets shared by other CS3 programs. Plus, you can set up blend modes and shadows that render at runtime, making for a smaller file. New filters and blends add more creative options. If you are drawing from scratch, Flash adds tools that include a Pen like the one in Illustrator as well as Shape Primitives for rounding off the corners of rectangles and making other shape alterations on the stage.

Rather than drawing from scratch, you can drag prebuilt components such as buttons directly onto the stage, and then customize them.

The introduction of Shape Primitive tools lets you alter shapes on stage, such as by making a rectangle's corners curvy.
