I can remember the day as clear is if it were just yesterday. I was walking by my boss’ office
late one winter afternoon at the college where I teach, and he called me into his office.
Sitting on his desk was a thin white box with some sort of weird swirl on it. He slid the box
across to me and asked, “You know anything about Flash?”
To be honest, as a Director user, what I knew was filtered through the eyes of a Director guy,
which meant I didn’t know much and what I did know convinced me it was a wind-up toy
compared to Director. I replied, “A bit.” The boss leaned back in his chair and said, “Well
learn a lot more because you are teaching it in four weeks.” This was the start of one of the
longest, strangest, and most exhilarating trips I have ever been on. The version was Flash 3,
and I have been using and teaching Flash ever since.
In many respects, Flash CS3 completes the process started by Macromedia, now Adobe, with
the release of Flash 8. That release was a “designer” release, meaning there were lots of
goodies for the creatives and a few for the coders. This iteration of the application is the
“developer” release. The coders are dancing in the streets, and the creatives are wondering
what the hell happened.