Hey Adobe, fix your broken code in Flash CS3

March 24th, 2008 by Steven Sacks

I'm so tired of this happening, that I've decided to write a rant about it.

Flash CS3 has this terrible bug where it renders things completely wrong on the stage when you're authoring a Flash file. It happens when you have MovieClips nested in MovieClips, a natural situation in Flash development.

Here is what it looks like when I am inside my MovieClip on the stage called MC_PlaybackController.

Inside The Clip

And here's what it looks like when I go one level up.

Outside The Clip

Do you know how often stuff like this happens? Too often.

Here's the kicker. If I save it out as Flash 8 and open this same exact file in Flash 8, it renders correctly. If I make this file in Flash 8 from the same graphics and open it in CS3, it renders it like you see with the volume slider clip appearing in place of the play button clip and the scrub bar clip. I can't do anything to stop this from happening. I've tried all manner of breaking apart MovieClips and creating them again, not naming the instances, naming the instances. Nothing fixes it.

Can you please explain why this is happening? I will happily provide the above FLA.

———
Update: Adobe has acknowledged the issue and explained what is causing it, and has also pledged to fix it in the next release:

Yes, I could reproduce the issue.  It is related to a change we made to
our Live Preview code so we could re-use Player instances when
displaying Live Preview for components and MovieClips with slice-9
guides.

In previous releases, we were creating many instances of the Player for
each component, which was using up a lot of memory.  We fixed that issue
by re-using Player instances, but we introduced this issue because the
code isn't accounting for this case.  :o(

Anyway, this issue has been addressed for the next release.  Sorry for
messing up your workflow.  At least the assets behave correctly at
runtime, so your customers won't encounter the problem.

Thanks for helping us out.

Thanks,
Nivesh

Sometimes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Thanks, Nivesh.

Posted in Bugs, Flash, Rants

4 Responses

  1. Richard

    I couldn't tell you what the issue is, but if you haven't already, report the bug to Adobe:

    http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

  2. ak

    I am also completely sick of flash 9 cs3 - it seems like it has sooooooooooooooooo many issues. It feels unpolished. When is the bug fix going to happen? Web service components? Data? tree controls? What gives adobe.

    Ive reported bugs and they dont get fixed as well.

  3. John

    if you are miffed about the missing UI controls in Flash CS3, check out Yahoo's Astra components for Flash.
    http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/astra-flash/

    Tree component and others are there. Doesn't solve all the issues but helps out.

  4. Steven Sacks

    http://frankieloscavio.blogspot.com/2008/07/weird-alpha-tween-with-9-sliced.html

    Frankie Loscavio recently had a similar issue with slice-9 MovieClips.

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About Steven Sacks

I am a professional Flash developer with over 13 years of programming experience. I have consulted for high-profile agencies and companies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta and New York, and developed numerous award-winning websites and rich internet applications for clients including Adobe, Fox Sports, FX Networks, Anheuser-Busch, GE, DirecTV, ESPN, The Weather Channel, Home Depot, and Coca-Cola.

I am the author of the open-source Gaia Framework for Adobe Flash, which dramatically reduces development time and makes developing Flash sites much easier.