CS4 Project Panel Removal Has Bad Workflow Consequences
In Flash CS4, Adobe made a decision to kill the Flash Project Panel, the .flp file extension, and all the functionality that this native panel provided. They gave us no warning, there was no period of deprecation, and the consequences of this drastic and poorly-thought out decision are starting to occur.
A lot of people used the Flash Project Panel. Its greatest strength was its ability to batch publish Flash files without opening them first. The project panel was of major benefit to people who work on projects with dozens of Flash files.
There is no JSFL equivalent for the batch publish functionality. With JSFL, you are limited to opening a Flash file, publishing it and closing it. The speed difference in doing this is unacceptably slower.
One of my readers ran a test comparing the Project Panel in CS3 vs using a JSFL script in CS4. The numbers speak for themselves.
In CS3, with the Project Panel, publishing 86 files takes 4m 20s.
In CS4, with a JSFL script, publishing 86 files takes 16m 12s.
Grant Skinner's gProject panel, which Adobe replaced the native Flash Project Panel with, has no JSFL API. Plus, because it's a swf panel, like any other swf panel, it is restricted to the same limitations. It cannot have a file type associated with it that will launch Flash and open it with that project in it and it cannot publish Flash files without opening them first. Additionally, there is no migration of .flp into the new project panel.
Adobe took away a file type (one that was associated with Flash and could be used to open it), a project file management panel, and the ability to publish Flash files without opening them, and did not replace any of this functionality. gProject, while useful, is not the same as the Flash Project Panel. The features it lacks (due to its limitations of not being native) are features that are critical to many Flash developers.
Adobe, please put the native project panel back in Flash CS4 in a 10.1 update OR provide a JSFL function that can be used to publish a Flash file without opening it, exactly how the native project panel was able to. Or, please provide the C code required to do it which can be called from JSFL.
Posted in Adobe, Flash, JSFL, Technology, Workflow
October 29th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
So, isn't this the time to move to haXe, then?
October 29th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Are you using a beta version maybe? There is a checkbox next to each .fla in your project that adds it to the publish list. There is a button at the top of the project panel (it looks like a lego) that will publish all checked files. Why it's a lego is beyond me, but it is there.
You can still use the panel to create new projects, but I see what you mean about the .flp, but it's one less file to manage. You can just point it to a directory in your file system.
The one thing I don't like about it is that it won't display any files that aren't Flash-related, such as audio or graphic files. At least being able to open them from there or drag them into Flash would be nice.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
@Kevin: The problem isn't that you can't batch compile files, the problem is that Flash CS4 has to open the file, compile it and then close the file, unlike CS3 Project where it just compiled all .fla files in a project wihtout opening them. If you look at the JSFL file that the "gProject" panel uses, the function to test the movie does just that, creates a list of currently open documents, opens any flas not open, compiles the swf, closes any documents not in the "open" list. This is why this is a 4x increase in batch compiling FLAs.
I had a lot of hopes for gProject when I heard Adobe bought it. A lot of the gripes I had about CS3 Project are taken care of but there is the 'existing workflow' issue that wasn't taken into consideration. No FLP and no JSFL has essentially broken my development workflow.
GS posted about the new gPanel and acknowledged that there were some issues that need to be worked out and features that didn't make it into the first round (ie: JSFL API). Hopefully it will get there and we will all be better off for it.
Need to find the happy medium between the CS3 and CS4 Projects.
October 29th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
The issue is that Grant's panel cannot publish Flash files without opening them because there is no such JSFL function. Even if they put in a JSFL API hook to Grant's panel to publish a Flash file, it still cannot publish without opening first.
Only the native Flash Project Panel could do that, and the JSFL API methods that allowed you to do that belonged to the Project object, which has been removed.
I'm still waiting for my copy of CS4, but if what you are saying is correct, if Grant's panel opens up all the files to publish them WITHOUT closing them afterwards, then you're looking at a major memory issue as more and more files are opened, and Flash will slow down to molasses. Let's hope that's not the case.
I am in the process of rewriting the project panel as best I can with JSFL for Gaia, including the ability to check which files you want to publish (I had no idea Grant's panel had that but it certainly is something the Flash Project Panel was missing).
October 29th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
confirm open-compile-close in commercial version, btw for me, i miss CS3 offline Help! ;\
October 30th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I can confirm that the new project panel does indeed close the files after publishing them, but only if you didn't have it open in the first place (which is a _good_ thing).
Either way, I don't think most people will ever be publishing 84 FLAs in one go. If your project has 84 FLAs, you need to think about re-architecting your project. The speed difference with 10 or so FLAs won't be as noticable.
However, I agree on all other points. An application should never lose functionality without warning or a suitable replacement. This is a bad decision that I believe Adobe just overlooked. I am confident, though, that Adobe will listen to its users as it has in the past and will provide a fix in the near future. We'll just need to make sure they know this is an issue – email the evangelist team, blog and twitter about it.
October 31st, 2008 at 8:13 am
how come the CS4 Project Panel auto collapses directories and sometimes does not publish to the correct destination?
it is unusable.
November 18th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
This is painful. Right click "Delete" actually deletes the directory or file from the file system? Trying to re-create projects that were old FLP's is proving to be difficult and just not worth my time. Why couldn't this just be an "add-on" like it was when it was GProject? I would much rather see this as an option, I had a nice workflow with a few JSFL commands as helpers in the old Project Panel. Right clicking on something that isn't highlighted will allow you to edit or open a file / folder but the node in the tree won't gain focus.
/rant
November 21st, 2008 at 8:30 am
This is the single reason I have not switched to CS4 yet. I have it, yes, but simply can't get used to the gProject panel. It's hardly an improvement at all, more like a large step backwards. It seems like Adobe is trying to force anyone who uses Flash more than trivially to switch to Flex.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:53 am
@Jason: " how come the CS4 Project Panel auto collapses directories and sometimes does not publish to the correct destination?
it is unusable."
Yup. Completely unuseable. Fine if your project has a few files in one folder, but if you have anything more than that, this new project panel will drive you insane. I am hoping that Adobe will replace this panel with a sense of urgency.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:15 am
Hey I'm the one that ran the test anyone know if there going to come out with a patch(probably for a nice hunk of cash) but that would show hope that someone else would just simplify and make a free component.
when doing my work so far the only thing i have utilized is the bones everything else i do in cs3 still hopefully i wont need as3 soon. making my day less waiting.
i do alot of teaching modulations and there are huge problems.
1. project window.
2. using Page Down key to go to next symbol takes for what seems ever(more like 10 seconds)(but 1 sec in cs3 is a big waist)
3. making hot keys with history and commands for some reason will only follow 1 step at a time.
cs4 was marked to save time but seems to eat up more of it.(at least with what i do) i hope cs4 doesn't quickly turn to csVista with further investigation.
i already don't like the auto key animation sure its nice when done right but i don't have time to learn how to move a key frame that for some reason wont just pick up and move. ill find it. just haven't got to it.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:18 am
[...] auf die Suche nach einer Lösung. Steven Sacks der Entwickler von Gaia schrieb bereits in seinem Blog über die Problematik. Seine Leser testeten die Lösung über JSFL und dem ProjectPanel und die [...]
December 6th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Any word on this from Adobe? I think you said you'd be presenting GAIA at MAX, so how did that go? Any timeline or plan for moving forward?
I appreciate all your hard work.
December 6th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I spoke with Richard Galvan at MAX and explained the issues at length. Unfortunately, I don't think anything is going to change until at least Flash CS5, maybe later.
I'm hard at work on the new Gaia panel. Over 50 hours logged on it so far. It's a lot of work converting everything over to Flex/AS3/E4X, but the panel will be much better for it.
January 30th, 2009 at 7:03 am
i cant wait till my company has to republish all files for 1 course of our selection. due to updates in external functions. my co-worker ran 216 files took him 1.5 hours would have taken 30 min. by our calculations when the updates are due we will have to run over 2000 files. so a 5 hour turns in to 15 or more hours just publishing lol. hope I'm sick that day.
the time is bad but the killed is going to be checking off all those boxes. i am wondering if the auto publish component on adobe extensions would be smarter. it dose the same open and close function but no checking off files just selecting…
February 6th, 2009 at 4:18 am
The worst part is that since CS4 has come up, Flashdevelop can't use the "Test project" command anymore.
So yeah, great improvement…
August 8th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
@Martial: I agree, I have been looking for a way to hook up a keyboard shortcut to the gProject panel Publish Project command and then adjust the FlashDevelop test project JSFL files to run the key command. But so far I don't think it's even possible. If it were that easy, I'm sure Steven would have already hooked that up.