I just installed Flash CS4 for Windows and so far I am impressed. I will do a more in depth review soon.

Unfortunately, I have to report another CS4 workflow issue. To my dismay, Adobe broke the Info panel. Why am I not on the betas (hint hint)? I would point out these issues immediately!

Allow me to explain.

One of those terrible little things about the Mac version of Flash from a workflow perspective is that it did not reselect the value of the width, height, x or y after you entered a new value, it put the cursor at the 0 index. On Windows, you could easily type 24 (enter), 28 (enter), 26 (enter) to hone in on a position/size because the value you just typed was automatically selected. By contrast, on Mac, you would have to reselect the value by either using the mouse, hitting CTRL+A, or pressing delete a few times.

One of the consequences for not having this functionality is that you can easily enter in completely wrong values. If you type 28 and then type 29, you're actually entering 2928 as a value. This is really annoying and frustrating, especially because other applications do not share this behavior.

To say I rely on this functionality on a daily basis would be an understatement. It was one of the first things I discovered upon installing Flash CS4! I wasn't even looking for it, I was making a test symbol on the stage to play with the new Motion Tween panel. This particular detail is extremely important functionality. Other Windows applications use this same behavior and the Mac version has always felt broken in this regard.

My expectation is that this functionality would be fixed in the new Mac version of Flash CS4, not broken on Windows to match the Mac version. It's one of those things that we've had to tolerate on the Mac version of Flash for years.

Adobe, please fix this in both the Windows version of Flash AND the Mac version of Flash. It might seem minor, but it isn't. It's little things like this that help workflow tremendously and cut down on needless frustration. It isn't difficult to have an input field automatically select its contents after entering a new value. It makes sense for these fields (x, y, w, h) to have that behavior.

P.S. The new property panel, while it has that really cool mouse dragging functionality, is now missing the ability to type in values for x, y, width and height one after the other without clicking on the field again. If I am typing on that field, then that field should stay editable until I take focus away from it or click and hold on it with the mouse. I can TAB cycle through them, so when they're in "Input Field Mode" they should stay there until I take focus away. Focus should not go away by hitting ENTER. At the very least, I should be able to hit enter AGAIN to edit the value.

If you fix the bug with the info panel, I'd be willing to overlook this issue with the property panel and chock it up to different functionality (even though I think it should be consistent, but I digress).

Thanks in advance, Adobe.