New drawing features in Flash 8 - part 1

Flash 8 includes some great new drawing features that may change your approach to drawing and will certainly make using Flash much easier. In addition to the Object Drawing model, there is a new method for adding rectangles and ovals to your movies as well as some additional options for drawing lines. I’ll cover both of these topics in this article.

Other new drawing features include enhanced gradients and the ability to specify scaling for objects. I’ll cover both of those features in part 2 of this topic.

You’ll need a copy of Flash 8 to see the new features explored in this article and these areas apply to both versions of Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8. You can download a trial version of Flash 8 from the Macromedia Web site.

You’ll find the source files for the tutorial in the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file. The download includes the starter files you'll need for the exercises in this article as well as the completed files, in case you want to see my solutions.

We’ll start by looking at a new way to draw rectangles and ovals.