Flash MX 2004 Upgrade as improvement is heavy

July 26, Macromedia released the Flash MX 2004 upgrade package, which fixes many bugs in the original 2004 document and is more functional, as the following excerpt from Macromedia's description of the latest improvements to the updated Flash MX 2004 Documentation: Added more than 400 new code examples Increase the number of ActionScript language reference samples from 43% to 98% Increase ActionScript document size to 85% Added 21 NEW Document sample FLA source files to further demonstrate the power of using Flash to develop common application software Fixed more than 2000 document Bugs Added 2 new chapters on component applications Rewritten 2 Existing component chapters, information about component styles and skins Upgraded the style and skin of each component Added an inherited APIs to part of a component's documentation Component Application Development Interface (APIs) documents and their inherited application development interfaces (APIs) are in one place Move one of our flash engineers to a permanent location in the documentation team Improved quality and accuracy of documents Our users usually have two main complaints about flash documents: too many bugs and not enough examples. To improve the accuracy of the documentation, we asked the engineer team to review all the documentation over and over again throughout the program. We also require users to read the documentation and report bugs. Comments from the team of engineers and users are applied in the use of Livedocs system (an online feedback tool during release). A total of about 2000 bugs were found during this period, and we are happy to say that we have fixed all of these bugs. When we look at the example in the Reference guide, we find that some examples of APIs are imperfect and outdated. Many APIs are not at all. We decided that the best way to react to real examples that developers need most is to have a real flash developer build them. We hired Jen DeHaan, a veteran developer, educational writer, active member of the Flash community, to help us add more useful and complete code examples. With Jen's help, the documentation development team added 400 Dodo new code examples to increase the APIs from 43% to now 98%. We have established a new code instance standard, see examples of moviecliploader.onloadprogress in the ActionScript language reference. Enhance ActionScript and component documentation In addition to the lack of examples, users tell us that the ActionScript language reference is not sufficient for how to use APIs. Developers are also having trouble building new components because there is not enough information about custom components, which is an obvious problem. Change ActionScript Language Reference To help developers understand how to use APIs in their work, the document development team added 21 document instances of the new FLA source file to demonstrate the functionality of the common application software. For a new example, see Loadvars.load () in the ActionScript language reference. We have also added new best Practice how-to chapters that provide recommendations for creating a satisfying flash document. Refer to the section on applying best practices in the use of ActionScript in the chapter in the Flash Guide (using the practices). In addition, we have added a detailed explanation of the data type in each entry in the "Usage" section (see Usage). Changed the application component manual Because many of our users are having problems integrating components into their applications, we've added two new chapters: Using components to build an application software Manipulating Component Events We've also heard that users have a hard time understanding how to build and customize components, so we've rewritten the chapter "Building components," and added more information about component skins and styles in the "Custom Components" chapter. We also update the style information for each component (see Example: Button component). Please see the updated section: Building Components Creating components Custom Component Customizing components Make the Help system easier to use Flash MX 2004, released last year, includes a new, updatable Help system. The goal is to use new information to enhance the help system and respond quickly to user requirements. However, over the past year, we've added more than 600 pages of updates, and users still tell us that they can't easily find the information they need. Most of the time, the information is there, but it's hard to find, because there's so much content that it's hard to know where to start. Although we cannot make a radical change to the Help system in this release, we improve its usability by providing two new features in the Help system. We created an interface through the document to guide the user (figure). We also provide a Readme file that lists the changes that have been made to help the system in each update. Many of the help topics have reduced the content overview and not given enough information to the user, so we added a list of topic descriptions to give users a path to follow, for example, see Working with Flash Documents