flash sucks
Nov. 17th, 2005 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashNo, really, it does. Every time I find a new bit of stupidity and brokenness in the editor I get pissed. Today's nugget of Flash sucking made me curl up and whimper for a while.
Now, most of the people talking about why they hate Flash are talking about end-user usability issues - huge ugly interfaces, broken homebrew widgets, stupid intros, etc. I'm annoyed by those too. But what really makes me hate it is the fucking editor.
Today's whimpering was caused by, first, watching Flash completely fuck up the colors on an imported PNG. No color correction info (not that Flash knows a damn thing about that anyway), looks nice and bright in every single program on my system - but import it to Flash and it comes out all faded.
And then I discovered what happens if you try to tween a bitmap in Flash. Try it yourself: import a bitmap on frame 1, make a new key on frame 3, and then motion tween between 1 and 3. Somehow, Flash thinks that a sensible inbetween between two perfectly identical frames involves the bitmap shrinking to half its size. It works sensibly if you stick the bitmap in a symbol, but holy shit this is so fucking broken. How can it do something this casually wrong?
And it's fucking slow. Look, I'm using a 1.25GHz machine. MX2004 should not be running slower than 4 or 5 did on the first-generation iMacs we had at Spümcø; I'm not sure how fast they were but they can't have been more than 350MHz.
And then there's the horde of brokennesses that happened after 5.
I'm not sure which version introduced it, but the behavior of de-"sync"ed tweens is fucked, fucked, fucked. Used to be you could have a sequence of frames on one layer, with motion tweens, and change how the symbol animated by unchecking a "synch" box in the frame's properties; this would let you hold an object on one frame, and make it start animating halfway through a motion. Now? Well, it changes on the keyframe you unsync at, but the later keyframes? It's anybody's guess what it'll show. So you get to do stupid, ugly workarounds involving extra layers in the timeline, just to work around this. I really hate it when I have to make my source files ugly because the tool is stupid.
And that goddamn fucking shit-head "smart" properties inspector panel. It is stupid. It is wrong. It obscures information that I need to have available, it breaks my flow by throwing extra clicks and pauses in to the mix. It makes me chalk up more distance of hand motion. I used to accept crap like this, but as the years go by I've turned into a usability nazi - anything that gets in the way of a smooth workflow is bad, any time I have to stop and think about the program instead of the project I'm using it for is bad. And I have to keep thinking about Flash's UI instead of the work I'm doing because of this fucking piece of shit marketroid bullet point "smart" properties panel. And it's a thorn in my side because it used to work much better and they threw that away and they're not bringing it back.
When I slither away from this gig of regular little Flash things, I'm going to delete Flash from my computer. In fact, I may back it up and do a complete system reinstall just to make sure all traces of Flash are gone. I might even delete the goddamn Flash plugin so I never have to be subjected to a Flash interface again. Yes, it's overreacting. But my loathing for this fucking program is deep, intimate, and complicated, and I really just want it out of my life. And I keep on somehow ending up using it again for money. Once I'm out of this current job, my rate for anything involving Flash will be a minimum of $300/h, and that includes the time I spend cursing the fucking thing - or, more precisely, I will simply not accept any work that involves Flash. At all. Ever again. It makes me snarl, it makes me throw things, it makes me grit my teeth, it fills me with hate. It didn't used to be this bad, but unlike Photoshop users who stick to an old version, I can't stick with the old, good version, as any work involving Flash requires interoperability with people who are stupid enough to keep giving Macromedia money for their shitty excuses for upgrades.
I want things that turn me into a seething ball of frustration out of my life.
Now, most of the people talking about why they hate Flash are talking about end-user usability issues - huge ugly interfaces, broken homebrew widgets, stupid intros, etc. I'm annoyed by those too. But what really makes me hate it is the fucking editor.
Today's whimpering was caused by, first, watching Flash completely fuck up the colors on an imported PNG. No color correction info (not that Flash knows a damn thing about that anyway), looks nice and bright in every single program on my system - but import it to Flash and it comes out all faded.
And then I discovered what happens if you try to tween a bitmap in Flash. Try it yourself: import a bitmap on frame 1, make a new key on frame 3, and then motion tween between 1 and 3. Somehow, Flash thinks that a sensible inbetween between two perfectly identical frames involves the bitmap shrinking to half its size. It works sensibly if you stick the bitmap in a symbol, but holy shit this is so fucking broken. How can it do something this casually wrong?
And it's fucking slow. Look, I'm using a 1.25GHz machine. MX2004 should not be running slower than 4 or 5 did on the first-generation iMacs we had at Spümcø; I'm not sure how fast they were but they can't have been more than 350MHz.
And then there's the horde of brokennesses that happened after 5.
I'm not sure which version introduced it, but the behavior of de-"sync"ed tweens is fucked, fucked, fucked. Used to be you could have a sequence of frames on one layer, with motion tweens, and change how the symbol animated by unchecking a "synch" box in the frame's properties; this would let you hold an object on one frame, and make it start animating halfway through a motion. Now? Well, it changes on the keyframe you unsync at, but the later keyframes? It's anybody's guess what it'll show. So you get to do stupid, ugly workarounds involving extra layers in the timeline, just to work around this. I really hate it when I have to make my source files ugly because the tool is stupid.
And that goddamn fucking shit-head "smart" properties inspector panel. It is stupid. It is wrong. It obscures information that I need to have available, it breaks my flow by throwing extra clicks and pauses in to the mix. It makes me chalk up more distance of hand motion. I used to accept crap like this, but as the years go by I've turned into a usability nazi - anything that gets in the way of a smooth workflow is bad, any time I have to stop and think about the program instead of the project I'm using it for is bad. And I have to keep thinking about Flash's UI instead of the work I'm doing because of this fucking piece of shit marketroid bullet point "smart" properties panel. And it's a thorn in my side because it used to work much better and they threw that away and they're not bringing it back.
When I slither away from this gig of regular little Flash things, I'm going to delete Flash from my computer. In fact, I may back it up and do a complete system reinstall just to make sure all traces of Flash are gone. I might even delete the goddamn Flash plugin so I never have to be subjected to a Flash interface again. Yes, it's overreacting. But my loathing for this fucking program is deep, intimate, and complicated, and I really just want it out of my life. And I keep on somehow ending up using it again for money. Once I'm out of this current job, my rate for anything involving Flash will be a minimum of $300/h, and that includes the time I spend cursing the fucking thing - or, more precisely, I will simply not accept any work that involves Flash. At all. Ever again. It makes me snarl, it makes me throw things, it makes me grit my teeth, it fills me with hate. It didn't used to be this bad, but unlike Photoshop users who stick to an old version, I can't stick with the old, good version, as any work involving Flash requires interoperability with people who are stupid enough to keep giving Macromedia money for their shitty excuses for upgrades.
I want things that turn me into a seething ball of frustration out of my life.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 10:03 pm (UTC)I was surprised when, a few days later, I actually got email from them:
...to which I responded with what was probably a lengthy diatribe on why I thought that would be an ugly band-aid on the core problem of that panel being a horrible, frustrating bottleneck; it's stuff that an artist/animator needs to have quickly and simultaneously accessible sometimes, not in this context-sensitive thing that forces you to constantly define your context for it.
And, well, I've just given up any hope of it ever getting better now. I really need to just work on eliminating this fucking thing from my life. Using it is just a huge source of stress for me.
[repost to fix my broken </blockquote> tag.]
no subject
Date: 2005-11-18 12:09 am (UTC)