Adobe LiveMotion: Flash On Your Doorstep
When something really big comes along from a top-tier company, there is not much more we need to do than introduce you and let you decide for yourself. When Microsoft Windows Media came out, there was more than anyone could explain, much less fully evaluate, when the system was only barely out of the box.

Well, Adobe's done it this time. Their brand-new LiveMotion (Flash compatible and more) Web animation package is just this instant in beta, and you can try it out for yourself as we do the same. It's touted to be easier to use than Macromedia's Flash and more flexible. Ultimately, you'll be the judge.

Just before its release, we talked to Mike Ninness, product manager for Adobe Live Motion, and we'll let him tell the story of how it came about:

"There's been a hole in Adobe's product line for a while, and that is in the area of Web animation. Our target customer is the Adobe customer that does not already own Flash but wants to, but has taken a look at Flash and is a little put off by the interface, the level of complexity it takes to learn Flash. Our customers actually came to us and said it would be really cool if you created a Web animation tool that authored Flash files but used the Adobe user interface (UI) and the After Effects Timeline. We said, sure, we can do that. So that's what we went out and built.

"We had three goals in the application. One, it had to be built on the common UI that Adobe customers already know how to use, so it leverages PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Aftereffects.

"Two, the overwhelming majority of the features that the user would want to use in Flash today would have to be easier to use in LiveMotion. That's where we did an object-based authoring environment, the object-based timeline. Pen tools, things like that.

"Three, we wanted to give them really rich content-creation capabilities. Our customers kept telling us that for the people who actually did own Flash, Flash tended to be a composition tool. The content creation tools in Flash were either weak or didn't exist, so they ended up going to PhotoShop, Freehand, or Illustrator, or FireWorks, creating content there, and then having to jump through hoops to get the content into Flash, where they would then animate it. Our goal was to keep them in Live Motion as much as possible, to give them as many tools as they need to create killer content, and then if they need to go to an outside application like Illustrator or PhotoShop, then we're going to integrate as seamlessly as possible in ways that Macromedia just can't.