It is a shame that Macromedia did not continue as a competitor to Adobe, I think the competition between the two benefited everyone.
No problem here, after Macro Media was bought up by Adobe the competition came up with some real good successors
such as Sothink SWF Quicker, Swift Max/3D, and KoolMoves.
Macro Media Flash 8 and MX (yes-still) have big potential but both have a long learning curve to get the most out of them.
You really need help from instruction video´s such as those from cartoonsmart or you will never make it.
Same counts for the Adobe Flash CS3, 4 and 5 series, I never bothered to try those monster packs. I moved over to
Sothink SWF Quicker, Flash IDE as it should have been from the start : small, fast, uncluttered interface, importing and
editing swf files directly without fla code, superiour compression rate ending up with much smaller swf´s.
Is there much overhead on a website when playing 3D flash?
It all depends on the flashplayer plugin for your webbrowser. It´s true that in the past it caused processor drains
and browser crashes but with this all new version it should be ok now. Same for 3D that now finally by Adobe is
being developed for the flash player. They made a good start with away3d. I´m sure they will not release anything
again with the same problems as before.
Have a look here, eat all your heart out and rescue your week-end
http://www.sothink.com/product/swfquicker
http://www.swishzone.com/index.php
http://www.koolmoves.com/index.html
http://www.koolmoves.com/kmscreenshot.html
http://www.flashkit.com/
http://www.cartoonsmart.com/
http://www.swfprotection.com/
(block decompilers, domains and slow down swf hackers for a reasonable price)
http://away3d.com/
http://alternativaplatform.com/en/
http://www.swftools.com/tools-category.php?cat=423
Coding Flash is great and fun
cw