Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of exciting new features that are going to make Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and the rest of the Creative Suite a lot more efficient and a lot more fun. But I was a little underwhelmed with the presentation. They talked a lot about the integration between various products (which is handy), but in a presentation like this, I'd like to see a lot more about the bells and whistles of individual products.

Some of the bells and whistles they did cover included Flash CS4's inclusion of inverse kinematics, 3D effects, and a new animation engine. For Photoshop, they covered some smart resizing features and new 3D features. But all-in-all, I would have liked to have seen more, especially since he started off the presentation by saying that Creative Suite 4 was going to be no minor upgrade.

The most disappointing part of the presentation was that they never announced a release date for CS4. In fact, I had to stumble upon the right link just to figure out how to get notified about the release of the products. (Click here to be notified by email.) But I do really like the packaging of the new products!

So drop by the forums, register, create your first post, and then drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Adobe just announced that they are teaming up with Google and Yahoo in order to address this issue. Adobe has supplied these search industry leaders with technology that will allow them to index swf files in a way that has never been possible before. In fact, Google has already started implementing this technology, and as I understand it, Yahoo won't be too far behind.

"But wait," you say. "I thought search engines already had a way to index swf files."

Well, you're right, but up until now, they could only index the static information and static links within your swf file. With this new technology, even the dynamic content of your Flash files will be open to search engine indexing, making it infinitely more possible for your all-Flash website to achieve top rankings in search engine results.

However, over the past couple of years, there's been a new answer to that question, and if you've heard of Papervision 3D, then you know what that answer is. Papervision is basically an open source (that means FREE) 3D engine for ActionScript. It's a set of classes that allow you to create and animate objects in 3D space.

The bad news is that I haven't been able to find the time to experiment with it just yet, but as soon as I do, I'll be sure to include you guys.

Until then, check out the Papervision home page and the Papervision Wiki, and take a look at the amazing examples of the things people are creating with it!

Also, take a look at Lee Brimelow's new video tutorial on using Papervision.

But then again, what more can you expect from an animation that was created over five thousand years ago?

Yes, you heard me correctly! The animation of the leaping goat was found on a bowl in an ancient burial site in Iran, and it dates back about 5,200 years. Around the circumference of the bowl is a series of images, and it wasn't until recently that researchers realized that these images, when thrown together in the fashion of a flipbook, could be made into an animation.

The animation, which seems to be about 8 frames long, tells the abbreviated story of a goat who wasn't satisfied with the leaves on the bottom of the tree, so he leaped and leaped in order to snag one from the top. Sure, it seems like a boring story on the surface, but you have to ask yourself why he wasn't satisfied with the lower leaves. Perhaps they were dry and wilted. Or maybe the goat didn't care about the leaves. Maybe he was just leaping around, trying to impress the lady goats. Or maybe... You know what? Never mind.

Anyways, perhaps seeing an animation like this will help us all to appreciate just how good we Flash nuts have it.

Hooray for Movie Clips! Yeehaw for Graphic Symbols! Long live the Motion Tween!