So finally Flash CS4 gets it’s much deserved update, I’m glad some of the mayor bugs on it seems to have been solved according to Richard Galvan’s post, One of those bugs ( The Bad Fonts Problem) made us  scratch our heads and our hard drives (by formatting them ) at Grupo W, and thanks to the efforts of  Adobe’s Flash Team it’s solved now  here’s a little excerpt  of Richard’s Post:

Adobe Flash® CS4 Professional (10.0.2) addresses a number of performance issues. Some key fixes are:

• Fixed a performance issues when dragging objects on stage, scrubbing the timeline, or entering symbol edit mode in large AS 2.0 and AS 3.0 files.
• Fixed a performance issues when opening large files or files with many nested symbols.
• Fixed a performance issues when working in the library such as scrolling, selecting items in the library, dragging item to stage, or editing symbol from library.

It also addresses several crashes involving creating a text fields on stage and opening specific files with corrupted fonts.  The font issue was causing many people to suffer crashes because Flash was not handling inappropriate or corrupted fonts very gracefully.

Hurry up and download the update here !!!

And The complete list of Fixed Bugs on this release WOW  lots of things fixed :

Bugs fixed in this release:

• AS2 Doc Crashes CS4 when buttons not rendered correctly
• Auto Format beaks the code if encounters ++ or — with an array inside if statement
• Clicking through movie clip with large preview takes long to select in the Library in AS 3.0 file
• Scrubbing and pressing Enter to play timeline is not smooth, slower in AS3 documents
• W and H of instance incorrect after frame 2 if apply tween to instance with filter
• 3D tools appear incorrectly to a child movie clip when applying skew and rotation to the parent 2d movie clip.
• Changing W/H for nested 2d>3d movie clip from PI does not work. After scrubbing the hot text, it snaps back to the original size.
• Dragging from Library to Stage is slow in some files in CS4
• Selecting items in the library is slow in CS4
• Scrolling the library (vertical scroll bar) is slow compared to CS3
• In a FLA with lots of library items, double clicking a symbol “in the edit mode” hangs Flash on Mac.
• Library contents explode CS4 memory (CS3 sits at 75M)
• Performance issue with Stagecore (AS 3.0 fla) – scrubbing, moving, altering objects.
• Object visibility is compromised when created inside empty groups in AS 3.0 fla files.
• Double clicking symbol or symbol name in library hangs Flash; library contains a lot of items
• Text with device font disappears when it is selectable
• Component parameters don’t work for scenes greater than scene 1
• Selecting frames with textfields is a lot slower if the Components Inspector panel is opened
• Empty maskee incorrectly renders mask invisible rather than visible
• Crash when opening a  fla that uses a font symbol whose name was identical to the Postscript name of the underlying font and the font is missing
• Optimize a section within a shape leaves gaps in the shape
• Optimize opening and closing FLA files, frame manipulation for FLAs with many frames
• Win only: Crash on exit when the text field is in edit mode and clicking X button to quit without save
• Compiler errors when opening “Air Settings” while adl still running.
• (screens) timeline playhead can’t scrub and jitters when playing anything that spans frames
• gotoAndPlay(“framelabel”) compiles differently in CS3 versus CS4
• Scrubbing the timeline and selecting frames is much slower in CS4 than in CS3
• Crash when creating a text object on stage when there are corrupted fonts
• Graphic symbol looping setting changes when apply color effect to instance in PI
• Files with lots of nested clips suffer from performance issue (file open) in Flash CS4
• Edit in Place of 2d objects which has 3d movieclips nested inside is not functioning correctly.
• Edit in place is slow for complex instances in FP10 documents
• Breaking apart a nested movie clip erases instance name of child movie clip
• Efficient calculation between keyframes so dragging is faster and generally makes people happier if spans are long and complex.
• AS3 Components not compiling correctly when using the Component Definition dialog
• Window Only: Flash crashes when double clicking a fla to open while a current fla is opened with text block selected
• Can’t interact with Flash because modal dialog is up, but hidden behind the workspace when switching between applications
• From crash reporter: crash on Mac when double click to enter symbol edit mode (when the black dotted rectangle is drawn)
• Mac IDE flashes when right-clicking on Library after doing Test Movie
• Performance is slow after double clicking movie clip to enter edit mode and exit
• Setting an instance’s width and/or height to 1 makes W and H hot text unusable in the vertical PI.
• Hot text in the Vertical PI for X, Y, W, H displays only 1 decimal point while edit field displays 2
• Export image: Dimension values in Export dialog and Vertical PI do not match which is misleading to user.
• Crash when selecting text field on stage with many fonts on user’s system.
• Text PI is stuck and some controls on the PI are not drawn with certain fonts on user’s system
• The JSAPI that allows users to publish FLA files without opening them was inadvertently removed when the Project Panel was deprecated.  fl.publishDocument( flaURI [, publishProfile] ) is added.
• “Export classes in frame” behavior is different in CS3 than in CS4
• Drag and drop large nested symbol from library to stage hangs Flash
• Dragging from Library to Stage slow on subsequent drag or after scrubbing the timeline
• Scrubbing and pressing Enter to play timeline is not smooth, slower in AS3 documents
• W and H of instance incorrect after frame 2 if apply tween to instance with filter
• Large amounts of text nested in a symbol causes performance problems in non-AS3 documents
• Playback in authoring is not smooth (playhead skips frames), cannot stop it when hitting enter, eventually hangs and takes long to respond (both AS 2.0 and AS 3.0)
• Performance Creating Exported Symbol when the classpath contains lots of files and folder
• Create ease, undo after first edit removes ease
• Selecting and deselecting raw shape after convert to symbol spikes memory and/or crashes
• FLA crash on open when fonts loaded
• Mac only: User input resets to previous setting when attempting to change any value in Vertical PI input area
• Accessing a Windows SWF after it has been moved or deleted crashes Flash
• Crashing when re-opening FLA after canceling publish
• Crash in test movie when running a file with video and filters

Flash CS4

The new version of Flash has arrived along with the rest of the creative suite applications, this version of Flash comes with many  enhancements and it seems that Flash designers and Animators are going to love this version, for developers it’s not fresh news because they been able to download and test the new capabilities of the Flash Player 10 Beta from Adobe Labs.

To give a more detailed review I will have to test it first but here are some of the new features: