Like Dreamweaver, Flash often seems more like a programming tool than a piece of creative software for designers.

So one of Adobe’s aims with this new version of Flash is to open it up and make it more accessible to designers who are more used to working with Photoshop than application-development tools.

To that end, Adobe has redesigned Flash’s interface to make it look more like the other Adobe programs in the CS3 range. It has the same range of tabbed palettes as Photoshop CS3, and has also borrowed a few of Illustrator’s drawing tools to help out when creating graphics for animations.

To make its programming features more accessible, Adobe has added an option that allows you to create animation sequences using the main Timeline window and then convert these animations into Actionscript (Flash’s own scripting and coding language).

This allows you to save and store animation effects – such as a logo moving across a banner ad – so that you can reuse them in multiple projects.

Flash isn’t just about animation anymore, though. Websites such as Youtube owe their success to Flash’s video capabilities, and this upgrade includes a new Flash Video Encoder that makes it easier to produce high-quality video files for use on the Internet.

And you can avoid looking like just another Youtube copycat by using the new Skinned Components to customise the look of Flash Player as it serves up the video content on your site. In fact, with so much video content now available on the web, we suspect that these video features may soon sell more copies of Flash than its original vector graphics tools.

It’s also worth mentioning that while Flash Professional is included in the various CS3 bundles, the less expensive – and less programming-oriented – Flash Basic will still be available as a standalone product for people who want a simpler introduction to web animation work.