While the interface for Flash is less "intuitive" than most design applications, once learned Flash is a dream.
An Adobe rep recently told me that the reason LiveMotion doesn't contain the features of Flash 4 due to Macromedia not releasing the code. Flash 3 code is released and was utilized to create LiveMotion. Maybe once Flash 5 is released the Flash 4 code will be set free and the complex scripting actions will be available for LiveMotion to incorporate.

Having worked with both Adobe and Macromedia products since 1988, I've had the pleasure and frustration of evolving with these products. This article mirrors my feelings about the shortcomings of Flash, and hopefully will open reader's eyes to a superior alternative. If you are a "creative mind" you will appreciate the intuitiveness and consistency of the Live Motion interface. The article does a fair job of identifying how objects and animation are created, and how Adobe's experience with After Effects is a perfect pre-requisite for a superior animation tool. I suffered through the inconsistent behavior of Director, resisted jumping on the Flash bandwagon because of a similarly half-baked interface, and am glad to see that Adobe has finally risen to the occasion. (If only they had helped mTropolis overcome Director dominance!) As the article mentions, there is still a lot of room left for growing the interface and feature set, so vote with your dollars so that Adobe can make improving this product a high priority!

Why is someone comparing LiveComotion to Flash 4? The Flash 5 features have been published for a month now ... and readily available to all, inlcuding Mr. Long Gone!

Flash 5 corrects many of the ills that the writer highlighted. All the features of Flash 5 were well known prior to the release date of this article. Poor and irresponsible reporting at best.

Pretty straightforward. Flash provides better interactivity. LiveMotion is a more adept animating package due to its similarities to AfterEffects. More authors should right about creating linear elements in LiveMotion and importing their resulting swf files into Flash. Using both tools is the strongest solution.

The most powerful feature of flash is action scripting. I personally use FreeHand for my complex objects and only animate in Flash. LiveMotion has no action scripting features. LiveMotion's swf files are generally larger due to the strong reliance on raster images. So you get larger downloads and less interactivity. Definately not worth saving a few clicks.

I went to a LiveMotion seminar hosted by Adobe recently and the presenter had a difficult time understanding what I meant by a symbols library. He admitted he's never used Flash. He demonstrated that there is no way of organizing, editing, and re-using symbols. LiveMotion attempts this, but if you edit an instance, it changes ALL the instances. You can't edit each one individually. This might be why LiveMotion files tend to be larger than Flash files.

This article was so heavily anti-Flash, it didn't bother to focus on what was right about it. First of all, that they had the foresight about 5 years before Adobe realized they should get their ass in gear about the internet. I was wondering when they were going to realize the web existed and now that Macromedia took the first step, I am becoming a fan of the trailblazer, and not the copycat.

I feel this article was (curiously) one sided. The reason so many features are missing from live motion should be obvious: Adobe always leaves out useful features in first release products, so that people have to purchase upgrades.

One last comment: Macromedia didn't invent Flash, remember it was purchased as Fururesplash. So if you are going to review a product please do the proper research and talk to people who have used it.

I am not anti Adobe, I love Photoshop, but leave Flash to the experts.

Ease of use is NOT always better, being able to view key frames only is certainly NOT better, and many of the quirks and bugs you have referred to are most commonly associated with Flash on the MAC. As far as using bitmaps in Flash and the problems you stated with them not compressing consistantly is basically a lack of experience and research on your part. Flash export's very consistanty if you import it with the proper image and file format (goes back to the old saying "Garbage in Garbage out").

Granted, Flash does take some time to get use to, and to understand. But I have to give credit where credit is do, I love Macromedia's interface. I love the fact you can edit every frame and once you understand the application, the possibilities are endless as to what can be done in Flash. I do agree with you though on your comments about its drawing tools, and its lack thereof.

And on a final note, if all you want to create is animation, your career may be short lived. The entertainment of animation-only is short lived, and the Internet community is already bored with animation-only web sites, users want interaction, and to provide interaction you need the powerful scripting features of Flash.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong ;)