Jacquelin Vanderwood

August 15, 2001

What's new in Freehand 10 and is it a better product? Is it more user-friendly? Is it keeping up with the technological revolution? These are questions we ask ourselves each time we contemplate purchasing a new or upgraded product. Is it worth it for me to spend my precious hard-earned currency to continue to rely on this product to give me the advantages I need? The answer is a definitive "YES". I hear you saying to yourselves, "So, what's so great about Freehand 10 this time?" Let me expound on the new features and let you decide:

The Navigation Panel - 

Assign URL Links/Attach Notes
If you're into web design, this feature is vital to productivity. You can now assign URL links to objects. The network savvy designer can attach notes with his or her work giving the end-user information important to that special project.

Flash Animation
After you've created that masterpiece design, refined it until the client is happy, go ahead and attach Flash Actions to it right inside of Freehand, export it as a SWF.

Master Pages - 

Master Pages are what is considered 'templates'. How they work: If you are creating a booklet and desire to have a standard design applied to each page, you would then create all that information onto the master page and it would filter down to each child page intuitively. If you need to edit the master page, you can do the same as any other document. The only drawback is you are unable to apply page numbers. Oh well, we can't expect everything in life to be automated, can we? Those little fingers need some exercise.

The Pen Tool -

New and Improved! 

In Preferences you have the option of checking Show Solid Points which allows you to display points as solid shapes making it easier to manipulate. If you're familiar with 3D programs then you would know exactly what I am writing about. 

Smart Cursors work like they do in Illustrator. What does that mean? Well, they are more user-friendly. They show what will happen if you click somewhere on the Pen Tool drawing.

Last Active End Point - Suppose you are drawing and decide you need to use the Bezigon Tool to add in a point but you want to go back to the last point where you left off with the Pen Tool, no problem, just click back on the end and you are there. 

Insert A Point - Now it's easier to just click on the path and insert as many points as you desire. 

Retractable Handles - In the course of drawing a path, retractable handles give you greater flexibility allowing you to be more precise in developing that masterpiece. If the handles are showing, you can delete a point by clicking on it.

Enhanced Tools -

Subselect and Hand Tools can be found on the handy Tools panel. And with this change, Macromedia has finally discovered how to make icons that do the same thing, appear the same in more than one program. These tools are Freeform, Zoom, and Line tools. I want to make a comment here: when hovering over an icon to see what tool it is, I think it should immediately tell you. In Freehand you have to wait longer than is necessary to view the tool name and shortcut. (I have a heavy-duty computer that is fast, so it's not my computer.)

Brush Stroke - 

As in Illustrator, Freehand now has the capability of creating a graphic, converting it to a symbol, then using that artwork as a paintbrush. Wish we could do that with a real paintbrush. 

Library Panel -

What was the Symbols panel is now the Library where you keep all symbols and master pages for easy access just like in Flash.

Editing Symbols -

If you've created a symbol and used that it throughout your document and you decide that it needs a change (i.e. a logo on each page), now you can make the physical change to that symbol, and like a domino effect, it will change that symbol throughout your whole document. Pretty nifty!

Integration with Flash -

When creating Flash animation items, you can assign Actionscript (the programming language for Flash) directly in Freehand 10. And what's more, you can preview and test the Flash movie while still resident in Freehand. What would a program like this be if you couldn't also export it as a SWF file? You can.

File Info Dialogue Box -

When communicating with an outside printer or on a network regarding a file that you have just created, it is important to be able to give the recipient as much vital document information as possible. The file info dialogue box feature allows you the opportunity to enter pertinent information about your doc such as dates, file names, captions, headline slugs, author/photographer names and copyright info. 

Contour Gradients -

Apply a gradient to your object then with the two-dimensional feature, manipulate the gradient onscreen.

Print Area -

Here you have the option of defining a print area inside of the work space area that you can send to your printer; this is considered as part of the document. You have the capability of resizing or deleting the new print area too.

Unsaved Document Indicator -

This feature is like an alarm in that it tells you when you need save a document (similar to Dreamweaver and Fireworks).

Color Boxes -

These are automatic popup color boxes that give you immediate access to color chips without having to go out and select the colors you want for a particular project which I have always found distressing about Freehand.  

Freehand works great especially regarding it's tight integration with Flash. It is definitely a big improvement.

Two Recommendations for Change: I would like to see a change in packaged keystrokes made to work like the Illustrator product instituted for Freehand making for ease of use especially since Illustrator's keystrokes are more easily accessed. I would like to see the menu items in the Inspectors and Panels taken out of these secondary menus and put into a standard menu format; I don't like hunting. This may seem like a miniscule complaint but in reality it plays a big part in whether Illustrator users purchase Freehand to use in conjunction with their Adobe product. Freehand and Illustrator both have their pros and cons, and when both can work together harmoniously for the end-user, I believe Freehand will be even more popular than it already is. 

For further information regarding Freehand 10, visit their website at www.MACROMEDIA.com

Copyright 2001, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved