The other day, I was browsing through a magazine and an advert happened to catch my eye. It was for a product called 'Xtivity". So I decided to have a look at the xtivity homepage, to find out a little more about what this product was.

Anyway, judging by what they say on the site, it looks like a flash creation tool, designed more for graphic designers who want to use flash but who aren't worried about all the behind the scenes stuff.

One feature, which grabbed my attention, is being able to import your .PSD (photoshop) files into the program and keep each layer seperate (as you would in photoshop). This looks like a really cool feature. I am interested to see just how well this works.

I think, that as a whole, the program looks a little bit too basic for doing any serious actionscripting (I could be wrong though). It seems to be aimed at speeding up the process of creating simple flash animations/movies with buttons and text boxes. For this reason alone, it could be a handy program to have, just for all the simple stuff. I think I will download the trial version within the next few days and I will give it a go. Im not sure how long this program has been out, has anyone here used it before?

Well here's the link:

Xtivity

Just D'loadin the demo ...

I think its like the next step from something like SWISH .. or lets say its in between Macromedia Flash and SWISH .. but it seems to have quite sum features not available in swish .. so leme give this a try

Cheers

Wow, this looks like quite a step forward for 3rd party Flash authoring tools. I am downloading the demo now. Judging from the screenshots of the interface on the website, there seems to be alot of features. For the most part I have avoided third party programs because they never seem to bring anything new to the table except a easy, bland, dumbed down version of the real Flash. I remember downloading Swish when it came out and being very dissapointed. I like the idea of importing layered PSDs. That alone gets bonus points in my books. I am curious to see the what the actionscripting abilities are. I suppose I could always export an SWF and decompile it back to a FLA if I wanted to make more advanced changes in Flash.

I think Xtivity might be an alternative or an add-on for Flash Designers, but of course it's not replacement for Flash technology. (Being a replacement for the whole technology was what I thought it could be when I read the title of this thread) It would be cool if Flash would get a real competitor, some vector graphis alternative technique, Flash is much too mighty in my eyes.

Yeah I am not expecting it to be a replacement at all. I agree that it would be nice to see a competitor. Many times competition catalyzes innovation. It would be interesting to see what other companies could bring to the table. Although I do have to say that flash is quite flexible. Actionscripting opens up so many possibilities.