Flash is one of the greatest technologies on the Web, in my opinion, and I am sure that a lot of people agree with this. The bad part of the story is that you need a lot of study and good programming knowledge to fully unleash its power. Of course that sometimes you can solve things easier, using animated GIF files, for example. Today, I have here a very simple program that can assemble animations for your sites from still images, other animations or text, called Animation Workshop.





Setup



The last version of this program is 2.0, released on the 3rd of February. The shareware version has a really nasty nag, so it doesn't matter for how long you can use it, legally speaking. I am sure you won't stand it for more than a few days, anyway...


As you can see in the screenshots above, the installation is not really different from most Windows programs...or so it seems! The 15MB setup package should be easy for most of us to download and install, but what I didn't like is the length of the installation process. Enough to say that I had to click too many Next buttons, and nothing else.





Interface


Animation Workshop looks clean and very easy to use, as you can see in the screenshot to the left. In fact, it's too clean... just think about this - the menus from the main menu have only a few options each, and the toolbar isn't that rich in tools either. After seeing the main window of the program for the first time, only a question remains: "how powerful can be this program, if its interface is so basic?". Well, this is exactly the question I'll try to answer in the next chapter.





Features



The features of this program orbit around creating animations, but I wasn't expecting for this to be the only thing you can do. I thought it is normal to have an animation workshop that also allows you to edit images and objects, create new ones, import graphics... wait! That's it!



Importing graphics and setting options for each frame of the movie you are creating is the only thing you can do with this program. In fact, the idea is as it follows: you use another program for creating the content you'll merge into a movie, then import the files into Animation Workshop, then export your work. The good part is that you can import enough file formats, at least for beginners (I am sure that advanced web designers are not going to use this!), and one of the formats available for export is SWF (Flash file, if you didn't knew it by now).


At last, a warning! Don't press the About item from the Help menu if your speakers are on and somebody around is sleeping, or if you want to have a peaceful day... you're going to face the audio-nag when closing the program, anyway!





The Good



Animation Workshop is pretty easy to use and you don't need to spend much time learning it. It can export animations to Flash files.



The Bad



The price is huge, considering the features that this program (doesn't) have. There isn't much you can do with it, and you need additional software for creating the contents to import in Animation Workshop. At last, I'll say it again: the audio-nag is really annoying!


Conclusion


Animation Workshop is a really nice name, and I was expecting more from this program. Unfortunately, the only thing I like is the splash screen, but that doesn't make the program useful. Well, I don't want to bury it, so if you have the time and think this may help you, give it a try. Just hit the download link below... you know the rest!



Developer: Alchemy Mindworks Inc.

Price: 29.99$

Trial Link: Download