Webmaster Forum / Flash / General Flash Topics / July 2008

I find it highly unlikely someone would actually purchase the Master Collection
and not even know how the programs differ. I surely wouldn't want to spend
$1000+ on something and not know what I'm buying. If you bought that
collection, you would see there is plenty of documentation about each program
(additional documentation is on adobe.com as to what each program does).
Anyway, After Effects is for adding additional video effects to, well, video.
If you want to create animation, then use Flash.

I'm not being shady, I just don't see the common sense in asking that question.
If you bought the program and read any of it's documentation, you would see
that Flash's main function is time line animation, and After Effects is for
post-production video enhancements. Now, after reading your latest comment, I'm
even more confused how you've created websites before but "is new to CS3". What
did you use to create websites before? Basic functionality and purpose of all
the programs haven't changed all the way back to CS1 (and beyond).

Well, it depends what you use Flash for. Certainly it's not for timeline
animation for many developers. I haven't used the timeline in a long time -
I'd tell you that Flash is mostly used for web site building, RIA's, data
viz, and the like. But there are plenty of people using it as an animation
tool... It just depends on your needs. AfterEffects has a timeline too...
you can do animation in it as well. But mostly it is for post-processing -
hence the name. You can build effects, and animations in AE and play them in
Flash as FLV files. In either case, it sounds like you need to do some
reading.