Finally! The newly released Flash 8 includes one feature that designers have wanted for years—the ability to use an alpha gradient as a mask.
by Rich Shupe
September 22, 2005
n last month's article, I gave you an overview of some of Flash 8's most exciting features. This month, I'll show you how easy it is to achieve a long-desired effect—gradient masks.
Prior versions of Flash supported only 1-bit masks, meaning that only hard-edge masks were possible. In masks, pixels were considered either completely transparent or not transparent at all, with no gradations of opacity. Even if you used an alpha gradient in a mask, all non-transparent pixels would reveal the underlying content. In Flash 8, a new feature called "runtime bitmap caching" has changed all that.
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n last month's article, I gave you an overview of 
