Flash CS6 is obviously the best fecking one.It has more features by far, has a more user friendly layout in my opinion.And if you want bigger brush size, I think you should just use pencil and make it a bigger size.Anyways, this kind of makes no sense since I use flash 8 lol.

Officially I never support or recognize anyone that runs a collab and doesn't take the responsibility of being able to accept all flash versions themselves. They're allowed to prefer Flash 8, but by putting the onus on potential participants to go out of their way for you, you don't demonstrate adequate leadership skills and I lose faith in the collab. Historically this stance has proven to be completely accurate, as most collabs that start with shitty leaders fall apart eventually. This is why the rate at which good collabs comes out is very small, and there are only a handful of collabs in the last few years that don't suck.

are any of these free?

No.

well, like me, i have all of'em so i can convert cs5 all the way down to flash 8, but i think 6 is the best, sense it has every thing the rest have.
people usually think about the workspace setup, but that can be optimize to how ever you want it, you can set it like flash 8 for the better feeling or leave it the way it came, your choice, but i prefer flash 8, not gonna vote though, but i think you can get what you want done from all of them :D

Well I managed to find cs5.5 cheap so I'm probably getting both flash 8 and cs5.5. I considered getting cs6 but its too costy for just having like 2 extra features which I think are converting to html5 and sprite sheet generations, sounds tempting but not worth the extra cash imo.

Thanks to everybody for your opinions and thoughts!

The only problem with having Flash 8 is that compiling will be an issue if you have people using new version of Flash when you are doing collabs. But, the biggest advantage on using Flash 8 is that it is so smooth, fast, efficient, and basically all you need for animating. [ Brush sizes are a go, too. ]

Problems for the newer versions of Flash are that they require more CPU, RAM, they take up a lot of space, laggy as shit, you won't be able to partake in a lot of collabs, and crashes a lot. [ They even have unnecessary long-ass save times and such. ] Though the advantages are better features, more options, compiling advantages, and such. If you want to get the latest versions of Flash, I might as well suggest getting a stronger computer.

Quote from Yun

Problems for the newer versions of Flash are that they require more CPU, RAM, they take up a lot of space, laggy as shit, you won't be able to partake in a lot of collabs, and crashes a lot. [ They even have unnecessary long-ass save times and such. ] Though the advantages are better features, more options, compiling advantages, and such. If you want to get the latest versions of Flash, I might as well suggest getting a stronger computer.

I think those issues have more to do with your computer than your version of Flash, because CS6 saves faster, runs faster and hasn't crashed once compared to Flash 8 (I'm running on a 2011 Macbook Pro), although I haven't ran the newer version on an older computer yet.

Quote from Skyshark

I think those issues have more to do with your computer than your version of Flash, because CS6 saves faster, runs faster and hasn't crashed once compared to Flash 8 (I'm running on a 2011 Macbook Pro), although I haven't ran the newer version on an older computer yet.

The great thing about Flash 8 is that I can run it on my small little netbook and it hasn't made a single fit with me. It even runs smoothly with a tablet. o3o

Now that you mention tablet, which drawing tool do you guys prefer for animating?

As in general mouses, labtop's integrated mouses, usb pen's for drawing in your labtops/computer, use a tablet (w/pen), or any other I might have forgotten.

Maybe this goes better in a separate thread but I don't wanna clog up the help thread with my questions.

i use a mouse, flash 8, and a slow ass microsoft windows xp media 2005 250 gb edition.
Flash 8 crashes every hour making me have to click file save every 5 seconds. I pretty sure this is only for my computer but i feel that flash 8 is slow. Once i download shock3 from terks gifts and my computer froze for 30 min just because i opened the fla.

Thats a con for flash 8(i think).Well its probably just my computer

Quote from Zed

I don't think CS6 can save in a way which is compatible to, for example, flash8. I should stress that I am not a flash user, but from what I have seen you end up having to save in a way which is compatible with CS5, and then send it to a CS5 user who can save it as CS4, and then a CS4 user brings it down to CS3, and then a CS3 user can make it flash8 compatible. You get a chain of hassle.

You could just send all the collab files to a guy with Cs6 and make the collab?