CoffeeCup Firestarter is unusual as a low cost Flash development tool. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash has been increasingly used to create animations, and to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop whole web sites. Flash can manipulate vector and raster graphics and supports bi-directional streaming of audio and video. Traditionally, development has required the use of high cost development tools aimed at professional graphic designers whilst the Flash player has been widely distributed for free in the manner of the Acrobat Reader. Some open source office packages eg Open Office have offered conversion from presentations but
the author has always found these severely limited and ultimately unsatisfactory.
CoffeeCup Firestarter provides a facility for Flash development at much lower cost. The software is available for download from the CoffeeCup Software site for free on a trial basis. The current cost of a license including free upgrades for life is $49.
The tool allows you to construct movies in native Firestarter format, and then publish them in Flash (.swf) format.
The screen is organized into a top half which shows a preview of the movie, and the bottom which shows the timeline for the movie.
CoffeeCup Firestarter 7.2 
The tool provides a range of facilities, including the ability to add text, images, shapes and sound (either a clip or soundtrack). The graphical and text objects can be manipulated using a range of transitions for both entrance and exit. The transitions available include slide in, slide out, grow, shrink, fade in, and fade out as well as simple morphing.
Transition effects
The tool uses a simple drag and drop interface which is easy to use and relatively quick to learn.
Firestarter is almost peerless. I am unaware of a competitor product which offers its ability to deliver Flash animations, ease of use and its low cost. It is no substitute for a full Adobe Flash development tool, but aside from the obvious difference in pricing, it really benefits from its simplicity in use and a wide range of movies can be created using its functionality set. For example, I used the software to develop a full scale set of elearning materials for a professionally accredited introduction to management. The end result is greatly enhanced if high quality audio and graphical objects are available.
At the same time, it would be foolish to deny the products limitations. Aside from the quite limited functionality it does behave in a rather quirky way sometimes. The irritations that I have experienced are backwards compatibility problems, losing final frames and standards compliance. I shall illustrate workarounds for these issues in a subsequent article in this series.
I have used the CoffeeCup Firestarter tool for about four years. It has proved to be a remarkably capable tool in use and provides an easy to use and cost effective route to Flash development. It does have a few quirks, but these cannot detract from its utility at the price.