* You can't set keyboard shortcuts for some common actions like changing the brush mode between "paint behind", "paint inside", etc. You have to click the button every time.
* No way to import or export any standard vector graphics formats.
* No easy way to just add custom properties to objects on the stage.
* No outliner. Unless you put exactly one object on each layer, it's very hard to find and select objects on the stage that aren't large and obvious. Invisible objects? Nightmare!
* You can name frames, but there's no menu to quickly select one to jump to. In a 500+ frame timeline, you've just gotta manually scroll around to find the frame you're looking for, even if you've named it.
* You can't set an alpha component for the grid to make it semitransparent.
These are all missing in Flash CS6, the last thing that was called "Flash". I don't know if any were added in Adobe Animate because I don't like to rent software.
There's definitely room for a Flash authoring replacement. Every now again I look at all the programs I can find in the space and try them out, but nothing reaches Flash yet, in my opinion, despite its limitations. Best of luck with yours!
Have you tried writing any custom plugins/editor panels to use in the editor? The process is pretty arcane at first, but eventually you are just writing html+javascript and have access to a very powerful editor API.
When I was working with Animate a few years ago I wrote a plugin to navigate around the timeline to find tagged frames and export things.
Yes! In fact, out of those problems I listed, I always thought the timeline navigation (and maybe the outliner) would be good candidates for a .jsfl plugin, I just never got round to doing it. Good to hear it's doable!
* You can't set keyboard shortcuts for some common actions like changing the brush mode between "paint behind", "paint inside", etc. You have to click the button every time.
* No way to import or export any standard vector graphics formats.
* No easy way to just add custom properties to objects on the stage.
* No outliner. Unless you put exactly one object on each layer, it's very hard to find and select objects on the stage that aren't large and obvious. Invisible objects? Nightmare!
* You can name frames, but there's no menu to quickly select one to jump to. In a 500+ frame timeline, you've just gotta manually scroll around to find the frame you're looking for, even if you've named it.
* You can't set an alpha component for the grid to make it semitransparent.
These are all missing in Flash CS6, the last thing that was called "Flash". I don't know if any were added in Adobe Animate because I don't like to rent software.
There's definitely room for a Flash authoring replacement. Every now again I look at all the programs I can find in the space and try them out, but nothing reaches Flash yet, in my opinion, despite its limitations. Best of luck with yours!