dispatchEvent()™

Wow. What a week. I have the results from the KtichenSync survey which was taken by 49 people (including myself). Thanks to everyone for taking it. Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. The most glaring thing I learned from the survey is that NOBODY’S USING IT! Come on people!

Aside from myself, only 5 people reported that they have actually used KitchenSync, of them, only one has used it for a real project. The good news? That person is none other than Aral Balkan and that project is GAE SWF, so it could be worse.

2. People love Tweener and TweenLite.

People listed Tweener as one they’ve tried but TweenLite came up more as a favorite. Not surprisingly, people loved TweenLite because of it’s incredible small size and speed.

Two people voted for KitchenSync as their favorite. Hey, that’s the same number as the people who have used it for a project. Coincidence?

3. People think KitchenSync is okay (even though most haven’t used it) but to make it better will require matching the features of the other leading tween engines.

People want performance above all else which would explain why TweenLite, currently the fastest of the competitors, is the favorite of the group.

Here is how people prioritized individual features.

4. In the tools department, Flash and FlexBuilder came in at a tie. For those of you who do your coding in Flash and have never used FlexBuilder, I suggest you give it a shot. Flash is miserable as a programming tool (but that’s a topic for another post). Also, despite the cries of distaste from the FlashDevelop crowd, people apparently love TextMate.

In conclusion, I think KitchenSync has a lot to offer. It’s a unique with a sophisticated architecture and some advanced features. However, these tests are proof that to be taken seriously, KS will need to add the basic, missing features that are found in other systems. So the big aim of version 2.0 will be to patch the holes and optimize for speed. I guess that’s what I was planning to do in the first place but it was great to get everyone’s input on the project.

That’s it! Thank you so much for taking the survey! Stay tuned for updates to the project over the summer.

Aral Balkan, champion of open-source flash, just annouced a Flash / Flex extension to the Google App Engine called GAE SWF. He also announced that KitchenSync will be a part of it. I’m very excited to see what happens with both projects.

GAE SWF

The goal of next version of my (your) animation engine KitchenSync, is to be arguably the best and most complete library for animation and sequencing out there. To do this, I’ve spent the last couple of months analyzing the top existing tween libraries trying to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses. With lots of help from the Draw Logic Blog, I think I’ve identified the contenders and put together a decent list of what (in my opinion) are their highest and lowest points. The next step will be to create a product backlog for KitchenSync based on matching these features and fixing the problems. I know there are other tween engines but these seemed to be the most prolific ones at the time. The tween engines analyzed were:

• Tweener
• TweenLite (and flavours)
• Boostworthy Animation System
• FuseKit
• Go
• and KitchenSync 1.1

Note: After some helpful feedback from readers (THANK YOU!) I added TweenLite to the list of libraries I reviewed. I should add here that these are fairly superficial observations about how things work and don’t go into incredible detail. If I steal any features, I’ll look closer ;-D

Keep the comments coming!

Tween Engine Comparisons (updated)

French 3d artist Zamak is totally amazing. If I wasn’t convinced that I suck at 3D modeling I would make stuff like this, but fortunately, i’m still good at looking at it.
Zamak Blog
Zamak’s Flash Site