A review of popular tweening library (UPDATED)
By Mims Wright | on April 15, 2008
In AS3, KitchenSync, Programming, Rants | 6 Comments
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!
Pimp my ‘clipse - a list of must-have Eclipse plug-ins for Flex/Flash Development
By Mims Wright | on December 17, 2007
In AIR, AS3, Eclipse, Flex, Hacks, Links, Organization, Programming, Rants, Serious Stuff, Tutorial, universalmind | 8 Comments
FlexBuilder may have its ups and downs but it still remains my pick for best AS3/MXML editor on the market (with TextMate not far behind). Part of the beauty of FlexBuilder is that it’s built on the Eclipse SDK, one of the most versatile and powerful IDEs available, which is not only free and open source, but boasts a wealth of third party plug-ins for every kind of (mostly Java) development. This article will take a look at some must-have plug-ins for doing Flex development as well as some tips for tricking out your development process.
As with all of our entries, your feedback, suggestions, corrections and additions are all more than welcome.
Continue reading Pimp my ‘clipse - a list of must-have Eclipse plug-ins for Flex/Flash Development…
Good Websites have Good Content
By Mims Wright | on December 15, 2007
In Organization, Rants, Serious Stuff, Site-seeing, Video Games | 2 Comments
Tonight I wanted to check out some information about a video game so I turned to a site that both Roger and I worked on while at Schematic – Game Invasion. I think this site is great but I’m not here to toot my own horn. We built this with Flash 8 in under 2 months and it certainly isn’t technically perfect. However, even though this site is two years old and takes a while to load, I still really enjoy using it. I started wondering why.
The reason is simple – content (the graphic design is pretty good too). What makes this site great was not the work we did but the incredible amount of really high-quality content. There are HD videos, big crisp graphics and something new every time I visit. There are other sites that I’ve spent way more time making perfect that I’d never look at again since there’s nothing really worth seeing.
Another example is the NBC episode player. It’s buggy as hell and the ads are annoying. I much prefer the ABC player. However, I really like the show ‘Heroes’ so I pretty much forget about those things in the end.
What I’m trying to say here is that technical brilliance and good design are great but what will keep people coming back to your site is some really great content so if you’re making a website make that your focus.