KitchenSync 1.2 released - Shiny new naming convention
By Mims Wright | on May 3, 2008
In KitchenSync, News, Serious Stuff, open-source | No Comments
Hi. I recently released a new naming convention for KitchenSync. There were a few reasons for this.
1. People found Synchronized to be a pain in the ass to type over and over again.
2. I’m going to add queue functionality which means I needed to support asynchronous functions. I thought SynchronizedAsynchronousFunction didn’t make any sense.
3. Some of the classes conflict with the Flex SDK. The easing classes still do but it should be better now.
4. While I love flat package structures, I felt that the system needed to be a bit more hierarchical.
Among other changes, all actions now use the initials ‘KS’ instead of ‘Synchronized’.
Classes have also been moved to multiple packages.
org.as3lib.kitchensync- Contains the new KitchenSync class and the KitchenSyncDefaults. These are global classes that control the entire system.org.as3lib.kitchensync.easing- Contains all the easing function classes.org.as3lib.kitchensync.action- Contains all Actionsorg.as3lib.kitchensync.action.tweenable- Contains classes that represent properties that can be tweened.org.as3lib.kitchensync.core- Contains the internal workings of the systemorg.as3lib.kitchensync.util- Contains helper classes.
The changes to the names of classes are listed here: Naming Changes
The changes to the package structure are listed here: Package Structure
Help with converting older code is here: Legacy help
The new naming convention went up yesterday in version 1.2. I fixed everything with the refactor command in FB and with find and replace so there’s a good chance that there are a couple of bugs, although, my demos are still running correctly. Please let me know if there are any problems with the wiki or the library.
We’re happy to announce a new addition to the blog - Caleb Johnston has joined as a contributor. Caleb is currently a developer at Your Majesty and is a swell guy.
Check out his first post.
What we can learn from the KitchenSync survey
By Mims Wright | on April 25, 2008
In KitchenSync, News, open-source | 4 Comments
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.