Humor4u

Animate Effect in Flex 4 , the next episode in the gripping and suspenseful series CodeDependent , is now available from Adobe TV . This show gives a basic introduction to the new Animate effect, which is the superclass of all of the new effects in Flex 4. This effect enables new and interesting capabilities, such as animating multiple properties in parallel (versus the older AnimateProperty effect, which animates just one property per effect) as well as handling arbitrary types. For giggles, I did some live coding in the video, which is a great way to amp up the pressure during filming. And for the record, most of the videos I've done so far, including this one, were shot in one take (something I far prefer, as it's a tad easier to feel spontaneous and dynamic when you're not repeating the same information for the nth time). This might also explain why I use the uncommon phrase, "Let's take a look at angrrizzat" in the video. Apparently, English is not my fir

No technical material today - just a link to some iTunes content that might interest you. I've been meaning to mention that all of my CodeDependent videos are being cross-posted on both Adobe TV and on iTunes (and, of course, on this blog). The thing I like about videos on iTunes is that I can watch them offline (not my own, of course - I have to spend enough time with that guy as it is). I just subscribe to the podcasts and they're downloaded onto my machine (and potentially my iPod, if my iPod weren't so old it's made of sod and animal hide). In addition to CodeDependent, there's other good content out there like "Adobe Developer Connection" and "ActionScript 1:1 with Doug Winnie". Just search in the iTunes store and it'll display these shows as video podcasts that you can subscribe to. (Did I mention they're free?)

Color My World , the next episode in the gripping and suspenseful series CodeDependent , is now available from Adobe TV . I hope this satisfies the great hue and cry for color-related tutorials. This show is not so much about Flex code as it is about color interpolation. Okay, I take that back; I do talk a bit about arbitrary type interpolation in the Flex 4 effects, which is what enables the new AnimateColor effect used in the demo. But the main idea behind the show was a demo app I wrote to test out a couple of color interpolation alternatives for AnimateColor and some observations about the results. This is probably a one-off topic, the only one I'll ever do that approaches anything close to color theory - that's a subject that I haven't touched since my thesis . But it is interesting to see how interpolating colors in different color spaces can have a dramatically different effect on the resulting animation. And of course it's also interesting to see how cool arbitr

Faster than a Speeding Button , the next episode in the gripping and suspenseful series CodeDependent , is now available from Adobe TV . This show relates to some of the concepts in the Stretch and Squash for Flex 3 and Flex 4 episodes, in which we saw how to use Flex to apply traditional catoon animation effects of 'Stretch' and 'Squash' to a bouncing ball. This time, we'll take a look at more techniques of traditional animation, using Flex to apply 'Exaggeration' and 'Follow Through' to breathe cartoony life into an unsuspecting button. People who happened to catch the "Move Your Users" session that Romain Guy and I presented at JavaOne this year have seen the demo already. Now you can see the code. Here's the video: Here is the demo application: And here is the source code . Enjoy.

Knock knock Who's there? Ease Ease who? Ease anyone going to open the dang door? For anyone new to the term "Easing", it refers in Flex (and in Flash) to altering the motion of an animation, to create non-linear motion for more realistic, enjoyable, or interesting behavior. I've shown some examples of this behavior in other blog posts and videos like this one , so you might check those out if you're interested and clueless about what I'm blathering on about. For anyone mystified by the title of this blog, the easing functions in Flex 3 came from similar easing functions in Flash that were created by Robert Penner , and are described in his book and on his website ; the functions are also sometimes called the "Penner" easing functions. (Pretty cool to get your name associated with something so widely known and used. I wonder how I could do that? Although I should be careful what I wish for; I'd probably end up with something like "Cheta

Stretch and Squash in Flex 4 , the next and episode in the gripping and suspenseful series CodeDependent , is now available from Adobe TV . This show is a continuation of the episode (can you guess?) Stretch and Squash in Flex 3 , in which we saw how to use Flex 3 to create deforming bouncing effects for more life-like motion with Flex 3. This time, we'll see how the same effects can be created in Flex 4 (with less code!). Here's the video: Here is the demo application: And here is the source code . Note that the code has changed to match the current APIs (we had some class/package/namespace renames along the way - Flex 4 is still in Beta, after all...). Have a (squashy) ball.