Skip to main content

Video: Keyframe Animations in Flex 4

Keyframe Animation in Flex 4, the next episode in the gripping and suspenseful series CodeDependent, is now available from Adobe TV.


This episode covers the new Keyframe capability of Flex 4 effects. Previously, all Flex effects were based on simple from/to values: Move a button from xFrom,yFrom to xTo,yTo, Resize a panel from its current width to widthTo, etc. And in fact most of the effects in Flex 4 still work this way: Move, Resize, Fade, and most other effects take just simple from/to/by values and animate the properties between these endpoints.



But in Flex 4, there's a new effect that can do more than this: it's the new Animate superclass of the Flex 4 effects. This effect, which is kind of like an extended version of the old AnimateProperty class with the ability to handle multiple properties or styles instead of just one, doesn't just take from/to/by information for the properties. Instead, it takes MotionPath objects which specify a simple 2-endpoint set of values. But a MotionPath can also specify an arbitrarily large set of Keyframe objects, which are key/value pairs that the property will pass through over the duration of the animation. Now, instead of having an animation that simply goes from one value to another, you can have an animation that goes through several intervals defined by these keyframes.



The animations during each of these intervals is still linear; the effects calculate the in-between values on a linear path between the interval endpoint values, just like we do for the simpler 2-endpoint effects. I'd like to see curved motion paths eventually, but that didn't make it into Flex 4. But in the meantime, you can at least specify more complex multi-step paths for the animation to take using motion paths and these new keyframe objects.



Here's the video:





Here is the demo application:






And here is the source code.


Here's where you can find CodeDependent on iTunes.


And here's where you can find CodeDependent on YouTube.


Enjoy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Austerity-A Fancy Word for Destitute.

The reason for this post is not for the folks who have been caught in the first wave of personal economic hard reality, but the next wave. Regardless of the optimism espoused by grinning leaders and sycophant press, we are entering the final stage of global economic collapse. It began in 2008 and was forestalled for five years with fudge putty, but the weight of global indebtedness cannot be propped any longer and the final crunch is imminent. Austerity measures herald the final throes.  Indications of coming austerity.   Austerity measures are the final last ditch effort, futile or not! Back in the day many of us old-timers went through periods of "hard-times". In retrospect I realize there is no comparison to yesteryear hard times and today's version. Back then, expectations were never very high for the working class, there were no sophisticated systems or conveniences anyway. In fact the difference between being "set" or not was about having treats or not. Si...

Terrifying Arctic methane levels

A peak methane level of 3026 ppb was recorded by the MetOp-B satellite at 469 mb on December 11, 2021 am. This follows a peak methane level of  3644 ppb  recorded by the MetOp-B satellite at 367 mb on November 21, 2021, pm. A peak methane level of 2716 ppb was recorded by the MetOp-B satellite at 586 mb on December 11, 2021, pm, as above image shows. This image is possibly even more terrifying than the image at the top, as above image shows that at 586 mb, i.e. much closer to sea level, almost all methane shows up over sea, rather than over land, supporting the possibility of large methane eruptions from the seafloor, especially in the Arctic.  Also, the image was recorded later than the image at the top with the 3026 ppb peak, indicating that even more methane may be on the way. This appears to be confirmed by the Copernicus forecast for December 12, 2021, 03 UTC, as illustrated by the image below, which shows methane at 500 hPa (equivalent to 500 mb). Furthermore, ...

Women and children overboard

It's the  Catch-22  of clinical trials: to protect pregnant women and children from the risks of untested drugs....we don't test drugs adequately for them. In the last few decades , we've been more concerned about the harms of research than of inadequately tested treatments for everyone, in fact. But for "vulnerable populations,"  like pregnant women and children, the default was to exclude them. And just in case any women might be, or might become, pregnant, it was often easier just to exclude us all from trials. It got so bad, that by the late 1990s, the FDA realized regulations and more for pregnant women - and women generally - had to change. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) took action too. And so few drugs had enough safety and efficacy information for children that, even in official circles, children were being called "therapeutic orphans."  Action began on that, too. There is still a long way to go. But this month there was a sign that ...