Anyone even remotely connected to Flash and the Twin Cities will probably already know about this, but what the hell:
MN.swf is a:
Minneapolis-based group dedicated to the professional development and collaboration of advanced Flash/Flex programmers.
Looks to be a good time. I’d go, but I have both class and Ali-duty that night, so I’m gonna be a no-show. If you are one of the rare souls that reads my blog, and you go, tell me how it is… maybe I’ll make it in 2007.
Two fun learnings:
One, almost all Flash designers think their coding skills are “at an intermediate level” — that includes people way better than me, and people way worse than me… and I’m at an intermediate level.
Two, Ali thinks that everything happened yesterday. Or, as she says it “etserdee”.
Well, here I am at Flashbelt 2006 in Minneapolis. It’s a very groovy conference focusing on Flash (and, increasingly this year, Flex). The event is three days long, and today started out with a keynote by Adobe employee David Mendels. He gave a bunch of details about the direction Flash is going, including a really cool project codenamed Apollo, which is a way of creating standalone, cross-platform desktop applications that are based on Flash (but can also display HTML and PDF content).
After the keynote, the first presentation I saw was about Flex 2 by Mark Anders. Most of it was stuff I already knew, but it was good to see how they’re integrating with Eclipse for Flex Builder. It’s gonna be Windows-only at launch, which really blows, but the SDK is already available, and that is cross-platform. I may need to check that out in the near future.
I’m currently sitting in a presentation by two individuals from Athletics. The presentation is called The Flash Divide, and it’s supposed to be about how to bridge the gap between developers and designers, but right now they’re just presenting their work. More to come…
I know that I’ve personified Flash before, but nothing like this guy.
I have no idea what it says, but these are the kind of banners I want to be designing:
Just a few thoughts I’ve had recently or that have come my way…
In Terry Prattchet’s Discworld there was a nice sentence like “and then he was surprised like a man is surprised by something which he previously thought only happens to other people”.
Aline says:
can it. Use the idea of a box instead
… so here’s the same explanation, but with boxes:
In Flash, you’ve got three types of Symbols: Movie Clips, Buttons and Graphics. Graphics are nothing more than 1 frame Movie Clips, so let’s conviently forget those. So now you’re left with Movie Clips and Buttons. Movie Clips are great, because you can store stuff in them. Buttons are great because you can put some fancy-pants text on them (in the biz, we call that “ActionScript”), and let people interact with your pages and animations. In order to make something into a Button or Movie Clip, we need to draw the object we want, then select it and do Modify > Convert to Symbol.
Here’s where things get tricky.
Upon doing this conversion, you just created a potential headache for yourself. You have now entered the territory of “nested timelines”. For newcomers to Flash, this always seems to trigger a host of incomprehensibilities about how Flash works:
“Where do I create my animations?”
“Where do I put my button’s ActionScript?”
“How do I change the color of my button?”
“Where am I?”
Repeat after me: It’s all boxes. When you do that Convert to Symbol command, you basically take that little drawing you did and box it up. It’s contained. It’s enclosed. It’s symbol-ized. You can prove this is true because when you click on your object, you get a blue rectangle around it called a “bounding box”. To edit your freshly made symbol, you double click on the object, and you are now in that symbol’s timeline. Yes, just as you can put smaller boxes in larger boxes, you can put timelines within other timelines (in this case the timeline of your Movie Clip or Button within the main timeline).
Here’s where the box analogy really pays off. When you want move stuff you put in a box, how do you move it? You don’t open up the box, take everything out one-by-one and move them. That defeats the whole purpose of boxing them up in the first place. No — you move your conveniently packaged materials through the real world via your box container. Just like a Movie Clip. When you want to do motion tweens on a Movie Clip, you move the symbol around, not the object within the symbol. Thus, you are building the animation on the timeline that holds the Movie Clip, not the timeline within the Movie Clip.
Think of it this way:
Real World > Box > stuff you put in the box (books, stuffed animals, whatever)
Main Timeline > Movie Clip Symbol > original drawing
When you want to read the books you put in the box, you open the box. When you want to edit the original drawing, you “open” the Movie Clip (by double clicking on the symbol).
Same deal with Buttons. When you want to label your boxes so you know at a glance what is in them, you put a label on the outside of the box. When you want to put ActionScript on a Button so you can let people interact with it, you put the script on the Button symbol, not within the Button. You should be able to see that blue bounding box when you are adding scripts to a button — you should never see the Up, Over, Down and Hit states when you’re trying to add ActionScript to control buttons.
So, it seems that I tend to think in terms of food. Which is fine: I like to eat. But when I try to describe basic Flash concepts to my students, I inevitably begin the discussion of tupperware.
In Flash, you’ve got three types of Symbols: Movie Clips, Buttons and Graphics. Graphics are nothing more than 1 frame Movie Clips, so let’s conviently forget those. So now you’re left with Movie Clips and Buttons. Movie Clips are great, because you can store stuff in them. Buttons are great because you can put some fancy-pants text on them (in the biz, we call that “ActionScript”), and let people interact with your pages and animations. In order to make something into a Button or Movie Clip, we need to draw the object we want, then select it and do Modify > Convert to Symbol.
Here’s where things get tricky.
Upon doing this conversion, you just created a potential headache for yourself. You have now entered the territory of “nested timelines”. For newcomers to Flash, this always seems to trigger a host of incomprehensibilities about how Flash works:
“Where do I create my animations?”
“Where do I put my button’s ActionScript?”
“How do I change the color of my button?”
“Where am I?”
Repeat after me: It’s all tupperware. When you do that Convert to Symbol command, you basically take that little drawing you did and box it up like the leftover spaghetti you made last night. It’s contained. It’s enclosed. It’s symbol-ized. You can prove this is true because when you click on your object, you get a blue rectangle around it called a “bounding box”. To edit your freshly made symbol, you double click on the object, and you are now in that symbol’s timeline. Yes, just as you can put smaller tupperware in larger tupperware, you can put timelines within other timelines (in this case the timeline of your Movie Clip or Button within the main timeline).
Here’s where the tupperware analogy really pays off. When you want to bring that leftover spaghetti to work with you the next day, how do you move it? You don’t open up the tupperware, grab the noodles with your bare hands and slide them around. No — you move your conveniently packaged pasta through the real world via your tupperware container. Just like a Movie Clip. When you want to do motion tweens on a Movie Clip, you move the symbol around, not the object within the symbol. Thus, you are building the animation on the timeline that holds the Movie Clip, not the timeline within the Movie Clip.
Think of it this way:
Real World > Tupperware > noodles and marinera
Main Timeline > Movie Clip Symbol > original drawing
When you want to eat the spaghetti, you open the tupperware. When you want to edit the original drawing, you “open” the Movie Clip (by double clicking on the symbol).
Same deal with Buttons. When you want to label leftovers so you know what it is later, you put the label on the outside of the tupperware. When you want to put ActionScript on a Button so you can let people interact with it, you put the script on the Button symbol, not within the Button. You should be able to see that blue bounding box when you are adding scripts to a button — you should never see the Up, Over, Down and Hit states when you’re trying to add ActionScript to control buttons.
Okay, I should probably get back to my lunch… I think it’s starting to get cold…
I’m writing a rap about Flash, ’cause Jen said that I should be MC Tween.
Well, I just woke up. It was nice to be able to sleep in on a weekend. It doesn’t happen often, so when it does I really cherish it. But I have a lot of catch up to do here, so here we go:
First, yesterday was the day. Another birthday come and gone. I’m officially at 25 now. There are only a couple of really significant things behind being 25: I can now rent cars without crazy additional fees, my car insurance rates will drop considerably, and I will never be able to join Fabrica or be on The Real World (I don’t need the drama of The Real World anyway). The party went well. It wasn’t tons and tons of people, but it was enough, and the people who were there made for a great time. I laughed a lot, I played some great video games, I ate some awesome cake and ice cream, and I got a lot of much-needed human contact and conversation.
Second, I’ve been meaning to write about the whirlwind trip to New York. Jamey and I flew out last Saturday morning, shot tons of photos for a freelance project we’re doing, and flew back that evening. We spent something like 6 1/2 hours in the city, and about 13 hours in planes or at an airport. It was quite fun though, and even more fun since I got to hook up with Aline to hang out during that time. It was great to see her: she looks awesome and seems really happy and at ease there (most of the time!). Thank you for the birthday presents, Aliney!
Third, I finally got an iPod. It makes me happy. My FM adapter just died though, so I need to kick some ass about that one: the damn thing didn’t even survive a month, and at $40 a pop, that’s not a “subscription model” I want to be a part of.
Fourth, I’m really digging on Ruby on Rails (and Ruby in general). Plus, the awesome friend that is Jen hooked me up with some space on her server that already has Rails installed, so I’ll be crushing on that for a while, I’m sure. Even though Flash 8 has some fricken sweet features, I think there may be fewer and fewer reasons for me to build SWFs when Rails has some beautiful Ajax support.
Fifth, another of my recent crushes is del.icio.us. I’ve known about it for a while, and always thought it sounded neat, but only recently have I witnessed the true power of that which is del.icio.us. If you have not checked it out, do yourself a favor.
Sixth and last, I’m building… something. It’s not art, it’s not software. But it’s cool, and I hope you’re going to want it. Stay tuned to our irregularly scheduled program…