Another Reason to Love TweenLite

I just found a useful function in the TweenLite library, which is great for easily sequencing multiple function calls. To call myFunction() in half a second with param1 and param2, do this:

[as]TweenLite.delayedCall(0.5, myFunction, [param1,param2]);[/as]
which is a lot less code than:
[as]var tmr:Timer = new Timer(500, 1);
tmr.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER_COMPLETE,onTimerEvent);
tmr.start();
private function onTimerEvent(event:Event):void{
myFunction(param1,param2);
}[/as]

TweenLite seems to have quickly become something of a Flash standard. It’s a great library that is well maintained and just works.

PercentMobile – Free Mobile Analytics

My buddy Stan Wiechers just launched a supercool new service that provides Free Mobile Analytics – PercentMobile. Check it out if you want to see how many of your users are viewing your site on a mobile device and what kind of device they are using. To sign up you can use the invite code “airtight” (good for 100 invites).

SWFAddress Gotcha: Navigating Directly to a Deep Link Breaks Preloader

There is a known issue with SWFAddress 2.2: When navigating directly to a deep link, the preloader does not display or jumps straight to 100%. When using the ‘#’ symbol in the URL, the browser loads the main SWF twice which cause the preloader to break.

The fix is to use a mini pre-preloader as supplied in the SWFAddress samples (‘samples/cs3/c.fla’). The mini-loader is loaded twice but since it’s so small it doesn’t matter. I’m adding this information here since the issue is pretty buried in the SWFAddress forum.

[UPDATE] OK, another SWFAddress gotcha by virtue of obscurity: If your back button is not working, check you have specified the ‘id’ attribute in the swfobject.embedSWF() call. The ‘id’ attribute can be any string.

swfobject.embedSWF('c.swf?path=main.swf', 'flashContent', '100%', '100%', '9.0.45', null, {}, {}, {id: 'myId'});

A New 'Battle of the Planets' Movie !?!

I just found out that there is a new ‘Battle of the Planets’/G-Force/Gatchaman movie coming out!

I used to love BOTP as a kid in the 80s. The weirdness and the beautiful animation really made it stand out from the typical U.S. cartoon dross. It was only later that I found out the original Japanese version (Gatchaman) was a lot stranger and more violent.

It’s interesting that even though the show was butchered for the western market, the original spirit shone through. I wonder if as western kids we would have been able to handle the original version, or if we needed the sugar coating of more linear plot-lines, Casey Kasem and 7-Zark-7.

Thru-You

thruyou
Genius.

Ffffound Alternatives

ffffound

There is so much great stuff on Ffffound that you can easily spend all day there browsing images. Ffffound is a fantastically well designed image bookmarking site by tha ltd, the brain child of famed Japanese Flash master Yugop. Ffffound has wisely chosen to keep membership by invite only in order to keep up the quality of the submissions. Which is great unless you don’t have an invite.

Vi.sualize.us is a good alternative for the rest of us, despite have one of the worst URLs ever (try remembering it). It’s a nice and responsive web app that makes image bookmarking a one-click operation (especially via their Firefox plug-in). Until now I’ve bookmarked web images by dragging them to my desktop, but that’s so 2004. In my quest to push all my personal data into the cloud, I’m now uploading all my image bookmarks.

Another source of cool images is the new tumblr image blogs that are popping up recently such as this isn’t happiness and arts and crafts. These image blogs mainly showcase found web imagery of the cool and/or retro variety. Subscribing to the feeds ensures great quality images interspersed among your daily news stories.