David Stiller’s blog

Note:  An ActionScript 3.0 version of this article is located in a more recent entry of this blog.

The timelines in Flash are an especially good metaphor for tween-based animation.  If your frame rate is the default 12fps, then a span of twelve frames lasts approximately one second.  If your frame rate is 24fps, that same span lasts approximately half a second.  Pretty straightforward.  It can get tedious, however, when you want your animation to pause for, say, 15 seconds before moving on.  At 24fps, you’d need 360 frames!  That’s 360 frames of perhaps a dozen layers.  Ack!  Isn’t there another way to pull off the same visual effect?  Enter, ActionScript.  Keep reading »

Note:  An ActionScript 3.0 version of this article is located in a more recent entry of this blog.

Truth be told, this article should actually be titled “How to Loop a Movie As Many Times as You Like.”  It just happens that when people ask about this topic, the most popular number seems to be three.  Keep reading »

People tend to feel strongly about their personal preferences.  Some folks love the global _root property, while others absolutely hate it.  Not everyone is vocal, of course, so any passion expressed in online discussion of the empirical merits of _root may be skewed.  Hard to say.

In this article, I hope to give you enough information to make your own informed decision.  Then you can get as passionate as you like.   Keep reading »