SnorklReport: Big News!

by carl schooff on November 8, 2011 · View Comments

in Just for Fun,SnorklReport

Hey folks,
Just wanted to check in and give you a little inside scoop on what’s going on at snorkl.tv and give you some stuff to play with. Usually these SnorklReports are about traffic and such. This one’s a bit different…

The BIG NEWS

Some of you may have noticed that my posting frequency has dropped a bit lately and it is for very good reason. This week a super secret and massively wonderful project that I have been working on is launching on the world’s premiere Flash tutorial site: ActiveTuts+. I’m doing a six-part video series on TimelineLite entitled TimelineLite Ultimate Starter Guide [UPDATE: it is live NOW]. I couldn’t be more excited about this opportunity.

It’s become clear to me that although I do a lot of tutorials on TimelineLite/Max I don’t have anything that really digs into the basics in a comprehensive manner. This series will serve my audience and the greater Flash community as now there will now be one definitive guide on a site that gets tons of exposure.

But wait, Isn’t everything you need to know on the GreenSock site and in the documentation?

It sure is, it is great, and it made it easy for me to learn. The thing is some people are too lazy to read, they get overwhelmed by the vast features,  or they simply need to be shown something in action in order for it to sink in. This guide is going to break whatever chains are holding people back and gently ease them into the most powerful set of tweening tools available on any platform.

Are you insane? Why give your best content to ActiveTuts+?

First and foremost, even before I started snorkl.tv I always wanted to have an article on their site. Their overall quality in presentation and content is really second to none. There is a certain level of excellence and expertise that they demand from their contributors and quite honestly I’m flattered to have been invited to contribute something.

Secondly, there is no other singular action I can possibly take to generate the sort of exposure and community-prestige that having my work published on their site can. I’ve been blessed and extremely fortunate to have Jack of GreenSock open up a firehose of traffic from his Learning Resources page. As I go into the new year and make a push to make myself available for custom training, conferences and development work, I need to step it up and really get my name out there.

And there is also that little bit about how they also pay you for your work;)

Is this the end of Snorkl.tv?

Bah! I see it as the second beginning. I have cranked out over 80 posts in the last year and half  and honestly I was getting a bit run-down. This AT+ opportunity has been a big emotional boost and working on it has really reminded me of how much I love making this stuff and sharing it with you. I have a lot planned for this site and so much more unleash.  I might pursue more opportunities with AT+, but whether its here or there, you will still get the best of what I have to offer.

 

AS3 CODE CHALLENGE #4 Will Launch This Week!

Yes it’s back. All that AS3 mind-bending goodness. I had a lot of fun with the first 3 challenges and have a real special one ready to go. The solution to the challenge is going to make for an excellent tutorial. Check back Wednesday or just follow me on twitter or facebook to get instant notification.

Also, I let the Really Green Club GreenSock GiveAway Contest slip for September and October but it’s in full swing now. I recently gave 2 memberships away on Facebook to make up for my transgressions and there is still one up for grabs if you hurry to my youtube channel. User Sixtay60 just snagged it. you lose;)

 

 

Something Free and Fun for YOU!

How To Load Multiple SWFs and Play Them in Sequence

This topic comes up every now and then in the LoaderMax Forum. I finally got around to building an example for someone and figured I would share it with you. I’ve been meaning to do a full-blown SWFLoader tutorial similar to my ImageLoader and XMLLoader tutorials but just haven’t had the time.

The SWF below loads 4 swfs and plays them back-to-back in succession.

This movie requires Flash Player 9

This solution has 4 main advantages over other methods:

1: the swfs don’t need to be named sequentially.

2: there is NO code at all in the swfs that are loaded, the parent swf detects when a loaded swf has finished playing and it automatically plays the next.

3: it uses LoaderMax so eliminates a lot of the clumsy code-bloat of the native AS3 Loader.

4: it exists right here, right now for you to download instantly ! — Flash CS4

*note the loaded swfs all contain just basic Flash IDE timeline animations, not scripted animations. There is no way for the parent swf to know what functions to call or what TimelineLite/Max instances to play()… although you very well could program this in.

Cool Flash Stuff You Have to See

In my adventures on Twitter and Facebook I come across a lot of Flash news and demos. Some are a waste of time, these aren’t:

Amazing 3D Music Visualization using Stage3D: http://www.simppa.fi/experimental/as3/2011/molehillparticle/ocean_bubbles/ (Flash Player 11 and Speakers Cranked Required) (more examples at http://www.simppa.fi/blog/)

Flash to iOS Benchmarks: http://blog.starnut.com/flash-to-ios-performance-tests By Michel Wacker

I’m done. Thanks for everything! – carl

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  • http://twitter.com/MerrickBrewer Merrick Brewer

    Awesome news Carl!! And even better news that you are doing a TimeLine Lite/Max series of tutorials. More opportunity to spread the greensock goodness around the interwebs!

    Well done sir, highly deserved!

    Merrick

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000328472517 Alexander Seitz

    Interessting direction your are going Carl ;-)

    On snorkl.tv, please keep us posted on your newest tutorials on AT+.
    Hopefully with that change posting our great tuts on AT+ we might see also new OOP tutorials from you^^
    Don’t hesitate to continue our OOP course and the use of document classes and class based code instead of framescripts ;-)

    I’ll stay tuned

    greetings from germany

  • Ben

    Great Carl. I’ll be following along no matter where you are. 

    On the Load Multiple SWFs and Play Them in Succession example you have posted above. I tried it but without success. I just replaced my 4 swfs with yours but it just loads them really quickly before each swfs has a change to do its thing!! In my examples, each swf has a series of animations using timeline max so I wonder whether this could be the cause? Is there something I should be doing such as pausing the second, third and forth swfs so to make sure the first is finished before allowing the second to start etc…?

    Cheers,
    Ben. 

  • http://www.snorkl.tv/ carl schooff

    Thanks a bunch!

  • http://www.snorkl.tv/ carl schooff

    Hey Alex, you are going to be thrilled to know that all the sample files I create for AT+ will use document classes.
    I’ll admit that once I got used to it… its not the worst thing in the world.
    We’ll see how that translates over to snorkl.tv. you may slowly be gaining ground in this battle;)

    as a side note I have done more work with oop recently, and Flash Pro is really horrible for that (no surprise). been messing around with FDT.

    thanks for stopping in.

    Carl

  • http://www.snorkl.tv/ carl schooff

    yeah sorry about the confusion (i edited the post to clarify). the loaded swfs have only frame-based animations. Its impossible for the parent swf to be able to automatically detect how you coded your loaded swfs and what the names of your timelinemax instances are and when they are done playing.
    the whole playing in sequence process is driven by an ENTER_FRAME in the parent that simply detects if the child swf is on the last frame of its timeline:

    if (currentLoader.rawContent.currentFrame == currentLoader.rawContent.totalFrames) {

    //do stuff to stop the current swf and display the next swf

    }

    Many similar examples out there require you to put a script on the last frame of each child swf that announces that it has finished playing.

    It is entirely possible that you could use TimelineMax animations in the child swfs, but you would have to have functions in each child with the same name that the parent could call to get things playing.

    something like

    currentLoader.rawContent.startTimelineMax();

    also each child swf would have to tell the parent when it is done playing.

    so it is a bit more work. you could certainly use this loading example as a
    starting point for getting a bunch of swfs loaded and take it in whatever
    direction you need.

    thanks for checking it out

    -c

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1642004995 Patrick Mullady

    Thats amazing news! I can’t wait to check it out. I can honestly say that I check your site out all the time to see what you are up to. We are lucky that there are people like you out there driving the Flash community forward. Keep rockin!
    BTW FDT is so kick ass. I was a Flash Develop guy for a while and when I tried the Advanced Refactoring in FDT my head almost exploded! I can honestly say that FDT has made me a better OOP programmer because of that one feature.
    Good luck Carl!
    - Patrick

  • http://twitter.com/jeffguthrie Jeff Guthrie

    Really happy for ya mate. Thats great news! Dont let snorkl.tv die as I always learn something when watching your vids.

  • Ben

    Thanks Carl,
    Could you help me and expand on this idea?
    I’m a bit confused to how to put your suggestion together.

    So if I have a function such as this one (below) in each of the child swfs, should set out the code like this?and can I use the name of the swf as I have done below? 

    function swfComplete(){ trace(“Activity complete”);          currentLoader.rawContent.startTimelineMax(“pair2″); }

    Ben

  • http://www.snorkl.tv/ carl schooff

    check out: http://forums.greensock.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6385&p=24856#p24856

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Marius-Posthumus/100001638378294 Marius Posthumus

    I just realised I have a project atm where I can use TimeLineLite in stead of the functionality I’m using atm (delayedCalls) :P
    So let’s take another peek at those tutorials :)

  • http://www.snorkl.tv/ carl schooff

    good to hear. timelinelite is indispensable once you get used to it.

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