About

Hey Jack – I just wanted to say THANKS for writing TweenLite. I used it in AS2 and now I’m using the AS3 version. Both are absolutely awesome and have been a tremendous help to me in many projects. I pretty much never take the time to thank anyone for code I find on the internet, but yours is an exception. You rule.

Also, I just noticed your paragraph about being a Christian. How cool… I am a Christian as well and I try very hard to live every day for God’s glory.

Thanks again for sharing this awesome tool! –Ben

I’m sure you’ve tried TweenLite with: http://www.robertpenner.com/easing/

Together, they’re like some unstoppable fusion of super guided movement.

Hi Jack,

I want to thank you for the nice work you have made available for us though your blog. I haven’t had the pleasure of using your tweening class yet, but using your XML parser has given me lots of programming joy.

Also, I think it’s admirable that you confess your faith. I am also a christian web developer — and once in a while I stumble about other developers that speak their faith freely. It’s always very encouraging.

Who said Jesus could not be preached in ActionScript?

Thank you for your effort. Now imagine all the people that want to thank you but don’t dare. — Simon

Hey Jack, thank you soooo much for all you have given to us stay tweened

Hi Jack!
I’ve been using another Tween class for a while and I discovered your website some days a go…
TweenMax is absolutely awesome!!! Thanks a lot for sharing it!!!
I will recommend this Tween class to everyone.

Hi Jack,
A tweener is very important tool in my development; I’ve probably tried them all, as2 and as3, at least one time in production. I don’t know why I didn’t try yours before – maybe the word “Lite” scared me
Anyway, when I saw some features like allTo() with the increment parameter, it made me think that this tweener was built to be used in real daily work, absolutely well thought-out in a lot of aspects. It made my life easier with complicated delay behaviors, reducing greatly the number of lines.
The more I use it, the more I get good surprises. Very good work. performance is excellent. Thanks for sharing, keep up your work.
Romu

Wow!!! I have no words, thank you Jack; these classes are awesome, ease to use and fast.

Thank you for taking the time to do something really useful.

Thanks, Fs_tiger

Hi Jack,

Incredible tween class. I am finding it easier than Fuse for many things.

Thanks Again for all your great work!

Dear Jack, I love your work. You make Flash life easier…
I wonder whats next!
Sometimes I dream on ActionScript too… kinda weird

A thousand times: thanks! God bless your work.

Keep dreaming in ActionSript! Its good for us

Jack, it’s nice of you to share your faith through this simple page.

I hope more people will get to know Jesus through you.

I personally find the book Know Why You Believe really interesting.

And oh, did I mention that your AS library rocks?

Hi, I’m a dreamer too. Well, I think I’ve never dreamed in code, but I dream videogames. I’m still looking for a great idea for a incredible huge casual flash game… waiting but hoping I guess . Anyway, I just want to say thank you for the support you gave/give/will give for my projects. I can see the passion through the code lines and that’s what marks a great product from a normal one.
I won’t bother you with my thoughts about faith (men’s gods + me = pretty miserable match) but I wish it will bring you at least the same happiness your libraries brought to me

Jack,

I love these classes and appreciate your work. Your openness about your faith is fantastic and I applaud you for that more than any ActionScript you could ever write. Keep up the good work, I’ll make sure to donate to the cause in the coming months.

i can’t imagine i found this site just a few days ago after struggling with actionscript for years. i know it never too late.. Thanks for the classes! Can’t wait for the full version 11

Just wanted to thank you a thousand times for creating these classes.
I am just amazed by your generosity.

Cheers.

DCL.

Jack – I already have much admiration for you! Not only are you a prodigy in AS3, but you profess your faith unashamedly, yet without condescension. That’s the best way to reflect the grace of our savior.

I have been getting into AS3 over the past year and have enjoyed every second of it. Your work has helped me learn quite a bit along the way.

Thanks again for all that you do,
- AR

I’m just getting my feet wet with design and flash, to a lesser extent, but I appreciated your declaration of faith. Lots of folks roll eyes when we mention Jesus, and I always think of Mere Christianity, and this quote by C.S. Lewis in particular, when someone mentions atheism:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that
people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral
teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we
must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Hi,

Thanks for this project – it’s the best AS3 Tweening engine available and I like your attitude to sharing it; without any of the basking in reflected glory we see from other Flash “Gurus” who open source their work.

Keep it up – donation to follow!

“When I actually did some thinking and researching, I couldn’t remain an atheist without being intellectually dishonest.”

I am extremely surprised when I see those whom I consider intellectually knowledgeable supporting the inevitable downfall of humanity that is religion. Religion does not support peace, especially Christianity which has been the basis for a literally countless bloodshed and war.

Even if a being of infinite intelligence whom as existed for all of eternity created us here on this earth, I don’t believe he could have been stupid enough to write something as self-contradicting as the bible.

I also do not believe that a being with such knowledge would expect us to spend our entire lives following the written words of other foolish men(bible) and then cast us into fire for not believing the words of another human being. We all know that most human beings can not be trusted and I’m not about to trust one that claims he talked to god.

All Christians are either liars or lying to them self, I was forced into Christianity as a child. Of course I followed and loved this so called ‘god’ as a child, until my intellectual mind reached a level that it was able to process the facts of his ‘existence’ for myself. In church I would see many pastors and other individuals standing up claiming to be speaking the words of god, spouting nonsense.

You can not talk to god and even if a god does exist it most definitely is not in the manner we have manufactured through history.

If a man down the street came up to your door and told you he wrote a book and it was the words of god himself it is very unlikely that you would fall into such a foolish trap during this day in age. However, at the time the bible was written humanity was at such a fragile part of our evolution that many followed the ideas of these misguided power-driven human beings.

For the record, I’m agnostic. Which means I don’t believe there is a way to accurately prove or disprove that existence of a god. I can however guarantee you that no currently manufactured god exists. It’s simply hundreds of years of human gullibility.

Not sure why, but had to speak my 2 cents on the matter I hope that it does not offend you as I am merely attempting to enlighten the world in hopes that we do not continue on our world’s current path indefinitely.

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate this site and the work you put into it. It made my last semester of college better and my flash classes easier. I even impressed the less script inclined classmates with the fancy effects.

Thanks for weighing in, Alex. You sound a lot like the me of many years ago. I would have completely agreed with you back then, offering a heartfelt “YEAH!” to your religious objections. However, I don’t think they actually hold up to scrutiny, so I’d like to respectfully challenge them.

Your first argument goes something like “Christianity has been responsible for massive amounts of bloodshed, therefore it is bad and cannot be true.” The problem is that the bloodshed you describe is completely inconsistent with true Biblical Christianity. Never judge a philosophy by its abuse. Would you apply the same logic to science? People have done some horrible things in the name of science, so would you conclude that science is therefore bad and false? Of course not! Judge a philosophy by its own merits, not by its abusers. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus prescribe murder. If you can show me an example, I’ll shave my head. Oh, wait. Too late.

Sure, people who claim adherence to Christianity aren’t immune from committing terrible crimes, but if you look at the historical facts you’ll find that bloodshed committed in the name of Christianity pales in comparison to bloodshed committed by anti-religionists and atheists. It’s not even close. In the 5 Crusades, 2 inquisitions, and all the witch trials that used “Christianity” to excuse evil, there were tens of thousands of deaths. Tragic. Horrible. But let’s take a look at the anti-religionists and atheists: China under Mao Tse Tung, 26.3 million Chinese slaughtered. According the Walker Report, 63.7 million over the whole period of time of the Communist revolution in China. Solzhenitsyn says the Soviet Union put to death 66.7 million people. Kampuchea destroyed one third of their entire population of eight million Cambodians. The Chinese at two different times in medieval history, somewhere in the vicinity of 35 million and 40 million people.

And then there’s the incredible record of heroic acts, amazing contributions to society, and rich benevolence that the world has consistently experienced in the name of true Christianity. Imagine if Christianity had never existed – would the world really be a better, less violent place? Ask yourself this question: if you’re walking down a dark alley at night and see 10 men walking toward you, would you be more or less fearful if you knew they had just come from a Bible study?

So when you scrutinize the “bloodshed” argument, I think it falls apart pretty quickly. For a great article on this, check out http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5527

Another argument you bring up is self-contradictions in the Bible. I’d love to hear a specific example. I have yet to hear a single alleged contradiction that holds up under scrutiny. Most people haven’t bothered to do the research or even read the Bible.

As for the Bible being written by flawed men, you’re right – we’re all flawed. But it doesn’t seem reasonable to argue “it was written by men, and men are flawed, therefore their writings are flawed and cannot be trusted.” Otherwise you’d have to disbelieve all history books, science publications, newspapers, etc. As the reader, your job is to assess its credibility. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that shows the Bible to be a reliable source of historical data and scores of detractors have tried to find some fatal flaw to no avail. In fact, I know of many who have set out to disprove the Bible only to be convinced along the way of its truthfulness and they ended up putting their faith in Christ. So the fact that humans are flawed doesn’t automatically disprove the Bible. In fact, I think that’s why God worked so many miracles – it was testimony that the message didn’t originate with men.

I think it’s wise of you to avoid believing everything someone claims came from God. Plenty of people and organizations claim to speak for God, but when you look at the evidence, they’re a bunch of frauds. That doesn’t mean all such claims are false, though. It’s like me walking up to you, introducing myself as Jack Doyle and you saying “oh, you can’t possibly be Jack Doyle. 15 other people have walked up to me claiming to be Jack Doyle.” Look at the evidence, not just the claims.

Ultimately it boils down to who you believe Christ is. Everything hinges on that one question. Look at the evidence. Ask yourself what explanation makes the most sense. Did he exist? Was he who he said he was? Why or why not? And is it really the most logical/reasonable thing to believe that there is no God; that life came from non-life and mankind just popped into existence from random collisions of molecules even though there is absolutely no evidence to support that whatsoever? When you see the incredible design of even the simplest creature and consider their irreducibly complex systems, does it take more faith to believe it was randomly created from non-life and somehow had a fully-functional reproductive system too despite a complete lack of evidence, or that there is an intelligent designer for which there is evidence all around you (including the Bible)?

If you’re anything like I was, your objections to God aren’t really based on logic and reason – they have more to do with fear, anger, or misunderstanding. Maybe you feel threatened by the idea that God exists and actually cares. But I assure you, he can be known. Nothing could be more important or rewarding. The stakes are certainly high.

I hope you don’t mind me challenging the arguments a bit. If you’re interested in continuing the dialog, I’d welcome that. I don’t have all the answers, but I sure enjoy kicking the topic around and exploring the merits of various ideas.

Hello, I just found out about TweenLite and I really love what it is doing. Thank you so much for letting us use it for free. And your boldness for Jesus/Christianity is amazing. I’m utterly inspired.

Jack
After tricking around with your stuff, and viewing your forum and seeing how much help you have freely given to people, I have gone Shockingly Green.

I also appreciate your profession of Christ.

We know that man was created in the likeness of God. I find that Flash allows me to express a characteristic of that likeness. The stage is my universe. I add, subtract, make rules, and break rules. I can create whatever I want, and then I rest. Just like the Lord Jesus. The world was his stage. All things in nature were subject to him. Even with all that power he lowered himself, took my place, and atoned for my failures that I might rest in his work, and not be trapped in a constant state of condemnation.

I know and understand why people view Christianity as a prison that a system of men have created to gain power over the individual, and no doubt this does exist in any organizational structure. It wasn’t until I personally experienced who Jesus Christ was and meant on my OWN that I found out that it was a profound freedom, and not a prison. It was freedom from my narcissistic attitudes, from judging people by various social statuses, from hating the guy in the car in front just because he’s in my way. I have found peace in him.

Thanks again for your help; it’s so refreshing to stumble upon such a bright spot in the dark internet.

Jack, thank you so much for your public profession of faith in Jesus! I’m floored by some of the wonderful responses above and would like to express to folks that ActionScript/ActionScript Lite provides incredible potentials for evangelism/witnessing and apologetics.

I’ve been heavily into Flash for a few years and just discovered your site, which will now be a project for a few nights. Wonderful stuff!

Thank you for making the idea of working with ActionScripting so friendly. I am a designer and am somewhat intimidated about the programming side of Flash. Tweenmax makes things a little more doable and approachable for the techno-phobic like myself.
Thanks for posting your personal account about your spiritual journey. I find it very inspiring and reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ own path.
Aywho, I enjoy your work and perspectives!

Keep the good work up, greatest tween engine around !

Great stuff and great support via your forum.

Jack, how did your spiritual awakening take place after so long?

You know, it’s not often that I take the time out to praise someone for their more than exemplary work, but I find myself driven to do so this one time.

The truth is, I hardly ever find anything that I can honestly commend anyone for. Most of the time, if there’s a bridge I just cannot seem to cross as a programmer, I peek at someone’s code to figure out the solution. It is usually at that time – when I have been properly inspired (after smacking my forehead a few times in disbelief at how simple the answer was in the first place) – I implement my own logic and/or write my own code. (That said, I have never ‘copy/paste’d anything; I hand-write everything myself.)

To keep from further wandering off course and off topic, I’ll go ahead and say it … GREAT FRIGGIN’ JOB, MAN! You’re a life-saver! I swore to myself that I would never use a code/class/framework/application from anyone or any group … EVER!

… buuuuut …

I’m a developer … but I mostly work with static xhtml/CSS/JavaScript/PHP/ASP.NET-C#; Flash is a beast all its own. I played around with Flash a few years ago (back in the days of Macromedia), but was deterred by the lack of maturity in ActionScript. It wasn’t to me what I would consider to be a truly Object Oriented Programming language – not to mention the fact that it just wasn’t natural for me. There were other problems I had with it (some from a design stand-point; others from a developer’s), but they were too many to mention here.

Recently, however, I acquired a project that required me to utilize Flash. I didn’t realize just how much it had changed from the days of “onEnterFrame = function () { // yadda, yadda, yadda }”. I was actually wowwed! One problem: I was used to the old ways. Data handling in Flash is now easy for me, yes, because AS3 resembles that of what I’m used to: strongly-typed languages (i.e. C# ). Tweening, however, isn’t as greatly documented as, per se, C# is. But this project I have is very time-sensitive. So, while having to steepen my learning curve, I still needed a fast way to implement simple animations on the fly with as little code as possible so I can concentrate on what mattered: data transformation and manipulation.

Finally, we come to the point: I stumbled accross this framework last night and was able to solve fifteen separate and distinct tweening issues I couldn’t get my head around. I was able to finish out three “pages” in one night, whereas – before my moment of serendipity – I had spent the last week on one page. If only I had stumbled accross this sooner!

Today, I bought the “Shockingly Green” membership package as my way of saying, “Thanks!” … because I know I’m going to NEED this package. I may be able to meet my deadline after all.

Thank you very much, Jack. You’ve done a wonderful job with this and I hope you keep it going.

Hi Jack.
I use your engine for banners adverts for all the major companies I build for (Vodafone etc) and for Microsites – http://www.fatduck.co.uk and would be lost without it! Keep up the good work and yes I have joined club greensock through the company I work for. Awesome dude.

I believe religion has the problem of making us numb by taking away the responsibility for our actions, we tend to lean on it for everything and blame everything good or bad on something else, even if it is :Oh, why is the Universe punishing me! My thing with religion is that does not allow self worth in the sense that humans can recognize that they have full control over their lives and destinies.

But I agree when Jack says that one can not blame religion or doctrines such as Christianity for what man chooses to do.

I am not religious but I had a religious education and it is true the Bible is an amazing book to read, I even if one is not religious, one can understand concepts such as myth or symbolism for example, and Jesus’ words written there are just words of love, tolerance and from a very intelligent man.
For me he was just human like all of us but most likely with his hyper dimensionality (say “quantum”) unlocked and therefore capable of doing things we usually say that are paranormal.
But nonetheless he spoke always of “Love”.

I don’t conceive God as an entity that is somewhere watching to punish or to love us.
God is Intelligent Design because the Universe is Intelligent Design, and we are all a part of it, therefore we are also God.
We are not a fruit of random, there is nothing random in this Universe, and humans were not created by chance, we have a meaning and a purpose and we are special although we are stuck in our linear perception of reality and are still not able to look beyond that.

Above all, what I think is that spirituality is unique to each individual, there is not one truth because each person has its own perception of reality. We are all heading towards the same point by choosing different ways.
Therefore we just need to respect each one’s pursue of a spiritual path according to one’s free choice and not try to make someone come to ours just because it fits what we think it is best.

Faith is different than religion, it is an approach to Love. You can have faith in all sorts of things rather than only religion: faith in yourself, in human kind, in art, in action script… it doesn’t matter.

What it matters is if it helps you on your path, if it makes you happy, if it makes you soar, gives you strength and patience, and maturity enough to deal with your challenges and your fears.

hi jack

i’m a shockingly green fan of your excellent work, and greatly appreciate what you have done for this community! i’m having a bad week, though, really getting dragged down by steve jobs’ ridiculous refusal to support flash on the iPhone and iBad (so over hyped)! as a long time website designer, and a HUGE fan of flash, i would like to hear what you have to say about this. i’m in vancouver but would love to get my hands on the htv evo g4 when it’s available here, mainly because it supports flash. do you think that google and adobe will make jobs eat his words? i hope that blackberry follows suit soon… i’d be very sad if flash was pushed out – i love being both a designer and programmer, and i still think that flash is the best thing that happened to the internet (i was building cd roms in director, hoping for something internet based, way back in the ‘early days’)

thanks, jodi

Hello Jack,

Thank you for your hard work, and for teaching us the ways of Tweenmax/Tweenlite. As a flash developer, designer, and motion graphics lover, I’m constantly learning new ways to evolve my work. It’s people like you who inspire and challenge.

I truly appreciate your path and the method in which you teach. If you’ve got more video tutorials, I’d love to learn from them.

God bless,

Blake