Comments on: Utilities for Code Hinting and Strict Typing in TweenLite/Filter/Max

By: Mikael

Mikael — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:06:18 +0000

Yes this whole new package is amazing, a big steep forward and I have been waiting for the tweenmanager för AS3 since this spring. I have no problem paying for it. I know how long it takes to develop a application like that. sweet, nice work!

By: Ash

Ash — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:24:46 +0000

Good grief you have been busy!

nice work

By: jack

jack — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:09:18 +0000

mjamado, yes, there is a slight performance hit when using the utility, but it’s negligible according to my tests. Even when doing 1500 every 0.5 seconds, it held up very well.

By: mjamado

mjamado — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:45:10 +0000

Good job (again)!

Although I’m all for strict typing, I have a question… In my experience, class instantiation always come with a performance hit. Have you re-tested Tween Family performance with this? Is there a penalty, or is it negligible?

On a side note, it’s amazing how some people just don’t use a package because it lacks strict typing… One might as well not use PHP, JavaScript… I’ve been working with strict typing since, well, forever (I come from desktop development, made the switch to Web Dev about a year ago), and even I’m not THAT freak…

Keep up!

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:22:01 +0000

This is excellent, thank you. I have implemented it immediately. While the vars version may have longer code I feel it’s more flexible as I can have conditional values without having to create temp vars to hold them, i.e.:

if (isGoingUp)
{
myTween.y = 0;
} else {
myTween.y = 300;
}

where-as before I would have to had either 2 complete TweenMax calls in there, or start creating a temp var for each value that may have been conditional.

So, not just for the strict freaks at all :)

By: jack

jack — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:42:39 +0000

Yeah, Gabriel. I hear you. But you might be surprised by how passionately some developers argue the merits of strict data typing. I’m all for it, actually. There are certainly up sides. But there are down sides too.For example, strict datatyping requires more code and (depending on how it’s implemented) can be far less readable. For example:

TweenLite.to(my_mc, 2, {x:300, y:100, scaleX:1.5, scaleY:2, rotation:90, onComplete:myFunction, ease:Elastic.easeOut});

Is much more readable than:

TweenLite.to(my_mc, 2, 300, 100, 1.5, 2, 90, myFunction, Elastic.easeOut);

And it’s less code that an alternate way of strictly data typing:

var myTween:TweenLite = new TweenLite();
myTween.target = my_mc;
myTween.duration = 2;
myTween.x = 300;
myTween.y = 100;
myTween.scaleX = 1.5;
myTween.scaleY = 2;
myTween.rotation = 90;
myTween.onComplete = myFunction;
myTween.ease = Elastic.easeOut;

But again, it’s just my personal opinion. I don’t think it’s a right vs. wrong issue, and I can see the benefits of using strict data typing when debugging very complex applications. Strict typing can also lead to better performance, but for TweenLite/Filter/Max, those speed benefits can’t be fully realized because they need to be able to tween ANY numeric property of ANY Object, dynamically.

Hopefully these utilities will serve the stricter types among us well. :)