A web designer & developer's blog

Didn’t expect to get this one, because I uploaded a bit of a bogus when applying for it, haha. I was reaaally sure I messed up. Lucky me, I’m happy.

Well, that’s the third and last of the more or less relevant, yet mostly unknown achievements, I suppose. There’s of course one missing, the big one, the only one I’ve ever truly been anxious to get but I suppose I botched it. At first I was actually a bit disappointed, but having seen people who don’t play games fiddle with the not-as-intuitive-as-i-thought controls, I’m not exactly surprised either. I may revamp the website with fancier technology (now that Flash’s Stage3D a.k.a. Molehill is out) and better controls (namely a better tutorial) within a year or so, but for the time being I’ll stick to my other big adventure of becoming a proper freelancer :)

Update: Uhm, I got featured on irie.be, too. I had to look it up and some mention Irie as an award in their portfolio, but srsly: neither have I ever heard of it nor did I apply for it. But, truth to be told: No one has ever heard of any of those awards anyway, so whatevs! Cool stuff, thanks.

Update 2: And also the BestWebDesignAward Award. I thiiink I’ve seen that site before (maybe through google). I noticed a minuscule amount of traffic being generated from them but didn’t find myself there, so I applied and later noticed that I have already won it. Like weeks ago…Speaking of traffic, it might be interesting to compare those sites, because the traffic they generate should more or less speaks volumes about their importance and reach. Now that will be interesting.

This morning, there was quite the pleasant surprise in my inbox :)

Congratulations!

Your site has received a web award from by Design Licks. It´s been designated as “Site of the day” and will be displayed on 12 September 2011. (…) The following link is the proof that your site has been awarded by Design Licks: www.designlicks.com/web-awards/2538-the-cubical-me

Kind regards,
The Design Licks Team

I’m happy.

Damn, wasted eternal amounts of time developing rotators for references and stuff. But I’m not happy with it, because, well, it’s too cumbersome to use (me being unhappy was the only reason it took forever).

I guess I’ll start over again make it easier, more usable. The dirty code and example for free for anyone who dares to use it.

This should be basic, but I still want to express my love for it: Nowadays, unless it’s small or especially detailed stuff, most of the animation I show is scripted and I suppose non of the more advanced websites around could do without. Flash’s internal Tween-Class has been around for a few years, but it’s rather cumbersome to use and not exactly fast.

Two alternative tweening-engines are widely popular: TweenLite and Tweener, with Tweener being the by far most mentioned one. Both are extremely similar, though. To e.g. set a movieclips alpha to 0 in 2 seconds, you’d write:

TweenLite.to(myMovieClip, 2, {alpha:0}); // or:

Tweener.addTween(myMovieClip, {time:2, alpha:0});

The differences are so small, that, even in larger projects, it should be possible to switch between both within minutes. If it were only a matter of preference, I’d choose Tweener because of it’s slightly nicer syntax – but TweenLite’s speed is superior by far. Their speed test shows it quite clearly, but even in rather simple environments where I thought performance was no issue, when using Tweener, I’ve continuously gotten to dead ends I just couldn’t understand and which were solved instantly, when trying the same with TweenLite.

And one of the greatest functions in recent history (at least for me) is TweenLite’s delayedCall. As the name suggests it delays the calling of a function; which is absolutely essential, when scripting animation – and a lot less messy than using the usual onComplete parameter. I really couldn’t imagine working without it anymore. So show TweenLite some love! :)

In the meantime we’ve relaunched the website of the agency I currently work for. Looking back, it feels as if it was more difficult to convince people to do things this way or that way, than it was to actually build it (which is me, exaggerating (though only a bit)).

I like that we’ve managed to get different disciplines work together – flash, 3d and motion – which definitely made the website a lot better than any of us could have done it alone. But that having more people leads to better results should be true for almost anything. Well, as long as there’s either a common goal or someone to take the lead, though I don’t want to get too philosophic here :p

This is, by the way, not the first try: There was a version before that, which suffered from the same problemsI described earlier and hence never saw the light of day. It was nice and all, but it lacked spirit. Things really can’t be good if you only make them big and abundant. Having a distinctive look and story really made things a whole lot better.

I wonder if it’s good enough to become a sotd, but probably not the way it is right now. There’s still quite a few rough edges and there were too many political decisions involved for me to be totally convinced. Things could have been crisper and overall better and more well-rounded than they are right now… I might convince my guys and girls to produce an english version of it, one of these days, with a little more creative freedom and more attention to the little, yet important details…