Just got word from Jack / Greensock (Creator of TweenMax/TweenLite) that his most recent creation, TransformManager, is out on the market. Unlike the tween packages, it’s not open source, but has a small price tag on it. Personally, I would encourage everyone to either buy this, or support Jack via his Club Greensock. TweenMax/Lite is an amazing accomplishment from just one person and accomplishments should always be rewarded

Here’s a snip from the release statement;

TransformManager makes it easy to add interactive scaling/rotating/moving of DisplayObjects to your Flash application. It uses an intuitive interface that’s similar to most modern drawing applications. When the user clicks on a managed DisplayObject, a selection box will be drawn around it along with 8 handles for scaling/rotating. When the mouse is placed just outside of any of the scaling handles, the cursor will change to indicate that they’re in rotation mode. Just like most other applications, the user can hold down the SHIFT key to select multiple items, to constrain scaling proportions, or to limit the rotation to 45 degree increments.

As mentioned; this class, unlike the other ones Jack released, does come at a small price. I know people go to great great GREAT lengths to not have to pay for their music, software, classes et cetera but at some point you should step back and consider the implications it has on the evolution of web products. I’ve personally always been a ‘pay for your shit’ vigilante and I strongly encourage everyone to pay for anything you’re using on a regular basis.

That preach being done, if you use TweenMax/Lite, do check out the transform manager and it’s cool features! TransformManager

Quick and short post. Due to a suggestion from Ryan Ragona I checked out how much resources the circle loader took up and it was pretty unacceptable. I re-wrote the class so that it snapshots the vectors to a bitmap object and rotates that instead of the vectors (vectors are now never even added to the display list)

CPU usage on my dual 3.2 went from 11% to 1%. Quite a difference. I would strongly encourage you to re-download it if you plan to use it. (I also updated the original link)

Download V2 (300Kb) (1263 downloads)

That’s quite a topic. “A customizable gradient circle loader / animation for AS3“. I wrote it then looked at it and couldn’t help giggling. Aaaanyway. You know the one, we’ve all seen it. From the worst sites to the best sites, every now and then you see that circle that spins with an internal gradient. Like a snake trying to eat its own tail.

Most commonly these are bitmaps. Pngs exported from PS that are rotated. The problem with that is that it becomes pretty rigid. If you need to change the width or height or whatnot, you’re quickly faced with re-exporting a new one. Actually more or less the same thing goes for those that took the time to make it with Illustrator. Once you are faced with increasing the inner radius and not the outer, or vice versa - you gotta redo it.

Soooooo, without further adieu, here’s a scripted version that uses the drawing API to construct a circle that is fairly customizable. You can use it as a loading animation or just .. just a spinning circle because how cool aren’t spinning circles? Much much cooler than fireflies, for sure!