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I won't lie, I'm having a hard time using this app. I spent awhile looking for a create keyframe buton and almost gave up before realizing how to do animations.

I won't lie, I'm having a hard time using this app. I spent awhile looking for a create keyframe buton and almost gave up before realizing how to do animations. I still don't know how to build custom shapes with curves or how to draw shapes that exist for a short duration. When I published the canvas element it didn't animate in the browser. Clearly you've solved a lot of interesting technical problems, but I feel kinda clueless while using it. As far as I know the only people who use the flash authoring environment these days are advertisers and animators (or designers building content for flex apps). So if you want to focus this, I'd say go after those people. When people do make flash sites in the authoring environment they usually rely heavily on simple onclick and gotoandplay statements. I'm impressed with what I see, but I don't know what problem has been solved.

pavlov 16y ago
Yeah, I completely see what you mean. That's pretty much what I meant by "abstract ambition" in my original post. I feel like I've spent a fair bit of time building modules that are generic enough to be the basis for a few different apps, but the whole doesn't yet do anything specific well enough. That's why I felt like I need to release this sooner rather than later. It would be appealing to go on polishing the app for an imaginary customer who happens to be just like me (my other application, Conduit Live, went down that drain)... But it's healthier to face criticism and try to figure out if there's some potential customer group(s) out there that I didn't anticipate. FWIW, I feel like there might be something interesting to be done in the intersection between realtime graphics and video on the web. Flash has a lot of cool technology, but nowadays you need to be a coder to take advantage of the new stuff like Pixel Bender shaders or the Alchemy compiler -- Adobe seems to have "outgrown" the designer audience who originally made Flash a success, and I think that's a mistake. Re: your points about Radi -- there's a big hole in the <canvas> publishing functionality currently, it doesn't export all keyframes. Sorry about that, I'm hoping to fix that ASAP. The keyframing UI is not very well thought out, and needs a lot more work. To make polygon shapes, choose "Draw Shape" from the toolbar and click away in the viewer. There's no exposed way to limit the shapes' visibility in the timeline either (internally there's a concept of empty keyframes same as in Flash, but it's not in the UI).
- kmfrk 16y ago
  I don't think it can be stressed enough how important it is to prevent feature creep while you still have the chance. I can't imagine the repercussions of cutting down the program down the line after people have acquainted themselves with it - to the point of feeling completely entitled.

pavlov 16y ago

Yeah, I completely see what you mean. That's pretty much what I meant by "abstract ambition" in my original post. I feel like I've spent a fair bit of time building modules that are generic enough to be the basis for a few different apps, but the whole doesn't yet do anything specific well enough. That's why I felt like I need to release this sooner rather than later. It would be appealing to go on polishing the app for an imaginary customer who happens to be just like me (my other application, Conduit Live, went down that drain)... But it's healthier to face criticism and try to figure out if there's some potential customer group(s) out there that I didn't anticipate. FWIW, I feel like there might be something interesting to be done in the intersection between realtime graphics and video on the web. Flash has a lot of cool technology, but nowadays you need to be a coder to take advantage of the new stuff like Pixel Bender shaders or the Alchemy compiler -- Adobe seems to have "outgrown" the designer audience who originally made Flash a success, and I think that's a mistake. Re: your points about Radi -- there's a big hole in the <canvas> publishing functionality currently, it doesn't export all keyframes. Sorry about that, I'm hoping to fix that ASAP. The keyframing UI is not very well thought out, and needs a lot more work. To make polygon shapes, choose "Draw Shape" from the toolbar and click away in the viewer. There's no exposed way to limit the shapes' visibility in the timeline either (internally there's a concept of empty keyframes same as in Flash, but it's not in the UI).

kmfrk 16y ago
I don't think it can be stressed enough how important it is to prevent feature creep while you still have the chance. I can't imagine the repercussions of cutting down the program down the line after people have acquainted themselves with it - to the point of feeling completely entitled.