Thought this was pretty funny

By scott

Most of you have probably figured out my name is Scott Morgan, that is why I found this article pretty funny. Sorry to anyone who is from Scott or Morgan county, but I couldn’t resist. Skip down to about the 4th and 6th paragraph to see my name in (broken) lights.

Damage from the storm over Scott, Morgan and rural Sangamon Counties consisted of the snapping of power poles and major tree damage, either ripped up or uprooted. Numerous farm buildings (both Morton type buildings and barns) were damaged or destroyed, as were numerous grain bins. One mobile home was destroyed.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ilx/?n=mar12-tor1

The Tween class is not just for bouncy balls

By scott

People don’t always realize that the Macromedia Tween Classes does more than just move MovieClips or fade MovieClips in and out. I wish I got a nickel for everytime I heard someone say I didn’t know you could do “that” with the Tween class. Most people do not realize you can tween filters (blur, dropshadow, glows, bevel, etc). And even more people don’t realize you can use the tween class to control volume on a sound object or change the font size of a text field. Basically you can blur any property. Here is an example of text being blured via the tween class.

import flash.filters.BlurFilter;
import mx.transitions.easing.Regular;
import mx.transitions.Tween; 

var template_mc:MovieClip = this;
var textHolder:MovieClip = template_mc.createEmptyMovieClip('textHolder_mc',
 template_mc.getNextHighestDepth());

var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
tf.font = '_serif';
tf.color = 0x000000;
tf.size = 18;

textHolder.createTextField('text_txt', 1, 0, 0, 200, 50);
textHolder.text_txt.text = 'This is my device font uber blur test';
textHolder.text_txt.autoSize = 'left';
textHolder.text_txt.setTextFormat(tf);

textHolder._x = (Stage.width/2) - (textHolder._width/2);
textHolder._y = (Stage.height/2) - (textHolder._height/2);

var blurText = new Tween(textHolder, "blur", Regular.easeOut, 0, 16, 3, true);
blurText.onMotionChanged = function(ev:Object) {
     ev.obj.filters = [new BlurFilter(ev.obj.blur, ev.obj.blur, 3)];
}
blurText.onMotionFinished = function() {
     this.yoyo();
}

Here is an example using the tween class to change the font size of a text field.

import flash.filters.BlurFilter;
import mx.transitions.easing.Elastic;
import mx.transitions.Tween; 

var template_mc:MovieClip = this;
var textHolder:MovieClip = template_mc.createEmptyMovieClip('textHolder_mc',
 template_mc.getNextHighestDepth());

var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
tf.font = '_serif';
tf.color = 0x000000;
tf.size = 18;

textHolder.createTextField('text_txt', 1, 0, 0, 200, 50);
textHolder.text_txt.text = 'This is my device font test uber size test';
textHolder.text_txt.autoSize = 'center';
textHolder.text_txt.setTextFormat(tf);

textHolder._x = (Stage.width/2) - (textHolder._width/2);
textHolder._y = (Stage.height/2) - (textHolder._height/2);

var stretchText = new Tween(textHolder.text_txt, "size", Elastic.easeOut, 18, 75, 2, true);
stretchText.onMotionChanged = function(ev:Object) {
     var newSize = Math.round(ev._pos);
     var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
     tf.size = newSize;
     ev.obj.setTextFormat(tf);
}
stretchText.onMotionFinished = function() {
     this.yoyo();
}

Any numeric value can be “tweened”, try it out yourself, it is a very useful class.