Soul Power '74 - Time Changes Everything

We already got a glimpse of the LM timeline. The timeline is at once the thing that makes LM wicked cool and the thing that scares away novice Flashers.

Different, eh? Not if you're used to Adobe After Effects - the developers of LM demonstrated rare big-company sensibility by using something that wasn't busted (and not fixing it).

As I see (and call) it, the success of the timeline boils down into two issues: objects and layers.

Objects

The idea of objects has been such a buzz for so long I'm surprised you don't hear Peter Jennings stumbling over the simple concept. Nowadays if you slap the label "Object Oriented" on anything from a ten-thousand-dollar IDE to fish food no one will dare criticize you for fear of being unhip. For those of you joining us in the middle of our program, the idea of objects in programming is that you have a thing (the object) and you know different stuff about it (attributes, methods, properties, or whatever). The idea came out of the desire to make code easier to work with in chunks, (e.g. "...instead of writing the same lines over and over to interpret forms, I'll stick all that code into one thing and call it 'Macaroni'. No, I'll call it 'CGI'. That makes more sense..."; and you have an object).

Macromedia gave you a way to manage objects in Flash - the library. Each of your symbols in the library is an object. You can use it over and over and you don't have to draw it every time you want it - (warning! condescending redundancy imminent!) - you just use the same symbol again. The problem with Macromedia's object model is that the tools that let you set, change, and animate the properties (aka attributes) of these objects is scattered all over hell. Some tools are in tool palettes, some are in that suffocating little ActionScript window, some are just from outer space (1).

Adobe's solution is to put everything in one place - the timeline. In the example image (repeated below so you don't have to scroll), we are focusing on the object which is the letter "d". It has a whole big bunch of attributes you can change as the timeline progresses. Note that the section labeled "Object Attributes" is only one subdivision of the attributes of the object. More good lexicological taxonomy. (2)

So we are looking at the object called 'Black "d"' (which LM named automatically for us when we split the letters - cool). It has attributes in the categories Transform, Object Attributes, etc. The top row of circled keyframes shows points on the timeline where the position attribute of the object 'Black "d"' changes.

(Ghostly voice of foil-objector, in the style of classical philosophy): "Big deal. You can teach a monkey to do that in Flash."

Consider this, my worthy opponent: can you independently animate the position, opacity, text content, and a dozen other attributes - all from a single compact tool? Or what if you decide that you want your object to fade out instead of fade in? Can you simply exchange keyframes by dragging them?

(Ghostly voice): "You have trounced me once again, wise master."

In a nutshell, LM offers you the ability to control every minute detail from the timeline. You either select from context menus or summon the appropriate tool palette. It makes it easy to change individual attributes without opening up that little window (in Flash) for each keyframe you want to affect. LM knows when you want to add a keyframe by where the playhead (3) is when you change an attribute, (i.e. you don't have to hit F6 every time you want to make a change).

Even without prior experience with the After Effects timeline, even with a general reservation regarding the quasi-scientific formality of Adobe products, and even with a love for Flash and intimate familiarity with Flash 4, I found that the Adobe approach to editing object attributes is clearly superior for doing text effects - or anything where you have multiple objects on the stage doing different things. No contest.

I am just guessing, but I bet Flash 5 will have a more centralized way of getting at object attributes. One of the big advances of the latest version of Flash's big brother Director was a centralized object inspector. Good news for everyone if it happens.

(1) The gradient shape tool. This is like the little contrivances you see on Eastern European automobiles - like the air hose from the spare tire to the wiper fluid pump. You know - things that work, that probably made sense at the time of conception - things that even have certain advantages. It's just that the rest of the world does things differently.

(2) Facetious. Irony of clumsy wording to describe the same is intentional.

(3) Adobe wants you to call the playhead CTM or some such nonsense - don't. It's a playhead.

Live Motion - Super Bad
Live Motion - Super Bad
Givin' Up Food for Funk