Do you have a link?

yeah, i'm sure posting the URL would be helpful. http://arch2.sensitivesystem.com

david - i think you forgot the URL? in general, i've had good cross-platform experience setting flash movies at 31 fps.

Very smooth, very nice. I'm on PC.

Paul, for some reason i always tend to need high framerates to achieve smooth motion. maybe my actionscript is inefficient. I will not yet tell you what multiple of 31fps the page is set to right now. i find that lower framerates work well for changes in alpha but not well for moving a few things around the stage controlled from actionscript. the problem seems to be that the page runs really slow on some machines right now, but when i slow down the framerate, certain motion components become pretty choppy. maybe i have too much going on on the stage. i guess you have to strike a balance.

Cool site, but your right it is slow. How may frames per second are you running? I sure wish our school would get their heads out of their arss and create a non lame web page.

Let us know when you figure out what the deal is.

text is too small on right "page" (programs sections) - illegible. also, the transitions are very smooth but too slow in my opinion, but i tend to be impatient with loading web content. the computer i'm on now is a mac g4.

overall it looks really nice... but i'm not a proponent of all-flash sites for content-rich sites like this. are you pulling data from a db with xml?

Paul, i'll probably just have to turn down the fps and maybe cut some of the effects. i have a lot of listener movie clips fading and moving things all at once. i need embedd the fonts on all of the dynamic text boxes. that's why they look crusty. i'm not really a proponent of flash content-rich sites either. i've been searching for a good system for linking flash to databases. i know there are ways but its all a bit much right now.

btw, no db/xml. controlled from external text files though. i know a little php but linking flash to mysql seems daunting to me at the moment. i've tryed for a while with no luck. i'll just have to keep reading.

cool. add the link to the links section when you're done with it. good luck!

in my experience, actionscript in general was just slower on apple computers.

i don't know if this is a ppc (hardware) fault or just the os. I would be interested to know if flash was as noticably slower on os 9 as it is in os X.

my site is still slower on a mac, but it is at least usable now at a lower framerate (31). David, if your animation is not smooth at lower framerates try looking at your code and seeing if there variables you could raise (amount of pixels moved per frame etc) and get a balance between silky smooth on a g5 and smooth on your grandmas's computer.

also, what easing/moving equations are you using - your own or penner's or who knows?

Chris. I'm not sure. It could be my actionscript. As far as the arrows, i wrote the code myself, and there could be a much better way to do it. Who is penner? Basically, I have a movieclip with just a looping actionscript controlling the arrow. When each button is clicked, it sends the new position to the looping actionscript, which then moves the arrow. the code is as follows. i hope this isn't too messy.

'pos' is the destination for the arrow, and 'point' is the arrow itself.

the easing is done by dividing the speed by the proximity to the destination.

// moves pointer to selected menu item
if (_parent.point._y != pos) {
// pointer is above selected menu item
if (_parent.point._y < pos) {
dist = (pos - _parent.point._y)
// speed slows down pointer as it approaches menu item
speed = (dist/10);
_parent.point._y = _parent.point._y + speed;
}
// pointer is below selected menu item
if (_parent.point._y > pos) {
dist = (_parent.point._y - pos)
// speed slows down pointer as it approaches menu item
speed = (dist/10);
_parent.point._y = _parent.point._y - speed;
}
}

if you know of a more efficient way to achieve this, please let me know. so far, correcting the alpha changes are fine, but lowering the fps makes the arrow seem pretty choppy. thanks.

ok. wow. i just looked up penner. i should probably try to incorporate his code and see how that works. thanks for the tip!

i believe it is the alpha changes that are causing your problems. alphas should be avoided when possible because it can choke the speed. i would imagine your problem is compounded by applying an alpha to an image.

e - most of the alphas are applied to objects, not images. the alphas look fine, i've just got to be doing something wrong with the motion. these robert penner functions are impossible.

david, i know i have read about this alpha problem within flash's documentation and have experienced the problem when building my own site and sites for clients.

david

worked perfectly fine on my lappy. Not one single hiccup.