KevLinDev Blog

There are just too many nice examples in “Flash Math Creativity” that need to be converted to SVG. I’m sure I’ll pick out more examples to convert over time, but last night I decided to convert a plant example. Press the grey circle in the lower left corner to generate a new set of plants. Really this file begs for an interface (as does Mouse Repel) in that there are a number of globals that can be tweaked to get different effects from the file. For now, you can save the SVG file locally and tweak things for yourself.

I’ve starting looking into the Flash MX development environment to see how things work under that platform. Really, there are some great features there that I would love to see in SVG, but we’ll have to rely on the future of SVG IDE’s to give us the things we’re missing.

When I’m learning a new technology, I have to have specific goals to hold my interest; otherwise, I get easily distracted and wander off into other areas. I had looked at a Friends of Ed book called “Flash Math Creativity” about a year ago and found many of the examples intriguing. So, I decided to try my hand at converting some to SVG. So far, I’ve only converted a Mouse Repel example. Simply move your mouse over the circles and they will try to avoid it. Also, you can click the colored cirlces at the bottom to change the current color.

I found the exercise to be both enjoyable and informative. I was a bit surprised to find that ASV was too slow to mimic the complete example. I ended up having to simplify my version to get the interaction to be smooth. Basically, all I did was reduce the number of circles that get updated during mouse moves.

Enjoy!