Methinks has just announced immediate availability of a product called Scooter. It is a set of Flash MX components for designers. Scooter makes popular Flash special effects easy: just drag-and-drop and set the control panel. The idea is that this is a whole lot easier than writing ActionScript and tweaking it.
Scooter consists of four components that affect four different attributes:
- Scooter Mover
- Scooter Zoomer
- Scooter Rotator
- Scooter Fader
Scooter components are used by simply dragging and dropping them onto instances on the authoring stage. All components share a similar control panel with fun-to-adjust parameters:
- TurboEase: for dramatic inertial changes.
- Bounces: for spring action.
- Randomness: for jiggles or wandering.
Before Scooter, these special effects required complex ActionScript programming every time an effect was used. Scooter is one of the first Flash MX component products made for designers, no ActionScript programming is necessary.
Scooter requires the Macromedia Flash MX authoring tool (Windows or Macintosh), but projects with Scooter can be published for the older Flash 5 player (or higher). Scooter costs $39.95 and is available for immediate purchase as an electronic download at methinks.com
