

Tumult Hype 1.5 is out with major improvements to the HTML5 builder for Mac OS X - tumultco
http://tumultco.com/blog/2012/02/23/tumult-hype-1-5-is-here/

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lukeholder
I just don't get that here on hacker news, on an announcement of a new version
of software that someone probably put a lot of work into, the main
conversation is the icon change?

I am sure most people here have the ability to change it to anything they want
- but that is not even the point. I am a UI/UX guy and nothing erks me more
than complaining about such a subjective non-important issue during product
development.

Great work on this release tumultco. If icon complaints are your only issue,
you are doing well.

~~~
cabacon
Here's the thing, though - I clicked through, and started to watch the video
about "25 features in 10 minutes". The icon change is listed as feature #1. I
stopped watching around feature #3-4, because the product wasn't interesting
to me. But as a rule, I think videos like this should be structured like the
canonical newspaper article - put the biggest news up front. That way, at any
point someone stops reading/watching, they have gotten the information that
you thought was most important for them to get.

In other words, if you don't want people to focus on the icon change, don't
highlight it as feature #1 in your time-limited chance to educate people about
the product.

~~~
tumultco
That's a good point. I put it at number one because I knew it was the first
thing that would be noticed anyways and would only take a couple seconds to
show. While I believe it is an improvement I wanted call it out to help manage
the change (as any change can represent friction). Probably the end would have
been a more appropriate place.

Many other places showing what has changed in 1.5 have the "top ten" feature
list in more of a priority order in which I put the icon change in the last
position. The video I made as more of a comprehensive guide to the changes for
our existing users than a highlights video. Ordering in many cases was
somewhat set by the features themselves; for example it is hard to show of
smaller feature of the new animations timing functions without first
discussing the more significant redesigned animation interface, etc.

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mullr
Browsing through the demo gallery, I become terrified that tools like this
will become popular and poorly done animations will begin saturating the web.
It looks like a fine tool when used appropriately and tastefully, but that's
entirely up to the user. And a long series of Flash-based sites have shown us
that there are many people in the world with poor taste.

For the last number of years, many of us have been able to shield ourselves
from blinking and moving things on the web using some kind of FlashBlock
browser plugin or by not installing flash altogether. This leads me to wonder:
if this kind of content becomes pervasive on the web, can it be blocked?

It may be possible to heuristically identify such content. In the case of
Hype, easy enough. (see
[http://static.tumultco.com/hype/gallery/HolidayCard2/Holiday...](http://static.tumultco.com/hype/gallery/HolidayCard2/HolidayCard2_Resources/holidaycard2_hype_generated_script.js?89177)
for example) Adobe's product appears to use a div with an easily identifiable
naming convention as well. (see
[http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/movement/m...](http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/movement/movement.html))
So this is probably a good approach.

But part of me thinks this can be addressed at a lower level. Fundamentally
what I want to get rid of is things that move of their own volition, rendering
useless the adjacent content. Perhaps scripts that perform continuous DOM
updates could be stopped?

~~~
epo
Many, many years ago I felt the same about GUI driven IDEs (Visual
Basic/Studio, Eclipse, etc). I remember learning woodwork at school and the
teacher saying we wouldn't even be allowed in the same room as a power tool
until we had shown competence with handheld tools. In the hands of the
clueless IDEs allow aimless fiddling to eventually converge on a result and
thus shorten development time by sacrificing code quality. IDEs caught on
anyway, I think I was right to be concerned. I think you are right to be
concerned about Hype but there is nothing you can do about it.

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dot
iBooks Author widget export is huge. Well done!

I feel like this is one of the best deals in software. $50 is an absolute
steal.

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tonywebster
I am in love with Hype and I've used it on several projects with startups and
web agencies to make animated demos of mobile apps, HTML5 presentations, etc.
Excited to explore these new features!

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troymc
In a recent talk, Bret Victor gave a demo of an animation program where you
could just click on an object (a leaf in his demo) and drag it around, and the
software would record the object's position as a function of time. (His demo
actually had the software on an iPad.) It was beautiful, direct, intuitive,
and now I want it in all animation software!

Video of his talk: <http://vimeo.com/36579366>

~~~
tumultco
Bret and I actually overlapped at Apple a little bit, his work has always been
insightful and amazing.

His first demo also is very similar to our own HyperEdit
(<http://tumultco.com/HyperEdit/>) though he takes the concept to the next
level.

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pavlov
This is a minor quibble, but I'm curious: why did you change the icon?

I quite liked the green hummingbird you had previously. The color was maybe a
bit too dark and uniform so it didn't stand out as much as it could, but the
shape was beautiful and recognizable.

I'm not a fan of this wooden thing on your new icon. To be honest, my first
association was something in an outhouse :)

~~~
mutewinter
I was not a fan of the old icon[1], but the new one isn't better. Way too much
detail on the new icon at smaller sizes.

[1]:<http://static.tumultco.com/press/media/HypeIconShadow.png>

~~~
ugh
Bullshit. <http://i.imgur.com/Nw5gv.png>

That’s how much detail OS X icons are supposed to have. (Have you looked at
the apps that come with the OS?!) Smaller versions with less detail are used
for smaller sizes.

I wish more app developers would actually have such awesome icons. But HN has
to complain. Of course.

~~~
tumultco
Thanks for illustrating how we scale with the screenshot! :)

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kenrikm
I preferred the hummingbird :( Maybe we need to sign a petition to bring it
back.

Great software though, I purchased it back when it was $29.99 and I'm glad I
did it makes making HTML5 animations extremely easy.

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navs
Lovely update.

I hope you tackle the orientation/responsive problem soon. At the moment we
show and hide a landscape and portrait version with media queries. Not the
most ideal solution.

~~~
tumultco
Agreed we need to tackle this -- I would definitely like to beef up how we
support mobile devices better.

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chucknelson
This app looks pretty awesome. It will be interesting to see what competition
springs up in the next year or so.

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tumultco
Meant to point out that we're YC W11.

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ivanzhao
What's the main different between Tumult and Adobe Edge?

