Introducing Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5
Adobe Flash Catalyst is the newest addition to the Creative Suite 5 lineup. It is intutive to use, makes it easy to create great interactive websites and content, and supports strong workflow collaboration with developers using Flash Builder 4, now part of Creative Suite 5 Web Premium and Master Collection.
When Flash Catalyst was first premiered at MAX in Chicago in 2007, it was a concept called Thermo. Thermo's goal was to let designers create user interface designs for use with the Flex Framework. The trick was that designers could use their favorite design tools (Illustrator, Photoshop, or Fireworks) and use their existing design skills to create amazing designs for the web.
As we continued work on Thermo, a large industry trend started to emerge. Designers who worked in print or in traditional graphic design wanted to expand their skills. In addition, their clients wanted to target the web, desktop, and other screens that their potential customers were using in growing quantities. With that trend, Thermo also worked to make the world of interactive user experiences easier for a broader set of people that want to express themselves with the power of the Flash Platform.
Since its introduction, we have been working tirelessly to bring Flash Catalyst from concept to reality, and when using Flash Catalyst, you can do the same with your own ideas.
What you can do with Adobe Flash Catalyst
Flash Catalyst includes the following features:
- Import Illustrator and Photoshop files: Out of the gate, Flash Catalyst lets you import Illustrator or Photoshop files to start off your interaction design process. Flash Catalyst supports the structure of your files, so you have clear and concise context when adding interactivity to your ideas because your designs look like they originally did.
- Built with Flex 4: Flash Catalyst projects are built using the new Flex 4 Framework, improving the performance of your application user interface and building strong abstraction of design from business logic of your components using the Spark component architecture.
- FXG file format: With Flex 4, Adobe has released a new declarative graphics format called FXG. With FXG, you can exchange designs between Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash Professional and Flash Catalyst, increasing the portability of your designs when working with the Flash Platform.
- User interaction design: Designers can quickly create user interactions for a variety of components using a simple point and click interface that adapts to the various components you are working with.
- State transitions and timelines: While designing and working with your projects in Flash Catalyst, the program is monitoring your actions and automatically creates transitions between each of the states of your application or component. Using these transitions, you can build choreographed timelines to give a natural and expressive flow to your application
- Roundtrip editing: When working inside of Flash Catalyst, you can quickly redesign your artwork through roundtrip workflows with Illustrator and Photoshop. Through this engine, exclusive to CS5, selected artwork will be transported to Illustrator and Photoshop allowing you to use your favorite design tools to update the design, in context with the rest of your application user interface. Flash Catalyst will then update the project based on your changes
- Wireframe drawing tools and components: If you have an idea, Flash Catalyst is the perfect place to start bringing that idea into reality. Flash Catalyst has a number of drawing tools and components that were designed for building out your idea. Through integration with Photoshop and Illustrator, you can then take the pieces of your wireframe and update them to full fidelity designs.
- Design-time data: Working with data can be a complex task, luckily with Flash Catalyst, designers can build data easily for projects they publish on their own, or simulate data that can be easily substituted using data services in Flash Builder 4.
Support for video and dynamic media: Flash Catalyst lets you import audio, video, and SWF animations into your project and control them using intuitive interactions and timelines. Dynamic media can be choreographed to get the right look and feel you want for your application. The built-in video player takes advantage of the new Open Source Media Framework, giving your developers the ability to tie in powerful content management and media monetization options into your video applications.
- Publish to SWF or AIR: Projects that you create in Flash Catalyst can be output to the desktop using Adobe AIR, or as browser-based applications using Flash Player.
- Export to Flash Builder 4: The native file format for Flash Catalyst, FXP, is easily converted to a Flex project when imported in Flash Builder, making the handoff workflow from design to development easy and seamless.
- Create component libraries for Flex 4: In addition to creating full projects for a designer to publish, or to hand off to a developer, Flash Catalyst also supports component library exports that can be imported as Flex Library projects in Flash Builder and linked to a number of other Flex projects for skinned components or custom components created by the designer using Flash Catalyst.
Where to go from here
We can't wait to see what amazing things you will create with this new tool. For more information on how to get use and get started with Flash Catalyst, check out the following resources:
