The sense I get is that this is somethng I can be Productive with.

Thank you.

there are always endless questions to designers like “what about this button’s rollover?”, “what about provision for this type of transition”, “won’t we need a control that does X?”, “did you design anything for this state?”. to imagine that visual designers are always going to be able to usefully create stripped down apps in catalyst is naive i think.

what’s more, as a developer with creative roots i usually have a lot of input to the design, look and feel and functionality of an app as i develop it, and the apps i make usually really benefit for these extra rounds of iteration. i feel like catalyst could in some cases rob me of part of my job that i love, and impoverish projects where developers are capable of constructively improving the interface as they build.

i think the designers in the vast majority of creative agencies i’ve worked in are simply not interested in getting involved in the technicality of a project to the level that catalyst demands, and are too busy too learn. likewise, busy developers are not going to take the time to learn a tool that probably drastically decreases the flexibility of what their able to produce.

my two pennies worth anyway :P

It may make sense to just to add this into FLEX and sell more copies of FLEX as opposed to targeting designers because at the end of the day the designer is just going to design in PHOTOSHOP, ILLUSTRATOR, or FIREWORKS and hand the file over to the developer.

So if anything this is yet another developer tool and the additional functionality provided with FLASH CATALYST should be apart of FLEX rather than a whole new program.

It may make sense to just to add this into FLEX and sell more copies of FLEX as opposed to targeting designers because at the end of the day the designer is just going to design in PHOTOSHOP, ILLUSTRATOR, or FIREWORKS and hand the file over to the developer.

So if anything this is yet another developer tool and the additional functionality provided with FLASH CATALYST should be apart of FLEX rather than a whole new program.

Now that some of the Flash Catalyst hype has died down some, this demo is sure to get some of its potential fans pretty excited all over again.  Here is Kevin Lynch’s Keynote from the Web 2.0 conference where he shows how to build a full application……

Also I still prefer making the graphics for my own lightweight buttons and code their behavior.
I never used the GUI components Adobe provided in Flash and I will never do for one simple reason: they are too difficult to edit.

So instead of Catalyst, how about a good Project Panel, a better component inspector and finally a decent coding environment inside the IDE for a start?

The biggest problem with AS2 was that it failed too silently, and didn’t kick up enough warnings. Now when AS3 fails, it kicks up errors that halt execution, and which don’t make any sense to designers and lower level hackers. The easy fix, which could still apply to AS3 (at least in some environments like Flash) would be to add more warnings, but continue execution in a way that more closely resembles the way Javascript works. Basically, make it behave like a scripting language again – they are much more forgiving. (there are other needed things – scripting against a DOM built with generic Legos is an easier model to hold in your head than a highly specialized organic class hierarchy).

We might even be able to recreate a dynamic language based culture around Flash again, which in my opinion has been lost with AS3 (but continues in Javascript and Canvas – something Adobe should tap into). Heck I’d even be happy with Javascript or HaXe on the timeline (maybe an API for third parties to add their own compilers?), as long as it all compiles to cross language compatible ABC bytecode.

Flash Catalyst seems like an attempt to create a UI which attempts to deal with the bondage and discipline of AS3 for the users visually. I’ve never actually seen this done successfully in other programs (maybe Director?), but maybe we’ll have to wait and see (and I do wish the best of luck to Adobe with it). I suspect Catalyst, which is married to Flex, is not going to be the salve that we traditional Flash developers are looking for. I suppose I should defer judgment though.

cheers

Dizzy