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Chapter 3

Workflow Enhancements with Flash Catalyst

by Elad Elrom

Designer-developer workflow (D-D workflow) in conjunction with Rich Internet Applications (RIA) has

become one of the most talked about buzz topics in the Flash community during the last few years. It has

created a lot of debate and uncertainty on how designers and developers are going to work together. In

this chapter we will talk about how Adobe’s Flash Catalyst (FC) should be used to allow designers and

developers to work together.

In the last couple of years, we witnessed RIA slowly moving to the mainstream, and the next challenge is

to create RIA GUIs and applications that have more animation and interaction and that do not have the

traditional Flex “look.” In order to achieve this, we need to find a way for designers and developers to work

together in parallel while taking into account each other’s needs. Do not underestimate the complexity of

creating a workflow; it is an important yet complicated problem. How do we combine an artistic vision and

story telling with the requirements of productive software development? How do we allow designers to take

their ideas and turn them into interfaces that developers can code around? How can we create User

Experience that addresses usability and integrates some more complex animation?

Flash Catalyst is a powerful tool that will help in developing applications that look unique and provide more

animation between states. Flash Catalyst enables developers and designers to increase their creative

productivity and leverage their existing skills to create more interactive and better designed Flex

applications. It also facilitates team collaboration when creating Flex applications.

Designers can create the application’s visual appearance and interactivity using Adobe Photoshop

Illustrator, or Adobe Fireworks, and developers or designers can then convert these graphics into a Flex

application by importing the native files into Catalyst while keeping the layers intact.

Catalyst acts as a bridge between Flash Builder and the Creative Suite. This chapter is based on our

experience working with Catalyst and is based on creating production grade applications as well as

listening and talking to many people in the Flash community. The vision of Catalyst to create a seamless

round-trip workflow between Adobe Creative Suite, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder may not materialize

right away but it is inspiring, and we believe it will change our D-D workflow.