Flash® Catalyst™ CS5 Bible

Chapter 2. Introducing Flash Catalyst

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Catalyst projects

• The Catalyst interface

• Getting help

Since its creation, Adobe Flex has provided a powerful means for developers to create Rich Internet Applications. Unfortunately, many developers do not have design skills, and Flex developers had to hire an outside designer to create the visual interface for their application.

However, the developer still faced a problem once the design was complete: He would be given a visual comp (composition) of the interface, often created in a program such as Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop. Such a design format was not directly usable to the developer, as he would still need to completely render the design in the Flex framework.

Adobe designed Flash Catalyst to bridge this gap between the designer and the developer. By integrating Catalyst into their workflow, designers no longer have to pass off a mere visual representation of their design to the developer, with both parties hoping that the design could be effectively re-created in Flex.

Now, designers can do much more of the work. By importing their Illustrator or Photoshop comps into Catalyst, they can create the beginnings of the Flex project themselves, converting that design into a real, functional Flex project. This allows a design-challenged developer to focus on the back-end and scripting aspects of the application.

Of course, this stereotype of the design-challenged developer and the development-challenged designer is not always ...