Although we’ve talked mostly about application UI, Catalyst can be used to create completed interactive content without coding. It can also be used for iterative design to help designers test out early concepts.
In the current workflow design is limited to visual design and defining the user experience. The output of this process is usually static images that have limited use in the development phase. The development process requires interpretation of the design, implementation of the user experience and the development process. This process does not enable the designers to fully implement the user experience and relies heavily on development.
The new workflow empowering designers to have complete control over both the visual and interaction design, allowing each person to focus on their core strengths. Designers, design and developers write code without having to learn each other’s skills. The results of this improved workflow are:The designer can iterate on the design with the customer before the developer gets involved. This reduces the time that the developers needs to iterate on the design with the designer, saving lots of time for the developer. The developer gets to implement precisely what the designer wants because they no longer have to go through the interpretation process. This leads to an overall better application design, delivering a more expressive, intuitive application.
>>> BUILDER DEMO STARTS AFTER THIS SLIDE <<<Increased productivity: Helps developers speed up coding and testingNew Features1) Coding enhancements (Template support;Event handler generation;Getter/setter generation;ASDoc tooltips;States-based code view;Package explorer)2) Expanded agile development support (Unit testing,Command-line build)3) New network monitor4) Enhanced debugging, profiling and re-factoringData-Centric Development: Simplify connection to and management of data services to enable rapid creation of data-centric applicationsNew Features1) Service introspection (Service wizard and operation testing;Generation of sample server-side code; LiveCycle, ColdFusion, PHP, Java)2) Design-time model (Visual service configuration;Data management and paging support)3) UI generation & binding (Form generation; Drag and drop binding to UI components)Design-Development Workflow: Create design themes in Catalyst and allow developer to import and apply themFeatures1) Import and extend projects from Flash Catalyst2) Create custom Flash components3) Roundtrip support with Flash Professional CS44) Improved design view support5) Exploit Flash Player 10 features (3D, advanced text, pixel bender, etc)
When an application begins with a very specific design as its inspiration, ensuring that the details of the design are realized in the final application is critical. How does content move from Adobe’s leading creative tools through the process of having interactivity added and ending up with complete integration with application logic and the application’s servers and/or services – all while still remaining true to the original designer’s intent? That question is answered with our designer/developer theme. It’s all about empowering better collaboration between developers using Flash Builder and users of Adobe’s creative tools, with emphasis on two key products in the Flash platform; Flash Professional, and Flash Catalyst. For Flash Professional, Flash Builder features a new workflow for adding Flash content to a Flex application: simply drag out the “New Flash Component” or “New Flash Container” item from the components panel and place it somewhere on their design canvas. You can launch Flash Professional and create or edit the content and click “done” to return to Builder with the FLA and SWC file exported to the Flex project.Applications created in Catalyst are Flex applications - and Flash Builder provides a simple workflow for importing these projects allowing designers to collaborate with developers more easily than ever before.
Whether you’ve gotten your application started through the workflow with Catalyst or by building on services using the data-centric features, at the end of the day much of application development is about writing and testing code. Flash Builder 4 delivers a long list of new and improved features to make your data-to-day coding and testing more productive. Refactoring, debugging, and the profiler from Flex Builder 3 have been improved with some of the most requested enhancements. The debugger adds conditional breakpoints, watchpoints, run to line, and an expression evaluator. Profiler now includes an improved "Object References" report. And move refactoring has been added. For new IDE productivity features, try getter/setter generation, event code generation, the new Package Explorer, and support for ASDoc tooltips. Builder also supports creating custom file templates for MXML, ActionScript, and CSS.
Beyond coding productivity, Flash Builder adds two important new features for testing applications; network monitor, and Flex Unit support. The network monitor allows you to see the network traffic between the Flash client and your backend server from within Builder itself. This enables you to more easily debug data access portions of the Flex application, and to diagnose any performance issues that might exist between the client and server. Unit testing is another important part of the application development process and Builder makes it easy with integrated Flex Unit support. This will allow test setup, test file creation, test running and test result analysis in Builder. When you’re ready to build and deploy your application, Flash Builder now includes support for command line builds. This will make it easier to fit Flex into corporate automated build systems.
New and improved learning resources make it easy to get started with FlexThe new Flex Test Drive help new developer get started and build their first Flex app in only an hour.Adobe Community Help provides a broad level of help when you have questionsThe free online Adobe Flex in a Week video tutorial has been completely rebuilt for Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4Adboe Cookbooks provide code samples and for reuse and learning
New and improved learning resources make it easy to get started with FlexThe new Flex Test Drive help new developer get started and build their first Flex app in only an hour.Adobe Community Help provides a broad level of help when you have questionsThe free online Adobe Flex in a Week video tutorial has been completely rebuilt for Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4Adboe Cookbooks provide code samples and for reuse and learning