Best of Adobe MaX #2: Flash Catalyst

Flash Catalyst (announced at MAX ‘07 as Thermo) is an application that allows designers and developers to share one file type while creating Flex applications without disrupting each other’s workflow.

It features familiar tools that designers will feel right at home with and imports Photoshop and Illustrator files seamlessly. What it offers that those programs don’t, however, is the ability for designers to easily create front-end interactivity, such as rollover states, transitions, and drop-down menus without having to rely on a programmer. It writes native MXML files that developers can in turn open in Flex for back-end implementation. Since Catalyst and Flex share the same data type, these files can be bounced back and forth between the two applications without compromising design integrity. This is huge ... if you are building Flex apps, that is.

Impressive though Catalyst is, the application is not number one on my ‘Cool Stuff at MAX’ list because as of this writing you cannot export your Catalyst files to FLA, which is a bit of a problem for those of us who use Flash on a daily basis. Still, it’s a grand endeavor and though the version distributed at MAX was only a pre-release, I anticipate release of the final production-ready version with enthusiasm.