Though it’s still many months from a final release, Flash Catalyst promises to change designer/developer workflows for Flash apps.

Sporting a GUI with familiar design tools, Catalyst allows designers to build interfaces with interactivity but without having to know a lot of code. What’s revolutionary about this application is that it writes files that developers can open in Flex without altering their structure. Thus, designers and developers can bounce files back and forth during development, making iterative tweaks to interface and functionality without having to retool each other’s work.

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.