Adobe® Flash® Catalyst - the future for designers and developers
I was out of town for part of the previous week so I was unable to follow the Adobe community. Now that I am back I have been watching and reading all sorts of new information on Adobe® Flash® Catalyst (codename Thermo). This isn’t the first time I have heard about it, but with MAX recently held there is bunch of new information floating about online.
This upcoming product is being developed to fill the gap between designing an application, banner or website and developing the interactivity. Designers can now create complete solutions without writing code. However, they can jump into “Code” view and edit the raw code (much like Flex or Dreamweaver) if they prefer. As a bonus, they can send the project to a developer that can add in back-end support without having to develop the complete application.
Right now (without Adobe® Flash® Catalyst) designers are making wireframe mockups of applications, which are then sent to a developer where it is often times created “close enough” but not exactly how the designer saw it. Even worse, if the designer needs to make changes the developer needs to flow with those new changes, causing even more confusion.
It will be interesting to see Flash Catalyst take shape in the coming months (no clue on a release date) but I do know designers are about to gain a new tool in their arsenal that can quickly mean less hours working and more time to design cutting-edge applications.
