Ah, I love how all this is shaping up: After debuting on the web, and followed by appearances in Dashboard and Apollo, Adobe’s kuler rich internet app is now available as a panel inside Flash CS3. Thanks to the efforts of the crew at Pixelfumes, you can now view & search feeds of color harmonies generated using the online tool, then use them inside Flash. I made a quick little demo video to show the panel in action. Great work, guys!
This is a great example of how opening a door to online community can enrich the desktop experience. If you know of other cool, usefully connected desktop apps (via Flash panels or any other method), please share ’em. It’s very handy to have these on hand as we plan the future.
That’s actually a good use for one of these Marketing Hype gizmos (“Rich Internet Applications”).
Anyway, physically dumping the color square on the stage is great, although it would be better if it dumped them off the stage, because after you sample and add them to swatches, you gotta move them or delete them.
[Going out on a limb here, I’m guessing that it may not be possible to create swatches via Flash’s JSFL scripting layer. Otherwise, I would expect that the panel would already be doing what you propose. –J.]
It makes me wonder about a unified Adobe UI though — why not have the same (sort of) swathes palettes in all Adobe apps? At least the same looking palette, because I realize Photoshop wouldn’t exactly have a “patterns” swatches.
[One of the quiet improvements made in the CS2 cycle was the introduction of the .ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) format. It lets apps (PS, Illustrator, and InDesign so far) move swatches back and forth via a common description. We need to work on making support both more obvious & wider spread. –J.]
Quote: the panel would already be doing what you propose…
OK, to be honest I was going by your video, not the real world. But auto entering into the swatches panel would be great.