If you want to turn Photoshop & Illustrator designs into interactive compositions quickly, without coding, Adobe Flash Catalyst is designed for you. Catalyst imports PSD, AI, and Fireworks PNG files, then lets you assign behaviors including animations & 3D effects. A beta of the app is now available for download from Adobe Labs.
To get up to speed quickly, check out Mordy Golding’s free Flash Catalyst Beta Preview video training course. It’s an hour of solid material broken into task-oriented pieces, covering everything from designing in Photoshop to publishing your output. (Props to Mordy & the Lynda.com team for making this great resource available for free!)
Alongside Flash Catalyst, Adobe Labs is hosting public beta releases of Adobe Flash Builder 4 (formerly Flex Builder) and the Flex 4 Framework. Here’s the official blurb:
Flash Builder 4 is the next evolution of Flex Builder, and includes a long list of feature improvements, new data-centric development features, and a new design-develop workflow with Flash Catalyst. Flash Catalyst, also now available in public beta, is a new interaction design tool for rapidly building application user interfaces without coding. Both Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst are based on the updated Flex 4 framework, also available for beta download.
Yay!
I have been waiting for these for a long time!
Weird thing, that Adobe didn’t send me a mail that Flex 4 and Catalyst are on the Labs now.
I could have missed the release,
Thanks John
Another lovely toy for us to play with…. and just when the sun has come out in the UK so I can skip off from work early. Yipeeee.
Only its not free is it?
You need an extended thing with Lynda at the not inconsequential cost of $$375 just for one year to get the exercise files.
On line training. You cant read it on the bus or in bed, and you cant scribble in the margin. And sometimes I prefer to read in my head in English than have an American tell me stuff. Are there no English trainers in the world at all???
Nice one. Downloaded, installed. Runs SLOW as hell. Seriously, feels so sluggish it is impossible to work in it.
( Win Vista x64, Quad Core, 4gig RAM ).
Looking forward to release =)
Like Max, I’m glad I read it here as there’s no email from Adobe (checked the spam filter too) in my inbox either. Ah, the download is finished. This is going to be fun… once the kids are done with finals, I assign grades, and run out of the school screaming, “Now I’ll have time to learn more!”
It never ends. And thank goodness for that!
I like that little color-picker-flyout with the ramps to the side…