New beta: Flash Builder 4, Flash Catalyst, Flex SDK 4

    Somehow, good news from Google quietly passed the news about new Adobe products, especially Flash Catalyst.

    If anyone does not know what Catalyst is, let’s imagine how the site is being created at present, and describe it like this:

    PSD -> HTML -> Server code

    or even simpler:

    graphic design -> layout -> server code

    Flash Catalyst is product for "flash-layout", allowing you to make the transition "graphic design -> layout" in a flash-project.

    The result of Catalyst is an fxg code that is passed to programmers for further work.
    The product is still quite slow and eats a lot of memory, but surprisingly few bugs. I myself have been waiting for him for a long time, I liked working with him.

    You can watch the video how it all works here (very clearly) and here .

    Since I translate poorly, links to innovation reviews:
    Flash Builder 4 and Flex SDK 4

    The main feature of everything is the new FXG format (1.0). This is the new XML graphics format for the Flash Platform. It describes high-level graphic and text primitives.

    The only sad thing is that the output swf file is very large, from 1 MB (the compiled empty mxml took 596 kilobytes in swf), but maybe future browsers or the flash plugin itself will support FXG?

    Finally, let me quote the words of one flash-program:
    - The bottom line is that as a purely programmer, I do not undertake projects where you need to give out eye-candy. But who said that a business UI should be dull and gray? Revive the interface with a professionally made design in PSD format will help close integration of Flash Builder into the Adobe product family. A new tool - Flash Catalyst - can bring designers and programmers together, allowing the former to “slice” the design, enliven it with action and effects. The programmer will receive an interface description in terms of FXG and easily integrate it into his project. For simple projects, Flash Catalyst will help the programmer to cope with the technical embodiment of the application design - if only the interface was professionally drawn in advance. I am sure that the result of such a rapprochement will benefit everyone, and customers will be completely delighted with the result.

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