Flash Catalyst export to HTML5 & DRAG INTERACTION

When will Adobe provide us with these two essential features in Flash catalyst? Leaving out a drag gesture in Flash catalyst is a big let down because drag gesture is a common and often useful gesture for interaction. Adobe's attempt at supporting HTML5 through Adobe Wallaby or Adobe Edge (FLA to HTML5) feels like a wrong direction to me.
If the argument is that HTML5 is the next standard for UX/UI designers then the easiest tool that can replicate what HTML5 can/will do to use a similar animation workflow that can get basic transitions done quickly and that tool is Flash Catalyst. I stand being corrected an attempt to publish HTML5 documents/banners/slideshows with Flash professional will lead to large file size with partly supported features and bugs which can make designers frustrated. I also believe that Adobe can include some backward compatibility checks when publishing to HTML5 from Flash catalyst for browser(s) that do not presently support all the features of HTML5.
Please can someone feel us in on what Adobe is gonna do to Flash catalyst in the next release.
Thank you.

Yeah Chris, HTML will evolve with time. But for devices (tablet pc revolution-ipad, android based mobile phones, etc) and browsers with partial support. Designers using Adobe tools shouldn't be left out of the party(I'm a core designer though I get my hands dirty with some AS & FLEX codes when the need arises). Even if Flash Catalyst's future is tied to Flash Builder which is a good idea in the first place. Why did Adobe omitted drag n drop interaction? It just won't do it if we don't have it in the next official release. It defeats the purpose of the tool (I mean FC). By now Adobe should start warming us up for Multi-Touch Interactions in FC. Designers are dying to see these two features in the next release, else Adobe is performing cosmetic surgery to a patient that requires a cure. Adobe - keep up the good work.

Similar Messages

CMS Site in Flash Catalyst.

Goodnight everyone.
I am making a site entirely in Flash Catalyst, but it should be manageable.
The gallery photos, text, RSS news - in short, everything manageable.
Sorry for my bad English, I'm Brazilian!
I wonder if they can produce sites with content in Flash Catalyst manageable. What is the easiest way? As a CMS site. Do you understand?
Thank you! This forum has helped me a lot.
@eldermarx.

Hi Elder,
Flash Catalyst isn't a pre-packaged content management system, it's a design tool that could be the used as the first step in creating a data-driven project.
Flash Catalyst is an interaction design tool to create your projects without writing code. Projects can also be imported into Flash Builder (where you do write code) to extend your project with more complicated features like connecting to a database.
Adobe TV has a good intro here that explores the workflow and how content is integrated inside Flash Catalyst:
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/flash-catalyst-cs5-feature-tour/creating-interactive-web-experie nces/
Hope this helps.
Tanya

Can drag and drop interactions created in Captivate 6.1 be exported to HTML5?

I need to convert some Flash drag and drop interactions to HTML5 and I'm looking at Captivate and Storyline.
Can drag and drop interactions created in Captivate 6.1 be exported to HTML5?
(I tried Captivate 6 with the drag and drop widget and that didn't work, and I can't find a trial version of 6.1).
Many thanks,
Sonya

Many thanks Lilybiri
I've just chatted to Adobe support and they have told me there is no educational discount for subscription I coudn't find the info on the website, so if anyone is interested, subscription is $29.99/month or $19.99/month if you sign up for a year.
Cheers,
Sonya

Exporting a InDesign file to Flash Catalyst...

Hi all,
I'm just startede exploring Flash Catalyst, and have learned a lot by using a Illustrator file.
But now my question is how to import a Indesign file into FC. I have read that it is possible throurgh some additional steps in Flash Pro. But I can figure out or read how to do it,,,
Can anyone help me?
It is a book created in Indesing, that I want to create as a swf, with the advanced features of FC. The features in Indesigns interactivity, isn't quite enough for my hunger to make it more web-eatable.. :-)
Hope to hear from some of you!
Enjoy the hollidays!
Kapirs

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. Thats what i was looking for . Another small thing I notice here is that when i export to html a preview of the html was displayed in the browser. I think thats because the "View HTML after export option is enabled by default. Can I change this setting so that there will be no preview of the HTML after exporting?. Again thanks for the previous answer.

Error on export from Flash CC to Javascript/HTML5

I am trying to convert a Flash CC project to HTML5. I continually get this error:
An unexpected error occurred during export. [NOSYMB (innerWheel)]
innerWheel is a movieClip that contains 784 frames of frame by frame animation. The elements that animate are the small letters (text saved as movieClips) and background to the small letters. See below - capital letters stay fixed in place.
I can't find any information on what NOSYMB means. Has anyone else had the same problem?
When I query the instance:
console.log(this.innerWheel.visible);
I get this message in the console (Safari):
[Error] TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating 'this.innerWheel.visible')
Any help is much appreciated. I'm tearing my hair out.

I isolated the problem to a particular range of frames, removed those and rebuilt the animation. I can now publish with no errors.
Still no idea what exactly was causing the error. When I inspected each instance on the stage they looked fine. But at least I'm not getting an error so all good.
Would still be great to know what NOSYMB refers to though.

Interactive ROI Calculator using Flash Catalyst?

Hello, a client of ours has asked us to create an interactive ROI calculator similar to the one in the following link:
http://bit.ly/98vjCF
Our design and production department does work in Flash, mainly to create simple web banners, however they're not hardcore Flash developers by any means. We'll be upgrading from CS4 to CS5 with Catalyst soon. Is it possible to create an interactive ROI calculator using this software or would using a seasoned Flash developer be a better choice?
Thanks for any info.
henry

Hi Henry,
You can use Flash Catalyst to design the UI of your calculator, both for protyping and optionally for final production too. However, to do the actual calculations you'll have to write a bit of code using another tool. For example, you can import the Catalyst project into Flash Builder and wire up the calculation logic to the UI you've created. This gives you the option of having a nontechnical designer work on the UI, while a less design-oriented developer writes code without having to worry much about the visuals.
The underlying code used in a Catalyst project is Flex 4. This should be a snap for a seasoned Flash developer to work with. Or, a Java or JavaScript developer should also be able to get up to speed on Flex pretty easily (especially if the UI was already built in Catalyst and the dev is just wiring up the "business logic").
Hope that helps,
- Peter

Exporting file for Flash Catalyst use?

Hey everyone. I've made a video in Flash Pro, and I want to be able to play it in Flash Catalyst. I'm using 5.5 of both versions, btw. I export the Flash Pro video to a .mov file and then use Media Encoder to make that a .flv file. I bring that file into FC and publish to web. However, when I put those 'deploy to web' files on my website, the video doesn't play. Everything else works except for the video. So I put a generic, short .flv file that I downloaded from the internet into my FC file. I published it to my website again, and everything worked fine. The video played. So obviously the problem with my video must be in the encoding process.
How should I do this? I read one article online that said when I export a .mov file for FC, I should make sure that I don't have 'Fast - Compressed Header' selected in the Streaming options. Well, I checked and I don't. It's just under regular 'Fast'. So what am I doing wrong here? I've even tried converting my .mov file to a f4v file, and that doesn't work. Help here would be so greatly appreciated.

Ah. I think they just tested the .html file. Though, they were trying nearly everything yesterday, so they might have tried the swf file, too. I'll ask him this afternoon. There's a webpage included in both deploy-to-web and run-local folders. Both are entitled main.html. I'm looking at both codes in Dreamweaver to see what would be different, how the code is calling to the flv video, and I can't see any change! I switch from one code view to the other, and nothing is different. The only difference is that in the video size area, the html file from the run-local folder is bigger. So obviously something more was put into the run-local html file, but what I don't know. I can't figure that out from the code. Here's the code from the run-local file, though it looks the same in the deploy-to-web html file, too.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
    
    <head>
        <title></title>
        <meta name="google" value="notranslate" />
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
        
        <style type="text/css" media="screen">
            html, body { height:100%; }
            body { margin:0; padding:0; overflow:auto; text-align:center;
                   background-color: #ffffff; }
            object:focus { outline:none; }
            #flashContent { display:none; }
        </style>
        
        
        <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="history/history.css" />
        <script type="text/javascript" src="history/history.js"></script>
        
        <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            // For version detection, set to min. required Flash Player version, or 0 (or 0.0.0), for no version detection.
            var swfVersionStr = "10.2.0";
            // To use express install, set to playerProductInstall.swf, otherwise the empty string.
            var xiSwfUrlStr = "playerProductInstall.swf";
            var flashvars = {};
            var params = {};
            params.quality = "high";
            params.bgcolor = "#ffffff";
            params.allowscriptaccess = "sameDomain";
            params.allowfullscreen = "true";
            var attributes = {};
            attributes.id = "Main";
            attributes.name = "Main";
            attributes.align = "middle";
            swfobject.embedSWF(
                "Main.swf", "flashContent",
                "405", "350",
                swfVersionStr, xiSwfUrlStr,
                flashvars, params, attributes);
            // JavaScript enabled so display the flashContent div in case it is not replaced with a swf object.
            swfobject.createCSS("#flashContent", "display:block;text-align:left;");
        </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        
        <div id="flashContent">
            <p>
                To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version
                10.2.0 or greater is installed.
            </p>
            <script type="text/javascript">
                var pageHost = ((document.location.protocol == "https:") ? "https://" : "http://");
                document.write("<a href='http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer'><img src='"
                                + pageHost + "www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif' alt='Get Adobe Flash player' /></a>" );
            </script>
        </div>
        <noscript>
            <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="405" height="350" id="Main">
                <param name="movie" value="Main.swf" />
                <param name="quality" value="high" />
                <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />
                <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
                <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
                
                <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="Main.swf" width="405" height="350">
                    <param name="quality" value="high" />
                    <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />
                    <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
                    <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
                
                
                    <p>
                        Either scripts and active content are not permitted to run or Adobe Flash Player version
                        10.2.0 or greater is not installed.
                    </p>
                
                    <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">
                        <img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash Player" />
                    </a>
                
                </object>
                
            </object>
        </noscript>
   </body>
</html>
But I don't see anything where it calls to my bathinline.flv file. Yet this one plays just fine. I've played both .html files, and only the run-local html file plays fine on my computer (not viewing from website this time). So I agree with you that I think it's a pathing issue on the deploy to web thing, but I have no idea what. The code isn't showing any difference.
Any more ideas. You've been really, really helpful so far!

Cant export to HTML5... Flash doesnt give me the option!

Hello, i am trying to export or create an HTML5 project but i cant. I have Flash cc and i dont see anywhere the option to export to html5, neither i see on the welcome screen the option to create an HTML 5 project
Can someone please help?
Thanks!

Check, if you local installation has the following files (This is under Win7 64.bit):
in your ...Adobe Flash CC/Common/Configuration/Document Types - folder there should be
1.A folder named Canvas
2.A folder named JSFL
3. A file called "Master.xml"
[also in the localized folder of the program (e.g. Adobe Flash CC\en_US\Configuration\Templates)
there should be a folder HTML5 Canvas with 3 fla examples that are already in the new Canvas format.
You could always open one of these delete the contents an use it in the future as your own Canvas-Template)]
PS: If i remember correctly the HTML5 support was patched in later, so before doing anything check if you have the latest version (for me its 13.1.0226)
If your Flash is not up to date, but keeps insisting that there are no updates available, this could be due to network/firewall problems, a corrupt installation etc.

Can I export a flash catalyst file to other program?

hi,
I started to build a web page in flash catalyst, but the problem is I can create only 20 states,
can I export the file or copy the code to other program like flex, flash or somthing else, and continue workinng on it there?

From within Flash Builder you can import your Flash Catalyst .fxp file. See these help docs for more info:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flashbuilder/using/WSbde04e3d3e6474c4ef5411412477fbf920-8000.h tml
Best,
Tanya

Flash Catalyst CS5 interaction to URL preview problem

I'm incorporating some Flash (via Flash Catalyst) into a Dreamweaver designed site.
On the Flash Catalyst designed portion, I have incorporated some interactions including "go to URL" when certain buttons are hit.
It seems that the interactions automatically assings "http://" before the page address. This is unfortunate because my site has not been launched yet and all of my html pages are still local.
The result so far is that I am not able to test my links prior to launching this site... Am I missing something ... or is this something I have to live with???
Thanks!

Tanya,
Thanks so much for trying to help.
I still haven't figured it out.
Recap of what I'm trying to do:
(1) incorporate content built in Flash Catalyst into a Dreamweaver Built website.
(2) Preview/Debug in Browser
What's happening is that the Flash Content is coming up and playing correctly (in Firefox) until such time I try to follow a local link (in this case, the local link is a page called "propane.html" .... the external links are working fine (from the Flash Content and the Dreamweaver content) - - - I can reach the local links from the content developed in Dreamweaver but not from the content developed in Flash Catalyst and "imported" into Dreamweaver (and then tested within Dreamweaver).
Please note that when I Preview/Debug the index.html page into Firefox; the URL is:
file:///C:/Users/bill.VISION/Desktop/VFG/VFG%20WEBSITE/index.html
I'm rebooting the system and retrying.... I will let you know if I have success. Thanks again for trying to help.

Flash Catalyst HTML5

Will there also be the possibility to convert Flash Catalyst-content into HTML 5??

At this point the focus of Wallaby is on enabling artwork and animation reuse in HTML for FLA files only.
Michael O'Rourke
Adobe Wallaby Team

.swf imported in Flash Catalyst shows only the Flash Shockwave icon

I have scoured the FC forums and watched all of the Adobe TV episodes
on importing .swf files into Flash Catalyst but I am still faced with the following problem.
I have a basic animated .swf file that I created in Flash CS5. I am trying to import that .swf file into a Flash Catalyst project but when I do I only see the blue border around the asset when I click it in the layers panel. In the top left corner is a small round Flash Icon ( I believe it is the Flash Shockwave version - Blueish Gray). Nothing shows when I "Run" the project nor when I added the .swf file in the local folder from where Flash Catalyst runs the project.
I tried re-publishing the original Flash file in different version of Flash player, but to no avail. Not sure if I am doing something wrong, or if I have imported incorrectly or what.
Even though I cannot see the .swf file imported into Flash Catalyst, I still tried to add an interaction to play on Application Start, but nothing there either.
At a loss and looking for some direction.
Thanks in advance for your response.
Cheers!

Erik -
It's a pleasure to help someone! I just got through this as you can see. Only problem is I just hacked it with no precision, so for example I moved a lot of files to the server to make them accessable and then it played. But near as I can tell, I'll tell you the story.
There are two things going on. When you play it locally it's different from when you play it on the web. You are correct, you should see the first frame of the swf in your animation. To get it to play (assuming it is set to play)you then have to control+enter to preview (on windows). The assests are laid out locally in the file structure displayed in the url bar. no?
Part of it is that there may be several things going on here... All I can do is tell you all the numerous problems I had, made worse because I had 3 different work-stations...
I had problems when I had several swfs floating around in the library and I think similar names: Eventually I just did a clean export of the swf (the first one was from Flash... 3? 4? and Catalyst is cs5... ) and such to just do the work-flow in one motion. I had too many work-stations going on. So that part I finally did cleanly, and when that was settled, I could handle the file issues.
The swf: It does have to be in the same folder, and not in a sub-folder. Also, all the contents from DEPLOY TO WEB - just drag it into your site folder defined by dreamweaver or whatever and put it on the server at the same level, NO russian dolls (no file folders within folders). With Dreamweaver, when you upload a swf, you select the MAIN file and supposedly DW pulls files - it does, but not all of them, such as supporting swfs.
I would have thought that DW would do it correctly automatically : It seems to want to: but there are still kinks.
If you're like me, you recognize that catalyst is a powerful creative stage, but this stuff is just annoying and really easier just man-handled with precision once and forgotten about lol.
I heard also some grumbling on swfs that are just too huge or have aspects that don't import well, but it doesnt' sound like a problem in this case.
Do update me - I'm around this weekend, would love to see you succeed on this.
Cache,
Thanks for your replies. I have put the .swf file in the same "local" directory as the main.html for the FC Project I am working on and no luck locally. However, does the .swf file have to be in the local directory of the FC project prior to it being imported into FC for it to work locally?
Also, when I was watching a video tutorial about inserting .swf files into FC, the graphics/content of the .swf that was inserted could be seen in the design view of FC. My imported .swf only shows a small, round flash icon in the corner and nothing else. This doesn't seem right to me. Shouldn't one be able to see the graphics/content of the imported .swf so that it can be properly placed in the design? That is how it was in the video tutorial. If this is also due to the location of the imported .swf then Adobe has not made that clear in anything I have read or seen.

Conversion Catalyst-content to HTML5 (Wallaby)??

Adobe is working on Wallaby: the conversion of FLA-files (Flash) to HTML5-code.
Will there be a similar tool to convert FC-content to HTML5??
I shure hope so.....

Yeah Chris, HTML will evolve with time. But for devices (tablet pc revolution-ipad, android based mobile phones, etc) and browsers with partial support. Designers using Adobe tools shouldn't be left out of the party(I'm a core designer though I get my hands dirty with some AS & FLEX codes when the need arises). Even if Flash Catalyst's future is tied to Flash Builder which is a good idea in the first place. Why did Adobe omitted drag n drop interaction? It just won't do it if we don't have it in the next official release. It defeats the purpose of the tool (I mean FC). By now Adobe should start warming us up for Multi-Touch Interactions in FC. Designers are dying to see these two features in the next release, else Adobe is performing cosmetic surgery to a patient that requires a cure. Adobe - keep up the good work.

Rest In Peace Flash Catalyst

I just heard the news and I can't believe it! I don't know what we're gonna do! We are designers and visualists, not developers. Although we are not formally trained in interactive design, from time to time we get jobs that require us to flesh out little interactive elements with some basic functions– in the past, we almost always ended up sending it out to our sister agency where our developers were up to their necks in more important work to have to worry about a simple Flash element because we can't figure it out. It took us FOREVER in Flash to figure it out! Thankfully, these jobs are not very frequent, but when we got them, it was hell!
When we discovered Catalyst, everything was soooo much easier. We could design elements in Illustrator and export them to FC, dump some actions on elements and we're done! The jobs serve as a mockup to give the client an idea of how it'll all interact. When the client approves the work, our sister agency handled all the real coding. Before FC, we had to send out most of our work making our developers across the state work double hard.
Flash made it 300x's harder for our designers to figure a simple little thing and many times it involved actionscripting. With Catalyst, it was as easy as 1.2.3.
Some of the designers here are a little flustered because we are all getting the feeling that our jobs are in jeopardy– recently my agency was in talks of consolidating hires and boarding people with multiple talents. Meaning a Flash developer who could design was better than just a designer. It's kind of stupid if they decide to purge our team. Although we don't code, we still have a lot on our plate. Coding is not our specialty nor our forté, but we make the extra effort to please the higher ups. Flash Catalyst was our little secret saviour. I just wished Flash was a little more designer friendly.
Big sigh...
Rest in peace Catalyst.

I understand your pain. My best advice is to invest in learning jQuery. It has a broad level of support and would start to fill in some gaps that now exist. I do feel that designers should have some knowledge of coding. And developers should have some level of understanding of design.
There are alot of great resources to assist.
Good luck,
Chris

After Flash Catalyst discontinued - What Workflow Designer / Developper to use? and how skin compone

Hi,
Now that Flash Catalyst is discontinued before being totally usable,
I used Flash Catalyst for skinning components and prototyping design of App.
So i wonder how experienced people do that without Flash Catalyst?
And more im asking to Adobe the same questions. What do you propose to do now what Flash catalyst helped to do until now?
how do you skin components?
how do you work with designers to get their App Pages designs?
in a word, what is the WorkFlow?
Thanks

I couldn't agree more with you that developers need a solid WYSIWYG tool, and Catalyst was Adobe's closest rival to Blend. It had much more potential than the amount of attention it received. Adobe was very foolish pulling the plug on it, not to mention all their other recent decisions related to the Flash Platform.
My point was that with all of the importing and exporting capabilities of Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash Professional, and especially Fireworks, you already have all of the capabilities of Flash Catalyst, at least in regards to making creative assets available to the Flex framework. That was the sole purpose of Catalyst- to bridge the gap between Adobe's design applications and Flex. If you weren't concerned with Flex, Flash Catalyst would be of no use, even if it were still in development. Exporting a Catalyst project to Flash Professional or HTML was never on it's roadmap, although I'm sure I'm not the first person who thought of those possibilities.
Catalyst, simply put, was the FXG editor which Flash Builder's design mode was not. For example, you could not draw a rectangle using Builder's design mode. With Catalyst CS5.5, it allowed you to directly assign FXG assets to MXML skins for ten of the nineteen Spark components which use the MXML skin architecture. This was a huge limitition, and espeically obvious with the new roundtripping feature, because using any of the non-supported components could easily break the connection between Builder & Catalyst. Honestly, myself and many of the Adobe engineers I talked to on the Flash Builder team, still do not understand why Catalyst wasn't merged into Flash Builder in the first place.
Perhaps it's not as useful out of context, but I compiled a presentation a few months ago for my Adobe user group, titled "Creative & Production Harmony": https://acrobat.com/#d=jNyu*qRjpF68tbl*8lCiTw&x=s
Basically what it outlined, was when to use Catalyst, and when you are better off exporting straight from the other design apps. My conclusion, was that you're generally better off designing your assets in the app you're comfortable with. That IS your WYSIWYG editor, to the precision of 1px. It was also a future proof answer since Catalyst was discontinued and many of the other Flex related workflows have evaporated. The main loss behind discontinuing Catalyst, were its states, timeline, and visual editing of FXG less commonly preserved when exporting from the other apps.
A workflow example for a project I recently used Catalyst with, http://disneycruiseadventure.com/ was to open the PSD provided inside of Photoshop, launch Catalyst, draw a shape (or copy/paste in a vector smart object from Illustrator), and use it's properties panel to match the Photoshop layer styles. This basically the climax of the day, because the rest of it was all spent manually editing code in Builder (and often fixing a lot of the crap code Catalyst spit out). For advanced use of graphics, we relied heavily on the Flex Component Kit, which basically lets you work with any MovieClip inside of Flex or even insert Flex components into a Flash Professional container. The integration between Flex & Flash Pro is most commonly overlooked, which is sad because it still offers the very most design freedom for Flex and has been around long before Catalyst.
In my personal project, my workflow heavily involves Fireworks. It's exporting capabilities are unparralled by any of the other Adobe design apps. You can design with the 1px precision you are after, and almost always preserve that precision after exporting to Flex 3, FXG, and even CSS. Speaking of CSS, now you can export to CSS3 and jQuery mobile themes using Fireworks. If I had a choice between Fireworks and Catalyst, I would take Fireworks without any question. If you're looking for another workflow, consider the idea of taking HTML/CSS exported by Fireworks and opening it inside of Adobe Edge for adding animation and interactivity. Then do your final editing with Dreamweaver, or skip the Edge step if you don't need it.

Flash Catalyst export to HTML5 & DRAG INTERACTION

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