Flash Catalyst idea

I want to change default package organize in Flash Catalyst, how to do that?
example, i want to rename the components package to the skins package, and more.

Hi Adam,
You are almost right !
I am just rephrasing my question for you to understand!
But I don't mean only carousel, I love to see the list control comes in some innovative paths. As you know in flash CS4 adobe has come with motion editor concept for tweening, where you can go ahead and fix some path for the motion of any object on the stage like in aftereffects.
Now how about i take a template from illustrator where i define the data template of a data list control and scroll bar as vector assets. Now in flash catalyst, i come and fix them as data template and scroll bar. Now i double click and go into the datatemplate and then have a editor like in flash, where i can set a path for the motion of the repeated items, then in runtime it follows that path. This is my first idea.
Second one was i have a search box on top of it , then i type some name to search from the above mentioned datalist control, now it refines and updates the exisiting list with relavant repeated items. When this layout updates , each item should animate and sit back on the data list.
It's a small example for my idea! Hope you got my point!
As you said , I am also mentioning the same repeated items(a.k.a. Data Template, a.k.a. Item Renderer)! One more level of animation to avoid coding and easy to create stunning path following list controls. Even it can be used to define other controls too ! I don't mean images, it can be anything!
Can it be possible ?
Thanks!
Regards,
Muthaiah,
Principal Web Technologist,
EMC Corporation, Bangalore.

Similar Messages

Flash Catalyst and Illustrator Editing

Hi! I am building an interactive map of Canada and when I import a vector from Illustrator into catalyst and create a new roll over button, it wont let me edit in illustrator. It simply tells me to click "finish" in illustrator when done. It only gives me the option to cancel then nothing happens. I have watched many tutorial videos and know that my vector is supposed to open in illustrator, but nothing happens.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated!
Thanks!

Exactly, my dear juviesi.
To create a little more complex sites we have to learn to program in Flash Builder - even if only a few lines. The Flash Catalyst' idea is great, no doubt, but I hope that Adobe will facilitate futher the life of graphic designers in future version of this software.
Thanks.
@eldermarx

Flash Catalyst and the problem of designers who can't to program.

Let us assume that Flash Catalyst is still limited to certain resources. For example, a loop sequence of images, a video and photo gallery, a contacto form and others.
I always have to work with Flash Builder - and then have to programs code? Will future versions of Flash Catalyst help us in this aspect? I hope so. I wanted to hear from you. Recalling that Flash Catalyst is a valuable aid to designers who do not know programming.
Graceful.
@eldermarx

Exactly, my dear juviesi.
To create a little more complex sites we have to learn to program in Flash Builder - even if only a few lines. The Flash Catalyst' idea is great, no doubt, but I hope that Adobe will facilitate futher the life of graphic designers in future version of this software.
Thanks.
@eldermarx

How about this idea with flash catalyst? Can it happen in next version or before the release?

Hi friends,
Let me come straight to my interest!
I create a datalist control asset using photoshop. Bring this into Flash catalyst by importing the artworks. Then selecting respesctive artwork and making it as an horizontal list control with custom way for sliding between thumbnails with some description text.
Till now it is 100% possible with flash catalyst beta 1.
Can flash catalyst team further tweak this ui design tool to go ahead and select the data template and add custom interaction where, we can go ahead and give the path in such a way it makes a 180 degree carousel in seconds without any coding. I just need to go into the template and draw/move the positions for 5 thumbnails which sits within the width area of the datatemplate, then all the thumbnails follow the path.
This might be two much, but next wish is to, create states within the data template for loading the thumbnails into list control with custom animations, loading the thumbnail when some search is changed , i mean on layout updated on the datalist.
So in short , my wish is second level tweaking of layout needs to be done within data driven controls.
Please come with comments!
Regards,
Muthaiah Thiagarajan,
EMC Corporation, Bangalore.
www.fmass.com

Hi Adam,
You are almost right !
I am just rephrasing my question for you to understand!
But I don't mean only carousel, I love to see the list control comes in some innovative paths. As you know in flash CS4 adobe has come with motion editor concept for tweening, where you can go ahead and fix some path for the motion of any object on the stage like in aftereffects.
Now how about i take a template from illustrator where i define the data template of a data list control and scroll bar as vector assets. Now in flash catalyst, i come and fix them as data template and scroll bar. Now i double click and go into the datatemplate and then have a editor like in flash, where i can set a path for the motion of the repeated items, then in runtime it follows that path. This is my first idea.
Second one was i have a search box on top of it , then i type some name to search from the above mentioned datalist control, now it refines and updates the exisiting list with relavant repeated items. When this layout updates , each item should animate and sit back on the data list.
It's a small example for my idea! Hope you got my point!
As you said , I am also mentioning the same repeated items(a.k.a. Data Template, a.k.a. Item Renderer)! One more level of animation to avoid coding and easy to create stunning path following list controls. Even it can be used to define other controls too ! I don't mean images, it can be anything!
Can it be possible ?
Thanks!
Regards,
Muthaiah,
Principal Web Technologist,
EMC Corporation, Bangalore.

Correction: Adobe Labs Ideas for Flash Catalyst

Link shown in Adobe Labs Ideas for Flash Catalyst announcement above (http://idea.adobe.com/labs) is incorrect. Correct link appears to be: http://ideas.adobe.com/labs

Have you tried downloading it directly from Adobe and installing it? http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
Try and see if it will install. If not, reply back.
Clinton

How to send submited information on the form created in flash catalyst to an email??

Hi,
i have created a contact form in flash catalyst including submit button and i need this information to be emailed, when people press the submit button.
does anyone here have the idea what should i do and what is the easiest way????
please help me on this...

Hi Faryar,
Emailing a form requires some special setup on your web server. The actual sending of the email is done on the server-side. The SWF you create in Catalyst sends a request to your server, which then sends the email. Unfortunately, you have to be prepared to learn some server-side coding to get this to work.
Here are some resources to help you get started:
- A tutorial on making web forms: http://www.javascript-coder.com/html-form/how-to-make-a-form.phtml . Note that you'll be doing the actual form UI in Catalyst, instead of HTML (so you can skip those parts).
- Using the Flex Form control to sending email using PHP on the server: http://cookbooks.adobe.com/post_Submitting_a_Flex_form_using_PHP-8523.html . Note that you're not using the Form control, but this demonstrates how to write the PHP code.
- A good discussion of this topic. http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?t=181049
- One cheesy way of doing this without a server is to create a mailto link with the email body pulled from the form. When the user clicks the link, his email client will open up with the email pre-written, but he will still have to send it. I don't really recommend this method as many users don't have mailto configured on their machines. If you do want to do it, you just need to construct a mailto link dynamically from the form contents. Add a "Go to URL" interaction in Catalyst, import the project to builder, and then change the URL to something like this:
"mailto:[email protected]?subject=Form Submission&body=" + firstNameTextInput.text + ", " + lastNameTextInput.text".
-Adam

Flash Catalyst CS5 resizable application with webpage zoom?

Hi guys,
I've come back to Catalyst cs5 after a long while of not using it and am wondering if it is possible to create something and make it resizable?
I seem to remember reading a while back about a way to do it in flash builder but can't for the life of me find the discussion again.
What I have is a basic photo gallery with thumbnails on the side and one large image that changes when you click the thumbnail. All this is great on a standard webpage but when you zoom in on the web browser with CTRL and + or zoom out with CTRL and - the SWF stays the same size. I'd like to be able to make it so the SWF resizes with the zoom so people with trouble seeing can view it bigger.
Does anybody have any idea how I can do this, if it is possible? (Baring in mind I can't upgrade to Catalyst 5.5)
Thanks,
Gareth

Hi,
That really helped me out!
I was playing around with importing all different file types to see what would crash Flash Catalyst and it appears to just be .flv files, because it imports images, mp3s, and swf files and .f4v video files with no problems. Hey, at least now I can continue importing videos as long as they are .f4v's!
Would still be helpful to figure out why it doesn't like .flv's though...
The step are: File>Import>Video/Sound File...Dialogue box opens, I choose any .flv file (include files which seemed to work fine before) and the program just quits itself giving me the error report window. When I use .f4v files no such problem occurs...
Will send you a yousendit link containing one of the guilty .flv files now - this is a .flv file I used in creating a page with flash Catalyst just days ago before it decided it would no longer import them.
Thanks for your help so far
Adam

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

How to create an ad banner using Flash Catalyst

This should be an easy question to answer...I've been able to create a variety of ad banners using Flash Catalyst but none of the online tutorials show how to link the ad banner to a URL...i.e. when someone clicks on the banner. I don't like the idea of having to create a button + Go To URL (on click) because the button doesn't appear on all screens/states, etc.
Is there a way to turn the entire project into a button without losing the animation action? i.e. so that no matter what state the banner is in, if someone clicks on it, they go to the URL?

Hi Chris,
Thanks for your advice. It's for our own sites, so we can accept the overhead.
The animation is simply fade in image, fade out image, fade in text message, fade out text message, fade in next image, etc.
So, when you say "they are instead wrapped inside a single custom component", I understand it conceptually but need a few details:
1. Does this mean I first create the custom component (before doing anything else)?
2. At what point to I import/load my Photoshop file with all of the layers?
Jim

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!

Rollover menu in Flash Catalyst

Hi, I want to make a rollover menu in Flash Catalyst. That means, that I have a "select language" PSD and a "German and Enlish" PSD. When I transform the "Select language" PSD into a Button and put the second graphic into the state "over", then the menu opens like it should do. But now i can't transform the "German" and "English" text into a button cause I can't make a button inside an other button. I hope you can understand...(:
Hope you know a way to make this rollover! (-: Sorry for my English!
Hallo, ich würde gerne ein Rollovermenü in Flash Catalyst machen. D.h. ich habe eine "Sprache wählen" Grafik und eine Grafik mit "Deutsch und Englisch". Wenn ich jetzt die "Sprache wählen" Grafik als Schaltfläche nehme, und beim Status "darüber" die andere PSD-Grafik einfüge, dann öffnet sich das Menü genau, wie ich will. Ich kann aber natürlich die Texte "Deutsch" und "Englisch" nicht als weitere Schaltfläche machen. Weil ich ja nicht eine Schaltfläche in eine Schaltfläche machen kann.
Ich hoffe, das war verständlich. (-: Hat jemand eine generelle Idee, wie man so etwas macht?
Grüße!

See if this tutorial might solve your issue:
http://insideria.com/2009/10/flash-catalyst-beta-2-combobox.html
Chris

Can I use Flash with Flash catalyst?

I was wondering, since Flash Catalyst apparently only uses
"rudimentary animation", can I use Flash Professional with Flash
catalyst? I would like to do more complex animations, and I was
wondering if there was a way to import those animations into Flash
Catalyst,

Flash Professional will definitely be the tool for creating
complex animation. The tweaks they have done to the animation
engine will blow away designers giving them intuitive tools to use
for creating animation. Designers will absolutely love how easy it
is to animate now.
As for whether or not Flash Catalyst can handle that... From
the trial software I received at Adobe MAX... it appears you can
import SWFs. In fact, as soon as you import them, they start
playing right there in the IDE. But I am not sure how much control
you have over the SWF once you import it. No SWC import though.
I was curious if there are any round tripping features
between Flash Professional and Flash Catalyst. Because the way I
understand it, Flash Catalyst is a way for traditional designers to
use Fireworks, Illustrator and Photoshop to build RIAs... they said
nothing of using Flash Professional.

Organizing Pages/States in Flash Catalyst

Hi,
is there a way to reorder the Pages/States in Flash Catalyst?
I wonder why Adobe created a whole new Programm for such less features, at least visually seen.
It would be so great if they simply would integrate the code creating feature in FIREWORKS
There we have all that much more advanced states/pages handling...
Just a idea
Cheers
Marc

Hi there,
Here's a post on that:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2500263#2500263
Let us know if it answers your question.
Thanks for posting!
-Kim

Flash catalyst 5 file opened in flash builder gives "Error #2032"

Hi there,
As the title suggests I created a file in Flash catalyst 5 and to give it resizeability I edited it in flash builder to add preinitialize="systemManager.stage.scaleMode='showAll'" in main.xhtml as I found suggested in the forums.
The problem is when I try to load this in my web browser I get the #2032 error and nothing happens.
Does anybody more knowledgeable than me have any ideas as to why I might be getting this error?
Best regards,
Gareth

I'll give you the short answer, Flash Catalyst is built on top of the Flex Framework and it's libraries. When you launch or load a FC swf, it will contact the Adobe servers to check the status of various libraries. Since you are loading this into a standard Flash Professional created swf, you are by passing some of the fallbacks that exist.
If the movieClip that you are creating is just a filler image, and you are just centering the FC swf, then I also recommend using CSS to display the filler and some HTML/CSS to center the content.
Hope this helps a little.
If you did the loading of the FC swf from a Flash Builder based project, you should not have the issue, since it is a Flex based SWF, the framework checks are already handled for you.
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 idea

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