Flash Catalyst question

I have imported my design from Fireworks into Flash Catalyst, here is my question.
I have two tabs which switches content on my page. Right now I have one state (page)
for tab nr 1 and another state for tab nr 2. But when I have tab 1 active and click a button,
then I want to make changes of the content that is visible when tab 2 is active. Is that
possible and if so, how can I achieve this?

Yes this is possible. There might a few solutions to it. One idea (untested), would be to wrap your tab 2 content in a custom component. then share this new component across both tab states. But, in state 1, set the visible of the content component to false. That should allow you to target elements within the content component. Then when you switch to state 2, make the visible of the content component to true.
Chris

Similar Messages

PLEASE help - Flash Catalyst Question

Does anyone know how to create a button in Flash Catalyst that will download a pdf to the users computer.
I have compleated my Portfolio website in Catalyst and this is the only thing stopping me from publishing.
Please help

To create a link to a PDF, just use the Go To Url interaction from the interactions panel. It does not allow for relative links (those like ../pdf/portfoilio.pdf), so you will need to full url path. You might also want the link to open in a new window.
Chris

Few questions about Flash Catalyst

In my organisation, we are looking at tools such as Flash Catalyst.
After experiencing a bit with the tool, I have the following questions:
- When you switch from the Design to Code view, the mxml is not editable. Is this done on purpose? To make it editable, you have to use the Open With in the Explorator View.
- The WireFrame Component view seems limited regarding the number of components available. Don't you think that basic componants such as Grids, Panels should be included.
- Do you plan to have a feature such as "Export as a Word document" to export the contents of the screens prototyping.
Finally, do you have a roadmap available for the tool with list of features and dates of release.
Regards,
Jean-Michel

Hi Jean-Michel,
Re Code view...
Since Flash Catalyst is a designer-oriented tool, it does not currently support editing code. You can import a Flash Catalyst FXP file into Flash Builder when you're ready to begin adding richer business logic and server connectivity to your app.
Re the Components panel...
Check out View > Grid & Guide Settings for a way to align layouts on various grids today.
While there's no generic "Panel" control, you can easily create artwork that represents a border around any bunch of content. To create a reusable border, akin to a custom-skinned reusable panel control, make the border into a custom component and then place copies of it beneath your different groups of artwork.
Re export to Word...
We don't have immediate plans for this functionality, but we're definitely aware there's a lot of interest around being able to output mockups and wireframes in printed form. Currently, you can print out individual screens of your Catalyst mockup by running it, right-clicking, and choosing Print.
Re roadmap...
Catalyst 1.0 will be released within the first half of next year. We don't have a full feature list that we can share yet, but look for at least one more beta this year that will preview some of the additional features.
- Peter

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.

Importing a flash Catalyst .swf file in Flash CS5 ?

Hi,
I found Flash Catalyst by luck while browsing the Adobe website and downloading the Flash CS5 trial...
One simple question....
Can I import a .swf file created in Flash Catalyst into a Flash CS5 .fla as an element ?
I created a scrolling text attached to a custom made scrolling bar in Flash Catalyst, and I would now like to use it in my Flash CS5 project...
Well, I will be waiting for your responses...
Thanks in advance for your help !
Gilbert Gour

Unfortunately you can't import an SWF from Flash Catalyst into Flash CS5. Flash Catalyst uses the Flex Framework for building the its SWF. Flash CS5 does not use the Flex Framework and doesn't know what to do with that kind of file. You can load an SWF from Flash CS5 into your Flash Catalyst project, though.

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

Using Flash Catalyst Beta 2

Hello!
My name ist Peter and I tried Flash Catalyst the last two days.
As a Graphic Designer and Type Designer, I think Flash Catalyst
is great, I like it very much.
But I have a question! Is it possible to do a roundtripping with the
Beta Version. I just created a website in Illustrator, imported it
to catalyst, did some interactions and what now. Is it possible
to save as a format, which I can open in other Adobe Programs
like Flash oder Dreamweaver.
Or do I have to wait until the Fullversion is available?
Thank´s to all!
Peter

Hello!
My name ist Peter and I tried Flash Catalyst the last two days.
As a Graphic Designer and Type Designer, I think Flash Catalyst
is great, I like it very much.
But I have a question! Is it possible to do a roundtripping with the
Beta Version. I just created a website in Illustrator, imported it
to catalyst, did some interactions and what now. Is it possible
to save as a format, which I can open in other Adobe Programs
like Flash oder Dreamweaver.
Or do I have to wait until the Fullversion is available?
Thank´s to all!
Peter

Autoplaying a website intro slideshow in Flash Catalyst

I was wondering if anyone knew a way, in Flash Catalyst, to create a Website Introduction slideshow as seen in the following websites:
http://www.infinityward.com/
http://www.spinxwebdesign.com/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
The goal is to create 5 or 6 slides / states that a user can click on, but until they do, for it to AutoPlay all the way through, then circle back around [Loop] to play it again.

Hello,
Creating a slideshow is one of the more common questions in the forums here. Peter wrote up a good answer in this thread.
You can link this up with the video play complete action sequence trick documented in the faq here.
You also have the option of building a fancy slideshow that exports to a swf and importing that swf into Catalyst. If you do that, your swf may need to load external files, and there's a little bit of trickiness documented here.
-Bear

Liquid sites on Flash Catalyst.

Hello everybody, I'm here again to address other questions cruel.
I want it to migrate my projects to Flash Catalyst CS5, but I know that at least 70% of this incredible tool. Well, let the doubt:
I wonder if it is possible to sites that meet all the browser screen (called liquid sites). Is there any way to do this in Catalyst CS5 without using codes?
Thanks.
@eldermarx

Hi,
Flash Catalyst only supports fixed dimensions at the moment. Projects don't scale to the size of the users browser.
Take a look at this FAQ on liquid layouts. It may help you. http://forums.adobe.com/thread/652613.
Best,
Tanya

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

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 - solutions to the 20 states limitation

Oops!! I accidentally marked this question as "Assumed answered".
I have not got any respons yet and am very anxious to hear about a solution to my problem.
hjbune2
Hi everybody
I have created an interactivew project in Flash Catalyst, however, just as I am about to add the final states to the project, I am told that I am limited to 20 states. Apparently I have exceeded that number and cannot finish my project, which has taken me hours to create.
The help file tells me that the way around the limitation is to encapsulate components. Unfortunately, there are no concrete examples of how to do that.
If someone can help me out here, I shall be very grateful.
Yours
hjbune2
Hi again
I realize that it is difficult to help me unlless I'm more specific as to my project.
The project has a main window with a vertical menu with 10 buttons which displays in every state and opens with an application transition:
I have an 'on click' interaction on each of the buttons, which transitions the user to "contents 1" on a page with a scrolling bar component, using a flex component from the common library:
The button in the lower right corner brings the user to a scrolling panel sub page:
The button in the lower right corner opens a pdf document to allow the reader to print the subject.
This is the structure for all 10 buttons in the vertical navigation bar.
Futhermore, I have animated background boxes coming in from the bottom on the scroplling panel pages.
I was not aware of the 20 states limitation before I started the project and am hoping that I can still save the project by finding a work around that will allow me to fit all my items and their contents into the existing structure, some magic recipe ;0)
If this is not possible, I am hoping that someone can instruct me on how to design the structure to avoid the problem next time around.
Any help will be VERY MUCH APPRICIATED.
By the way, I think Adobe should definitely introduce the states limitation at an early point in their tutorials, so that it does not come as a nasty surprise when it is too late. I have watched all the adobe video tutorials and there is no mention of this limitation.
I hope that they will bring a video tutorial on how to work your way around it, with step by step examples, as soon as possible.
hjbune2

Hi Chris
I don't mind sharing my project at all and will be very grateful if, if you would tke a look at it.
How do I make the fxp file accessible here in disacussion forum. I cannot find any insert/upload file option in this editor.
Best regards
hjbune2
Hi again
I have now uploaded the original project, where I ran out of states, and the edited project where I tried to use custom components with states for item one's subpages.
I sincerely hope that you can tell me how to go beyond the 20 states, since the success of my undertaking is utterly dependent on this.
www.megaupload.com/?d=WR3STNC9
Studieretning oversigt fxg 673x470.fxp
1.3 MB
www.megaupload.com/?d=GT3R2XK4
All the best
hjbune2
Message was edited by: hjbune2

Dynamic link between Photoshop and Flash Catalyst does not exist

Hi,
I'm a french developer and I have a question.
I didnt find any Dynamci link between Photoshop and Flash Catalyst.
Let me explain :
I have a photoshop file (.psd) and I import it into Flash Catalyst.
But I have some modification to do on my design file (psd) but the design does not update himself in Flash Catalyst .
Do you plane to add the possibility ?
Thanks a lot !
Clement
http://www.dator.fr

Given that you named the class TextDynamicLayout, it implies you are trying to handle wordwrapping text. That requires handing down the VBox's explicitWidth to the Text controls before they get measured. Wordwrapping text can be any size so it needs to have its width fixed in order to determine its height.
The List classes do not support percentages on the renderers. All renderers are effectively given a size based on the List's size (or DG Column size). You can see how explicitWidth is handled in the default renderer by looking at the source for ListItemRenderer.as.
Note that VBox or any container makes for heavy and slow rendering. That's why the default Flex renderers extend UIComponent and have custom measure() and updateDisplayList() methods.
Alex Harui
Flex SDK Developer
Adobe Systems Inc.
Blog: http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui

Flash Catalyst (especially Paninni) Rules - This Is An Apology

Hi… Two weeks ago I posted a question asking how to create a horizontal scrollbar that reveals content from both the right and left sides of a page. I became frustrated because I couldn't bring Catalyst in line with the design I had created in Illustrator for my web page. I had tried using a data list, a component with nested buttons and more components but wasn't able to resolve the challenge on my own. So, I started reviewing the video tutorials and visiting the Adobe Catalyst forum for an answer. When my question didn't receive a response within the first couple of days I posted an additional comment expressing my disappointment. Well, Mykola D. responded to my question telling me how I could use Flash Builder and ActionScript to accomplish my goal. This frustrated me even further because as a designer (not a developer), the last thing I wanted to do was to learn code and begin as a novice with yet another program. So instead I posted another comment basically lambasting Catalyst, and the basic premise of the new program as a "bridge" between designer and developer. Well… I was wrong. In fact, my ultimate experience with Flash Catalyst (Paninni) has been so rewarding that I wanted to post this additional comment to let any one know that read my previous post that I jumped the gun forming an opinion. REALLY jumped the gun. And you know what I forgot? I forgot one of my own fundamental rules when creating. Never try and take a set of preconceived ideas and impose them on a set of tools with which you are unfamiliar. The best ideas emerge from the the artists familiarity with the materials, tools and techniques he/she is using. Trying to create in any other way would be analogous to someone trying to compose a piano concerto without knowing how to play the piano… Or performing brain surgery without ever having attended medical school. I am sure we have all run across THAT type of person before… You know, the big shot creative director who fancies him/herself an "idea" person but has no idea how to actually reduce those ideas to practice, instead relying on the expertise of real artists to create. And you know what? After focusing my attention and actually learning Catalyst it turns out that I didn't have to compromise my Illustrator design one bit. I got the scroll bar to work and even implemented an Illustrator mask grouped with the custom component and… Well, it just worked fantastic. My web page is up and I am very pleased. If you would like to take a look at a professional designers first attempt at a web page I am including the link below. Thanks to whoever had the initial idea for creating Catalyst and I hope the development of this product continues. I am already working on some other ideas on how I can use Catalyst.
Karl
http://www.karldeckeronline.com/

I totally feel ya (though I don't know the thread you are writing about)...
My only complaint is that there is little support for it, however it is obviously quite powerful and full of deesign steroids
In particular it works so well with illustrator, if only I could figure out import=>swf to work on the server

FAQ: How can I make a SWF from Flash Catalyst scalable?

The SWF files that Flash Catalyst publishes are fixed in size. Even if you set the size of the SWF manually when embedding it, the content created in Catalyst will remain the same size. However, with a small amount of work in Flash Builder, you can make your SWF scale to fit the width and height you want.
Follow the instructions in this tip on FlashCats.
Answered by: Bear Travis.
Read original discussion.

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