Flash Catalyst Quick Links

Designer-developer workflow enhancements with Flash Catalyst by Elad Elrom 

This is a great summary of the challenges the Flash Catalyst (FC) faces as it attempts to solve the Designer-Developer workflow problem. Given how complex this problem is, Elad provides some clear thoughts on how FC can ease this transition. For me the key point was to think of your application in smaller custom components. As a Developer/Designer, I find the best way to solve development problems is to break the entire task down into smaller chunks. The same process can be applied to using FC. By doing so, the output should be more usable by a development, which will in all likelyhood, refactor the code to fit their development model. But by providing smaller elements, this integration should happen smoother and facilitate revisions.

Adobe Flash Catalyst best practices by Andrew Shorten

In this article, Andrew give some advice on configuring your Adobe Illustrator files so that Flash Catalyst interpret them easier. I mentioned the need for visual designers to take care in creating their assets. Remember “Layer 3 copy” doesn’t help the workflow.

Design Prototyping: Bringing Wireframes to Life

I found this talk on Design Prototyping by Dan Harrelson of Adaptive Path that was given at the MIX ‘09 conference. For those who don’t know what MIX is, it is a Microsoft sponsored conference (basically the MS version of Adobe’s MAX). 

Here is the summary of the talk:

See how “design prototyping” differs from other techniques, and learn how to determine when a prototype is needed. Understand how to tailor your prototype to a particular audience, gather techniques for bringing paper sketches to life, and how interactive sketching can fit in an Agile process.

Now you don’t not need to install Silverlight to view the video, there is Mp4 version available.

Speaking at SandCHI – August 11

Come hear me speak on a panel about prototype development at the August meeting of SandCHI.

Websense Inc. See Google Map
10240 Sorrento Valley Rd
San Diego, CA 92121

Parking:
You can park in visitor parking (marked Websense) directly in front of the main building (on the left as you enter), or in the parking lot across the bridge. Do not park in front of Samsung next door please.

How to find it:
Walk up to the main building. Instead of walking in the front door, go around to the right and enter through the patio between Websense and Samsung. Next to the coffee kiosk is a back door into the Atrium which should have a SandCHI sign on it.

Flash Player Multi-Touch: Confirmation from Kevin Lynch

At the Adobe Analyst Summit, Kevin Lynch gave some clarity around Flash on mobile devices which included news that Flash Player for mobile will have support for multi-touch and accelerometer features.

If you’re interested in the Flash Platform and multi-touchDaniel Dura is going to be doing a session at MAX covering some of the advancements in the Flash Platform and multi-touch. It should be an interesting session.

My past two prototypes have been touch-based user interfaces, and would love to have more native support for multi-touch and gestures.

Flash Catalyst Beta now available

Adobe has just posted the beta of Flash Catalyst on the Adobe Labs site. In addition, a beta of the renamed Flash Builder 4 (Flex Builder).

 

Make sure you attend the San Diego Flash User Group’s meeting this Wednesday to get an inside look at them. More information on the event can be found at sdfug.org.

Rapid Prototyping Tools

Dan Harrelson has  a post on the Adaptive Path Blog entitled “Rapid Prototyping Tools“. He has a nice list of various tools that we can use in creating our prototypes.

One application that was missing from the this list was Adobe Director. It is true that this grand old application’s limelight had faded, but it still holds a lot of power and capabilities that other tools can’t bring to the table. Although I spend most of my time now inside the Flash Platform suite of programs, there is always a part of me that fondly remembers my time spend with Lingo.

It has a nice set of prebuilt behaviors and a set of components, so creating UI mock ups are not too difficult. One down side is, you can not leverage it’s output for production. I once built a complex UI prototype of a Tomahawk Cruise Missile control station, but we knew not one line of code was useful by the development team.

Thermo (Flash Catalyst) Unleased at MAX!

For those of you lucky enough to be at Adobe MAX, a preview of Thermo, now known as Flash Catalyst was unveiled. It’s going to be featured in tomorrow’s Day 2 General Session. They will also be giving away copies of the preview version to MAX attendees. There is more information on Flash Catalyst on the Adobe Labs site. It is not available to non-attendees at the moment. Maybe we will be able to demo it at the next San Diego Flash User Group meeting..

Now I need to update my icon bar..

The New Name for Thermo coming….

Ryan Stewart just posted some teaser bits about “Thermo”. First, we are going to learn its real name. I’m sure there is going to much debate over it. Thermo was just too darn cool.

Second, at MAX they’re going to be doing an early preview release of “Thermo”. It will be an Adobe Labs release soon, but for the time being going to MAX is the only way to get your hands on Thermo. If you want to get the bits before anyone else, you’ll have to attend one of those two Intro to Thermo sessions. They will have DVDs during those sessions after walking you through the preview build. Otherwise if you’re going to MAX you’ll have to get the DVDs on the second day.

I’ll be there, will you?

Visual Design Patterns

I spend most of my time working with various visual and interaction designers, and often refer to various visual design patterns. I say this post on Ethan Eismann’s blog about the site Pattern Tap. This is nice reference site for the entire team.

More prototyping resources….

A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO PROTOTYPING  is a book in progress by Todd Zaki Warfel. The anticipated publication date is late 2008.

From the website,

A Practitioner’s Guide to Prototyping will take a hands-on approach, enabling you to develop prototypes with minimal muss and fuss. The book will discuss how prototypes are more than just a design tool by demonstrating how they can help you market a product, gain internal buy-in, and test feasibility with your development team.