Almost a month ago Mike Chambers posted a
video featuring Kevin Lynch doing a demo of the coming Flash Catalyst. In roughly 7 minutes he goes from Illustrator to a working Flash application that uses Facebook API to bring some data and display it (including tweens) without a single line of code. Not bad at all for 7 minutes.
So, you can quickly bring to life Illustrator or PSD mock ups using a nice GUI.
Marketing says:
Catalyst is a professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding
If you see the video, Catalyst also generates MXML files that you can fine-tune in Flex Builder. So a GUI that generates code that you can modify later on. Where I've seen that before? Dreamweaver maybe?
Don't get me wrong, I know you can build good HTML apps using DW but you need to be a
good developer for that, there is no magic behind the scenes. Good developer, good app. Bad developer, bad app. Tools are just that, tools.
The problem I see with Catalyst or DW is that they make some people
believe they can create good applications without the knowledge. Not only that, they can create them "rapid" and "without coding". Sounds like marketing BS to me.
I'd like to know what is Adobe expecting people to do with Catalyst, who are they targeting.
** Designers so they can create real life apps without devs?
** UX guys to create interactive prototypes?
** Is this suppose to ease the work-flow between designers and developers? I'll quote
Jesse Warden:
Like in Flash, Designers created MovieClips without a care in the world about how’d you actually code that stuff. Sometimes, MovieClips weren’t the best way to go about it. They shouldn’t care, either. They should be able to design their vision how they see it. It’s then up to us engineers to code it. If we need to compromise and iterate, so be it, that’s how it works.
Couldn't agree more. Although projects start at UX/design level, the "real thing", what it is actually going to be compiled, starts from a developer.
I've never, ever used a FLA file from a designer straight away, I use it to pick up what I need and then paste it into my own FLA (put aside I hate FLA files, but you know what I mean).
So, if you cannot enable someone without knowledge to create something really good (and you cannot), if most likely it doesn't fit into more professional workflows (as Jesse points out) the only thing you have left is interactive UX prototypes, but there're another thousand apps for that already....
I don't know, I might be wrong, but I don't see a great market for Catalyst unless they do something
extremely good. Not sure how much is Adobe going to charge for it, maybe nothing and it will be part of the bundles? Does anybody see it as part of their daily routine or has another target that I'm missing?