Andrew Shorten @ Adobe

Further to my earlier post about shaping the future of Flash Builder by submitting feature requests, another way which you can help us is by completing our online Flex survey.

Answers to the survey questions will help us determine the future product roadmap for the Flex SDK, Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst – by completing the survey you’ll get some idea as to the areas we’re thinking of exploring and you’ll have the opportunity to help prioritize what we work on.

The Flex product management team will be taking the results from the survey very seriously and I’d please ask that you spare 15-20 minutes to complete it for us.

Thanks for your help!

Note: for those living outside North America, I can only share your frustration that the sweepstake prizes are not available to you and I hope that we might be able to resolve that issue for a future survey.

At Adobe MAX this week, I presented a session entitled “Working with Flash Catalyst Projects in Flash Builder 4″ – the recording for this is now available for playback on Adobe TV and I’ve posted the slides below.

The presentation builds on the Exploring Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder workflows article that was published on the Adobe Developer Connection site, but also includes some example code which may help if you wish to explore the use of Flash Catalyst generated skins for custom Flex components that extend SkinnableComponent.

Today we released the beta 2 versions of both Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder on Adobe Labs – if you looked at either of these products at beta 1 but felt they were a bit early for regular usage then I’d encourage you try out these news builds.

With lots of bug fixes and performance improvements in both products, I’m now using these as my regular toolset for RIA design/development – Flash Catalyst in particular has added a significant number of new features over beta 1, including the ability to work with audio/video assets, as well as import and control Flash SWFs that were created in Flash Professional.

I’d like to highlight two updated developer centre articles that I’ve written and also point out a brand new one discussing workflows between Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder:

• Building a data-centric application using Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder 4 (updated for beta 2)
  Learn to create an employee directory application, starting from the Illustrator design, working in Flash Catalyst to create the user interface and moving into Flash Builder to connect to a PHP or ColdFusion back-end.
• Flash Catalyst Best Practices (updated for beta 2)
  A set of hints and tips for designers using Illustrator and Flash Catalyst that will help ensure that projects created in Flash Catalyst will be optimized for use by the development team you’re working with.
• Exploring Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder workflows
  Understand the different workflows that are possible between Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder and learn which is most appropriate for your team and the projects you’re working on.

If you have any comments/feedback on the articles then please do get in touch.

At Flash on the Beach in Brighton this week I spoke with a number of Flash designers and developers, asking their thoughts on how Flash Catalyst might impact their workflow for producing rich Internet applications – here is what they had to say (3 minute video):

Just over a week ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with Iain Dodsworth, founder of TweetDeck – one of the most-downloaded applications that have been built using Adobe AIR.

In this video Iain talks about how and why he went about creating TweetDeck, why he built it using Adobe AIR, what worked well (and what didn’t) during development, what he and the team have learnt from the whole process and his plans for the future of TweetDeck. He also offers up some advice for anyone else thinking about embarking on a startup venture.

The full version (below) is approximately 20 minutes in length, but I’m working on a shorter highlight video that hopefully we’ll get posted on Adobe TV – I’ll post a link to that in due course.