The document provides an overview of the Adobe Flash Platform user group tour, including demos of Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder 4, and the Flex 4 framework. Key points covered include new workflows for interaction and visual design in Catalyst, data-centric development features in Builder, and improvements to graphics, states, layout, and text in the Flex framework.

1. Adobe Flash Platform
User Group Tour
Replace with
a graphic
White Master
5.5” Tall & 4.3” Wide
Piotr Walczyszyn
Platform Evangelist
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2. Agenda
 Flash Platform and Overview
 Catalyst
 Builder
 Framework
 Demos
 Q&A
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3. Flash Catalyst
A professional interaction
design tool for rapidly
creating the user experience
of applications and
interactive content without
coding
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4. Current Workflow
Design Development
 Visual Design  Import visual assets
 Define user experience  Implement user experience
 Development
Today’s workflow produces static designs that have limited use in development
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5. New Workflow
Design Development
 Visual Design
 Interaction Design
The new workflow produces functional designs that can be leveraged in development
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6. Flash Catalyst features
Interaction
Design
Cross-
Layout
product
Design
Integration
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7. Interaction Design Features
1. Organize projects into Pages and
objects into States
2. Interaction Design without writing code
3. Turn static artwork into a dynamic
components
4. Create a list from artwork
5. Design-Time Data
6. Extensibility through Components
7. Interactions HUD (Heads-up Display)
8. Library Panel
9. States Panel
10. Transitions and Action Sequences
11. Timeline panel
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8. Layout Design Features
1. Artboard
2. Pixel-level Placement
3. Layers Panel
4. Properties Panel
5. Vector Drawing Tools
6. Layout productivity tools
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9. Cross-Product Integration
1. Integration with Photoshop and Illustrator
2. Integration with Flash Builder
3. Dynamic-Media support (Audio, Video)
4. Flash Player 10 support
5. Preview project in Browser
6. Export to Flash Player
7. Flex 4 framework Support
8. Windows and MacOS (Intel) support
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10. Flex Framework
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11. Flex Branding Change
FLEX 3 GENERATION FLEX 4 GENERATION
Flash Flash
Builder Catalyst
Consistent branding for tools
Flex framework,
Flex Builder
Flex framework
Aligning Flex brand with the open source
framework underlying both FB and FC
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12. SDK – Major Themes
 Spark component model
Design in  MXML 2009
Mind  FXG
 Compiler performance
Developer
 2-way binding
Productivity
 CSS Improvements
 Improved states, effects,
and layout
Framework
Evolution  High-fidelity Text
 New Video Component
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13. Design in MXML?
A designer comes to Flex looking for …But finds this instead
this:
<Canvas>
<Label text=“name:” />
<Button />
<DataGrid />
</Canvas>
 Designers need freedom to design
Flex UI Framework
 Mxml needs support for:
 Primitives graphics.
 Flexible, expressive layout
 Rich animation and States
Flash / AIR runtime
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14. Halo Component Model
Component / Skin
Graphics
Layout
Animation
Parts
States
Behavior
Logic
Data
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15. Spark Component Model
ActionScript MXML
Component Skin
Graphics
Behavior Layout
Logic Animation
CSS Parts
Data
properties States
Separation of behavior from appearance
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16. MXML For Graphics
 MXML Graphics library providing rich
primitive support
 Simple Shape primitives
(Rectangles, rounded rects, ellipses, circles)
 Complex Paths
(Linear, Quadratic, and Bezier curve segments)
<Graphic>
 Full range of fills and strokes <Path data=“ ….. “>
(solid, transparent, bitmap, linear and radial <fill>
<LinearGradient angle=“90”>….
gradients) </LinearGradient>
</fill>
</Path>
 Masking, filters, blend modes, and more. <Path blendMode=“screen” data=“…” >
<fill>
(blur, glow, dropshadow, screen, multiply…) <LinearGradient angle=“45”>…
</LinearGradient>
</fill>
 Color and 2D transformations </Path>
(rotate, scale, tint, brighten…) <GraphicText text=“MXML Graphics”>
<filters>
<Glow color=“#00FF00” strength=“3” … />
 Integrated text, bitmaps </filters>
</GraphicText>
</Graphic>
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6

17. Compile Time (FXG) Graphics
Tools to Design and Develop
FXG: graphics format based on
MXML
 Understood by Design tools Flash CS4 Flash Flash
Professional Catalyst Builder
 Based on flash rendering model Interactive
Prototyping Eclipse IDE
Content
Tools to Design and Develop
 Static – no binding, layout, event Design/
Animation Develop Code Profiling
handlers, styling, etc Workflow
Visual Layout Debugging
 Optimized by compiler (really
important for great performance)
FXG
After Effects Illustrator Fireworks Photoshop
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18. Productivity Improvements
 2-way binding
 text=“@{myModel.data}”
 <fx:Binding source=“foo.text” destination=“myModel.data” twoWay=“true” />
 Advanced CSS
 Multiple Class Selectors:
<Button id=“upButton” styleName=“default tiny” />
 ID Selectors:
#upButton { fontSize: 14 }
 Descendant Selectors:
s|Scrollbar #upButton { baseColor: #FF8888 }
 Pseudo Selectors:
s|Scrollbar #upButton:over { baseColor: #8888FF }
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19. States
 Difficult to use <states>
<State name=”login”>
 Verbose <SetProperty target=“{goBtn}”
name=“label” value=“…” />
 hierarchy difficult to </State>
<State name=”register”>
manage, factor, tool <SetProperty target=“{goBtn}”
 Hard to optimize name=“label” value=“…” />
<AddChild target=“grp”>
<Checkbox label=“Agree to terms” />
</AddChild>
</State>
</states>
<Group id=“grp” >
<TextBox text=“username:” />
<TextInput />
<TextBox text=“password:” />
<TextInput />
<Button label=“new user?” />
<Button id=“goBtn”
</Group>
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20. States
 Declare your states with a <states>
<State name=”login"/>
‘State’ tag <State name=”register"/>
</states>
 Describe ‘alternate views’
of your markup <Group>
<TextBox text=“username:” />
 Change values, bindings, <TextInput />
event handlers <TextBox text=“password:” />
<TextInput />
 Include and exclude <Button label=“new user?” />
<Checkbox includeIn=“register”
components as easily as label=“agree to terms” />
setting visibility <Button label=“log in”
label.register=“sign up” />
 Unscoped entries specify </Group>
the ‘default’ for all states
 Use in 2009 documents –
2006 still supports legacy
states.
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21. Layout
 Runtime assignable
 Supports 2D and 3D transformations on contained objects
 Supports virtualization directly, so it’s not only Lists that can be
virtualized
 Goodbye hacky Repeater!
 Smooth scrolling
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22. High-Fidelity Text
 FTE: New low level text engine (player
10)
 TLF: New text layout library built on top of
FTE.
 Benefits:
 Soft hyphens
 Baseline control (e.g., superscripts and
subscripts)
 Right, center, and decimal tabs
 Vertical justification
 Multiple columns
 Ligatures, capitalization styles, digit styles
 Integrated Rendering of device fonts (a.k.a. I
can fade and rotate my text)
 Bi-Directional text
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23. Flash Builder 4
Flex Builder 3
plus new features
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24. Flash Builder 4 Themes
Support both design and data focused apps in a productive environment
Designer/Developer Data-Centric IDE Productivity &
Development Testing
 Remain true to the
design  Support many different  Improve hand-coding
back-ends
 Facilitate workflows  Speed up tuning &
 Simplify managing data debugging
 Eliminate manual
steps  Generate data-aware UI  Fit in with established
testing and build
processes
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25. Designer/Developer Features
 Adobe Flash Catalyst Workflow
 Open Catalyst projects (FXP) in
Builder
 New states editor
 Adobe Flash Professional
Workflow
 New “Flash Component”
 Launch Flash Professional, create or
edit, and return to Builder
 Themes Support
 New UI to apply themes
 Easily manage the look & feel of Flex
components in an application
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26. Data-centric Development
3. Bind Operations to
1. Define Service 2. Model Service
Flex UI components
 ColdFusion  Flash Builder  Databinding
examines service
 PHP  UI Generation
 Builds design-time
 Java Paging
model 
 SOAP Data-management
 Configure data 
 REST types and
operations
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27. Data Centric Development: Supported Services
 ColdFusion
 Consume any ColdFusion Component (CFC)
 New workflow with ColdFusion Builder to auto-generate
data access CFCs
 PHP
 Built-in support for Zend Framework
 Use Zend components or any PHP5 classes
 New workflow with Zend Studio for class generation
 Java
 BlazeDS
 LiveCycle Data Services ES – new workflow with
LiveCycle Model Editor
 HTTP, REST, SOAP Web Services <WSDL>
 Extensible – add support for any other back-end
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28. Data Centric Development: Data-bound UI
 Drag and drop to bind
operation results to UI
 Invoke operations from
component events
(e.g. button clicks)
 Generate Master/Detail
relationships
 Generate Charts
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29. Coding Productivity
 Package Explorer
 Getter/setter generation
 Code indentation (auto-indent)
 Custom file templates
 ASDoc integration
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30. Testing and Deployment
 Network Monitor
 Unit Testing
 Code Coverage
 Command-line Builds
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31. DEMO
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32. Tools Summary
 Flex 4 framework is the
foundation of both tools
 New tools deliver increased
productivity, integration with
servers and services and
high-fidelity applications
 Flex Builder becomes Flash
Builder
 First public preview of Flash
Catalyst
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33. Q&A Replace with
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34. ®
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