First off, I want to say I have been using Flash Catalyst to prototype device interfaces for the past month and it has worked out very well. When Adobe announced the product in November 2008 I anxiously awaited it. For a very long time. When it finally was released as a public beta, Adobe stated 3 main use cases for the product:
Prototyping
Catalyst has turned out to be a great tool for prototyping interactive applications. It allows me to communicate interactions with developers very quickly. One issue however: It does not have many of the built-in components (like tabs, folder trees, panels, etc) you need to truly prototype enterprise applications. Considering that this is the market for Flex, this is a big issue. Perhaps when the official release comes out this will change, but I doubt it.
Grade: B+
Designer / Developer collaboration on Flex Applications
Another advertised use of Flash Catalyst was the ability for designers and developers to work together in same file format. You can do this with Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder, but it’s a one way trip Yes, you heard that correctly. Once a designer hands over their Flash Catalyst file to a dev and they change anything, it cannot be read back into Catalyst. This is a major shortcoming to say the least. Adobe says count on it in a future release, but considering we’ve waited a year and a half for version 1, I’m not holding my breath.
Grade: D
Widgets for Web Sites
Flash Catalyst really shines in this area. It is super easy and fast for designers to create widgets and banners for their sites.
Grade: B+
but….
After following the Flash Catalyst forums on Adobe’s site for the past month, it is becoming clear that the real demand from designers is to create *sites* using Catalyst; the issue is that it is *terrible* at this. The SWF files it generates are *huge*, and there are no tools in the application for image compression and optimizations.
Grade: B+ … C-
Conclusion
Even though Flash Catalyst is a great prototyping tool, it falls short in the Flex Enterprise Application world. It also appears that they missed a big opportunity: a pent-up demand from non-technical designers who want to create websites in Flash. Again, Flash Catalyst falls short in this as well.
Sadly, at this point in the game, I don’t think there’s much hope in things improving for the 1.0 release. In the future, it might be desirable Adobe to split the product into 2 versions, one for Flex Application designers and one for Web Designers.
Ok, now back to prototyping with Catalyst. Which it does rock at.