A few weeks ago Friends of Ed published their latest offering Foundation Flash Catalyst by LordAlex Leon and Greg Goralski. Read on to find out how Shane Johnson feels about Flash Catalyst, what he made of the book and how you could win an eBook copy of your own..
Introduction
Being someone that hasn’t really yet tried Flash Catalyst (I downloaded the beta version from Adobe when it was released, tried it once, wasn’t hugely impressed and haven’t really touched it since, even though I have it as part of my Adobe collection) I was a little dubious about what this book could do for me. In much the same way, I’ve always been skeptical about what Flash catalyst could offer the Flash community or the Flash platform as its little brother.
The book is published by Apress as part of their Friends of Ed series of technical books. I have always held Friends of Ed books in high esteem, some of the best books in my collection have been published as part of this series, so I was very happy to find this out. The book is written by Greg Goralski and LordAlex Leon, both highly respected within the Flex / Flash community, so seeing that the book has a good pedigree from the offset got me off to a good start.
The book assumes you already have knowledge of the Adobe suite of software tools and assumes you are a designer who is familiar with either Illustrator, Photoshop or both. After all, this is who Flash Catalyst is really targeted at. It’s laid out clearly and broken nicely into sections relevant to the tools available in Flash Catalyst. Even if you do not read the whole book, you can easily refer back to relevant sections to give you a “heads up” on what a particular tool is used for or how you would use it.
Chapter one gets into describing and explaining the Flash Catalyst interface, familiarizing the reader with terms used to describe different parts of the software and how they interact with each other. Once we are familiar with the interface we then get onto starting our first project, which is of course the best way to get to know any tool.
Projects
The projects outlined in the book are simple, very easy to recreate and start off with the simplest form (almost html/javascript) of website project with straight-forward image transitions and text buttons. However, as a simple project it does teach you the basics of what kind of procedures are needed in creating a Flash Catalyst project getting you used to “states” and the very different approach to animation (different to Flash professional, but not necessarily other animation tools out there).
The projects continue through the book, becoming harder in complexity, but introducing you to and explaining more of the tools available. Explanation is given for procedures needed as a designer with Flash catalyst in a project which would inevitably be handed over to a developer. However, the book never really demonsatrates anything so amazing that you want to get Flash catalyst out and start creating some wondrous application or website.
The section on wire framing (one of the features that even to me as developer makes Flash Catalyst really stand out amongst the other tools in the Flash platform) goes into some nice detail about the practices used to create quick and effective interactive wire frames when layout and functionality are more a requirement than design elements.
Foundation Flash Catalyst is only 275 pages long, so isn’t a real slog to read, plus it has an amazing amount of images, which makes the book even easier to access. It manages to convey the necessary steps needed to recreate each project in a “follow along” style.
The book is more a technical manual on the “how to’s” in Flash Catalyst than anything else, therefore being an excellent resource for those who are used to Adobe’s tools and want to get up to speed on how to use and make effective use of Flash Catalyst quickly.
The “development process” section at the end of the book is a good introduction to designers, showing them what happens after they have done their part. All through the book references are made re-iterating the importance of things like naming conventions, reuse of clips and consistency to help developers once the project has passed on from the designer. This all helps cement the designer/developer relationship; a role that Adobe so want this application to fulfill during a Flex project.
Conclusion
Overall, this book is clearly written and is very easy to follow, using simple projects to teach the techniques needed to become familiar with Flash Catalyst. It is definitely just an introduction to Flash Catalyst and kind of teaches you the basics of the application then leaves the ball in your court as if to say There you go, now let’s see what you can come up with.
The authors have done a good job in conveying the ease of use this tool offers a designer who is used to creating images in Illustrator and Photoshop rather than using a piece of interactive software. It shows how easy it is to add interactivity to their designs.
One thing that has always made me smile is how designers always seem to be impressed when a developer takes their artistic creation and then makes it “sing and dance” on the screen. Thanks to Flash Catalyst designers can now easily do that too, and this book shows them how.
For myself, I found the book too much like an instruction manual and it didn’t really do enough to stir up any creativity, impressing me into getting Flash Catalyst out and giving it a go as I went along. The book hasn’t really changed my skepticism and I still don’t see Flash catalyst as a heavy weight in the Flash platform arena. Unfortunately, for the moment, it remains an unused piece of software in my collection.
Comment to Win a Copy!
LordAlex Leon has kindly offered up an eBook copy of Foundation Flash Catalyst to a random Activetuts+ reader!
For the chance to win, all you need to do is comment. Be sure to include your correct email address with your comment so that we can contact you. This giveaway is open worldwide, but make sure to get your comment in before midnight this Friday, Pacific Eastern Standard Time. Good luck!
Please note: Envato staff and people who have written more than two tutorials/articles for a Tuts+ site are not eligible to enter. Shane, I believe you already have a copy 🙂