November 17, 2008

Thermo is Flash Catalyst

Adobe is rebranding groups of related technologies as "Flash Platform" for Adobe Max. Also unveiled was Flash Catalyst, code named Thermo.

Adobe says Flash Catalyst is "a professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding. Flash Catalyst enables artwork created in Adobe Creative Suite 4 to be imported with full fidelity and quickly converted into dynamic components such as buttons, scrollbars, input fields and more. Finished projects can be published directly to Flash Player or AIR. When combined with the next version of Flex Builder ["Gumbo"], Adobe Flash Catalyst enables design and development to be done in parallel. This workflow supports iterative development and delivers higher quality results with faster time to market. A preview release of Adobe Flash Catalyst will be available for MAX 2008 attendees. A public beta version is expected to be available on Adobe Labs in early 2009."

It's not clear if this tool could be used instead of Flash itself since there's no appearance of SWF export functions or if it can work with digital video. For now there are demo movies on Adobe Labs, and last year's Edge movie:

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