Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst Betas Now Available

May 31st, 2009 by ryanstewart

We just dropped the bits for both the Flash Builder beta and the Flash Catalyst beta. These represent a big jump in how people are going to work with the Flex Framework and I’m happy to see the hard work of the teams now available to everyone. So grab the bits and start creating some Flash content. Important: If you installed the MAX public beta, check the bottom of this post for some instructions that will help you through some install problems that may come up.

Keep in mind that we’re still early for both Catalyst and Builder. We won’t have everything we want in Catalyst 1.0 but this beta represents a HUGE step over what some of you saw at MAX last year so we’re making a lot of progress. It’s snappy, it’s tightly integrated with the CS4 tools, and it opens up a whole world of design centric tooling for the Flex Framework. What makes this all possible are the fundamental changes to the Flex SDK for Flex 4. We’ve completely separated the logic from the look of a component which means designers and developers can collaborate without stepping on each others toe’s. We’ve abstracted the layouts so you can dynamically change the layout of components creating some very cool looking components. We’ve integrated Flash Builder with a lot of your favorite backend technologies so it’s easy to consume and generate services to connect to data.

I’ve created a screencast to help people check out the new features. It goes through the workflow of moving from a PSD to Flash Catalyst and on to Flash Builder when you want to bring in real data.

There are a lot of resources to make sure you get up to speed quickly using the new tools. Here’s a good list:

• Flash Builder developer center
• Flash Catalyst developer center
• Mordy Golding worked with Lynda.com to provide FREE training videos for Catalyst
• The Flash Catalyst Exchange for seeing and downloading projects and samples
• We’ve got a series of eSeminars coming up in the next couple of weeks
• Adobe’s user group tour for Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, and ColdFusion is kicking off this month
• Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst forums for asking questions
• Serge Jespers has a bunch of resources as well.

If you’re having trouble uninstalling the MAX preview and installing the public beta, give these steps a try:

• Uninstall Catalyst
• Download the Mac version of the Repair tool from this page: http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/licensing.html
• Run the Repair tool with the default options.
• After the Repair is complete, re-install Catalyst and enter the SN when prompted by the installer.

source: http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/2009/05/flash-builder-and-flash-catalyst-betas-now-available/