David Harris from the Auckland ColdFusion User Group has organised a User Group meeting that coincides with my visit to Auckland this week. This means I’ll be able to show off some of the new Adobe tools!

The meeting is being held at the Auckland Media Design School and I’ll be first showing the new Flash Catalyst beta, the upcoming improvements in Flash Builder (was Flex Builder) & ColdFusion and even a quick look at the new LiveCycle Data Services beta.

The feedback on these new products has been very positive,  so come see what the fuss is about, share a beer (David assures me that there will be at least one!), and network with other Designers & Developers.

Register here: http://nzroadshow.eventbrite.com/

Want to see Flash Catalyst & Flash Builder 4 up close and have a chance to ask Adobe some questions about the new beta releases on Adobe Labs?

Yes? Then join Andrew Spaulding & I and the fantastic Adobe User Group managers at one of the upcoming June user group meetings across Australia;

Canberra – June 11th – Mark Szulc
http://groups.adobe.com/posts/78231c9ce0

Melbourne –  June 17th – Andrew Spaulding
http://groups.adobe.com/posts/081e9d435f

Sydney – June 22nd – Andrew Spaulding & Mark Szulc
http://groups.adobe.com/posts/a8adb3e375

Other cities (Andrew & I will attempt to attend remotely if possible for Q&A)

Brisbane – June 17th (Gareth Edwards, Carly Gooch & Richard Turner-Jones)
 http://groups.adobe.com/posts/49bfc505f0

Perth – June 17th (Andrew Mercer & Kay Smoljak)
http://groups.adobe.com/posts/1edbf91f4b

Are you running another group activity? Let me know!

Showing is better than telling and I’ve put together a quick recording of Adobe Flash Catalyst in action. In four minutes you will see an Adobe Illustrator CS4 file turned into a Flash application reading for import into the new Flash Builder 4.

Another version of this demo with automated zoom is available here.

Like what you see? Download the preview release from labs.adobe.com

Today on labs.adobe.com, Adobe made available preview releases of the next version of two  tools in the Adobe Flash Platform. Of these two tools, one is an upgrade from a previous version (Flash Builder), and another is a completely new tool (Flash Catalyst).

Flash Catalyst is an incredible new tool from Adobe that aims to bridge the gap between developer & designer workflows. Traditionally designers hand over artwork as still images or “sliced up” assets to a development team that then need to go ahead and attempt to reassemble the assets as intended. I say attempt, as often it is very time consuming if not impossible for a developer to recreate the intent the designer had.

Designers can now continue to use familiar tools such as Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator to design, then use Flash Catalyst to add interaction to their design while at the same time moving the project into something a developer can use. Flash Catalyst converts artwork into a Flex project which can be opened up in Flash Builder and extended by developers.

Flash Builder 4 (formerly known as Flex Builder) is the latest version of the Eclipse based IDE that allows developers to build applications that execute in the Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR or even within a PDF. Renaming Flash Builder links the product into the Flash Platform, something that the name Flex often missed, yet it will continue to leverage the Flex framework to make it quick and easy for developers to build Rich Internet Applications

Developers will benefit from the new features in Flash Builder 4, including support for projects built in Flash Catalyst, round trip support for Flash Professional CS4, coding enhancements, service introspection and more.

As both of these tools are now on Adobe Labs as available free of charge technical preview, it is a great idea to download and test these tools to see how they assist your workflows, but equally important that you provide feedback to the product teams so they can make the tools meet your needs.