This quarter's new Adobe Edge is now live on their site and DevelopmentArc has two features this release.  Aaron sat down and wrote up a great introduction to Flash Catalyst round-tripping called "Roundtripping between Adobe Flash Catalyst and Adobe Creative Suite 4".  He takes a look at how it works and a proposed workflow that designers and Catalyst users (maybe the same person, maybe not) can use to make iterative updates to the UI.

For the last few projects, we have found ourselves creating more custom ActionScript based Flex components then MXML based components. One of the challenges with this kind of development in the Flex Framework is understanding where and when to handle component configuration. When should we set styles? How do we update children components? How can I improve performance and scalability of my application? Trying to define the best answers for these questions have been rolling around in our heads for a while, and we are not the only people asking them.

We felt that the best way to approach solving this issue was to first understand the Flex Framework lifecycle. The lifecyle provides four main stages: creation, growth, maturity and destruction. Adobe has talked about this since the launch Flex but not all developers are familiar with the actual process. Even if you are familiar with the lifecycle, understanding the intricacies and what is available to you as a developer is not well documented or easily digestible. We are seeing a movement of Flex experts researching the topic and trying to provide better insight into the overall process. At Flex|360, RJ Owen and Brad Umbaugh did entire presentation on the subject. At Adobe MAX, there were multiple sessions that covered these concepts.

Starting back in June of 2008, I became a regular contributor to the Adobe Edge Newsletter. My most recent article, "The Future of Flex Components" was just published in the February 2009 edition. In this article, I explore the upcoming Flex 4 (codename Gubmo) component architecture and how it will change Flex develop in the future. Understanding how the new components are designed is critical both from a developers perspective but also a designers perspective so that they can best apply their design in a functional and consistent manner within the technology.

In the same edition, our good friend Doug Winnie also has a new article. In "An iterative approach to the designer-developer workflow", Doug discusses how designers and developer work using an iterative process and how this process can be applied to make a more cohesive team and product. Doug's insights are always spot on and once again his detailed research into workflows is shown in this piece.