Barry: I came across this very issue just yesterday would you...
Vasi: i had the same problem and the issue boggled my mind for...
Thu, 07/30/2009 - 16:16 — Christian (not verified)
Thanks for the article.
I am curious what version of Fireworks and Catalyst you are using? So far most of my experiments with export to FXG don't go all that well.
Example just opening the FXG file in the latest Catalyst beta is difficult. The only success that I have had so far is to open a new Catalyst doc then Import... some times this works sometimes it does not (BETA). It never works from the import.fxg on the Catalyst landing page (the page that is missing the FW icon).
Once imported many things don't translate, example many gradients show up as single color rectangles,,, though they do remain vector (yeah!). Rounded corners show up as hard edge, and sometimes shadows show sometime they don't. These are all things that are supported in Flex 3. It could be that Catalyst in its current beta form is just not handling these things yet.
*** My most important comment in regards to the lack of support for FW import options is that FXG does not (to the best of my knowledge) support Layer support, thus all my layering is gone upon import. This is crucial to catalyst for creating view states. Especially since much of the Catalyst workflow is based on hiding and showing things in layers. And much of the workflow (from examples that I have seen) is that a lot of layer planning needs to be done ahead of time to make your work with Catalyst successful.
Personally I wish they used the FW page paradigm with layer and states. To be completely honest I wish that Catalyst was built on FW.... Page = View States, Layers are storage, state = button and symbol states, and then of course storage of symbols = components.
***********************
What does work that is not well documented is the import of pngs. (kind of). I recently did an experiment where I took elements from my fireworks design and exported them individually as png files. (thus preserving the complete look).
My findings with this work flow is that Catalyst does maintain the transparency of the png, but also keeps the size of the document rather than snapping to the size of the art-work, so before I leave FW I make sure I do a fit to canvas command.
Also note these pngs are not editable FW pngs, rather they are a flattened image file with transparency.
Why is this good and why is this bad?
- The good is that I can now do prototyping that looks like what I want my end application to look like.
The bad is that since pngs tend to be large in file size I probably would not use png in a real Flex application, thus my work in catalyst is limited to prototyping and would have to be recreated once in Flex.
This last argument is something that I have brought up from the beginning.. Most Flex applications are data heavy and since they are being served over the internet file size still matters. One major factor in usability is how long the user has to wait for an action or for a screen to show up. If the application is constantly loading graphics, and having to compile this info in the swf more than likely you will end up with a pretty application that no one uses. This is one the reasons that I really didn't understand Adobe's approach of pushing Illustrator and photoshop as the design tools for Catalyst.
Flex skinning best practice was and will still be to programatically skin as much as possible. FXG is a major step in that direction.
Thanks for the article.
I am curious what version of Fireworks and Catalyst you are using? So far most of my experiments with export to FXG don't go all that well.
Example just opening the FXG file in the latest Catalyst beta is difficult. The only success that I have had so far is to open a new Catalyst doc then Import... some times this works sometimes it does not (BETA). It never works from the import.fxg on the Catalyst landing page (the page that is missing the FW icon).
Once imported many things don't translate, example many gradients show up as single color rectangles,,, though they do remain vector (yeah!). Rounded corners show up as hard edge, and sometimes shadows show sometime they don't. These are all things that are supported in Flex 3. It could be that Catalyst in its current beta form is just not handling these things yet.
*** My most important comment in regards to the lack of support for FW import options is that FXG does not (to the best of my knowledge) support Layer support, thus all my layering is gone upon import. This is crucial to catalyst for creating view states. Especially since much of the Catalyst workflow is based on hiding and showing things in layers. And much of the workflow (from examples that I have seen) is that a lot of layer planning needs to be done ahead of time to make your work with Catalyst successful.
Personally I wish they used the FW page paradigm with layer and states. To be completely honest I wish that Catalyst was built on FW.... Page = View States, Layers are storage, state = button and symbol states, and then of course storage of symbols = components.
***********************
What does work that is not well documented is the import of pngs. (kind of). I recently did an experiment where I took elements from my fireworks design and exported them individually as png files. (thus preserving the complete look).
My findings with this work flow is that Catalyst does maintain the transparency of the png, but also keeps the size of the document rather than snapping to the size of the art-work, so before I leave FW I make sure I do a fit to canvas command.
Also note these pngs are not editable FW pngs, rather they are a flattened image file with transparency.
Why is this good and why is this bad?
- The good is that I can now do prototyping that looks like what I want my end application to look like.
The bad is that since pngs tend to be large in file size I probably would not use png in a real Flex application, thus my work in catalyst is limited to prototyping and would have to be recreated once in Flex.
This last argument is something that I have brought up from the beginning.. Most Flex applications are data heavy and since they are being served over the internet file size still matters. One major factor in usability is how long the user has to wait for an action or for a screen to show up. If the application is constantly loading graphics, and having to compile this info in the swf more than likely you will end up with a pretty application that no one uses. This is one the reasons that I really didn't understand Adobe's approach of pushing Illustrator and photoshop as the design tools for Catalyst.
Flex skinning best practice was and will still be to programatically skin as much as possible. FXG is a major step in that direction.