Adobe opened the doors of their San Francisco office to the Flash design and development community for FlashCamp, an event showcasing new software and framework features of the Flash Platform: Flash Catalyst 1, Flash Builder 4 and the Flex 4 SDK.

outside the Adobe Building - FlashCamp 2009

First up was Flash Catalyst, software designed to marry the workflow of Flash Designers working in Photoshop with the workflow of Flash Developers using Actionscript and the Flex framework. Adobe’s been teasing Catalyst under the codename Thermo for years and now that we’ve seen it in action and have working beta copies, I can say that it’s an impressive program which will empower designers and developers. Steven Heinz, Principal Product Manager for Flash Catalyst, prototyped a rich internet application using Catalyst where the user accesses information about congress members via an interactive graphical interface. The prototype was functional, incorporated animations through multiple states and drew on an XML file to dynamically drive data, all without the designer writing a line of code. Catalyst did, however, generate MXML and actionscript code that is ready to be handed off to a developer for the actual building.

Steven Heintz, Flash Catalyst

Adobe is changing  the branding of their Flash and Flex code building software from Flex Builder to Flash Builder, which combines with new features of the Flex 4 like FXG to grant developers more control in how their applications look and animate between states.

Ely Greenfield, principal scientist, descibes new features of Flex 4

We also heard from the head of AIR, Arno Gourdol who demoed features of AIR 2.0, codenamed ATHENA: smoother installs and an improved filebrowser.

Arno Gourdo, Adobe AIR

New York Times Adobe AIR based desktop app

On my way out I cornered an Adobe engineer and asked him about their plan for the mobile space. He mentioned the ability Flash developers have now to target the AIR framework for developing desktop applications and sugessted that sometime after Flex 4 is final later this year, we may hear about another framework specifically for mobile devices. He then brought up The Open Screen Project, an initiative led by Adobe to enact a set of standards for interacting with rich media apps across computer, television and mobile screens. Overall a very cool night and an exciting time to be a Flash Platform developer.

Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder and Flex 4 Software DVD

Adobe’s holding FlashCamp in San Francisco this month to educate developers on upcoming releases of FlashBuilder 4 (formally Flex Builder) and Flash Catalyst, software that facilitates the authoring of interactive functionality in a design view as opposed to code. FlashCamp will be at the Adobe’s building in San Francisco on Friday, May 29th from 5-10:30PM and I’ll be there to meet other developers, score goodies and learn about the new interactive capabilities of the Flash platform.

A quality RPG reminiscent of Final Fantasy or Secret of Mana is something I’ve searched the Appstore for ritualistically. Last night I came across Zenonia (iTunes link), a $5.99 action RPG receiving great user reviews and praise that it’s production values are on par with $35 Nintendo DS games by SquareENIX. Is this just what I’ve been looking for?

In short, yes. Zenonia is a fun and deep experience so far unrivaled on the iPhone platform. Three hours in, the story and music are not mind blowing but are immersive and engaging. You choose which stats and abilities to develop as your character levels up, there’s an inventory system, magic spells, skills to learn and a storyline with branching paths for good and evil do-ers. Promising over 40 hours of questing, Zenonia is an impressive title and the first quality action RPG on the iPhone. Developed by GAMEVIL, available on iTunes appstore.