ScaleNine

As Adobe continues to move forward in the RIA space they’ve clearly outlined what the focuses are behind Flex 4 and Thermo. One of those focuses is on design/developer collaboration. I’ve been following the progress across blogs, interviews and conversations and I started to think, “What would a Creative Suite for RIAs look like to me?” I think some of what would be included is pretty obvious, but there are other things I haven’t heard anything about.

After being involved with different types of projects and playing different roles on those projects I have definitely started seeing patterns in the way applications are used to create RIAs and what seems to work best. Different projects have different expectations at the design stages. Sometimes the deliverable is a series of “wireframes”, refined views or a full prototype. For a successful series of applications, these use-cases need to be supported. Based on my experiences I’ve assembled a list of what I’d want in an “RIA Suite”.

Fireworks

For me, Fireworks is my go-to application for UI design. I can rapidly iterate on designs that maintain vector qualities, make rich symbols for quickly laying out views and keep everything pretty well organized. Fireworks CS4 makes it even easier to do the day-to-day tasks with features that seemed to be lacking in CS3. The downside is that I usually have to bring Fireworks artwork into Flash to add animation and maintain vector quality before bringing it into Flex. Filters also have to be removed and reapplied in Flex because they don’t translate the way I’d like. From what I’ve seen, Thermo will help solve some of these issues.

Flash

When creating a UI for a Flex/AIR application it’s usually inevitable I’ll be using Flash. I’ll use it to group assets into a single SWF, package up a font, create a complex UI, or add animations. However, it seems I’m beginning to use Flash less and just doing everything right in Flex Builder. Using Tweener and Degrafa I can achieve the results I’m looking for most of the time, but I can’t give Flash up completely yet.

Thermo

We’ve all heard about Thermo and I think it’s going to address a lot of the issues I have with current workflows. It seems Thermo will be the middle application that bridges the gap between CS applications and Flex. Mockups are transformed into working MXML with the help of a designer-friendly environment. This includes converting graphics to working components, adding animations, creating dummy-data sources, and more. The one thing I have yet to see is how the designer/developer collaboration actually works. What happens when a developer makes a change and how does that get reflected on the designer’s side, and vice-versa?

Flex Builder

Every day that I am working I fire up Flex Builder and start plugging away, so of course it’s gonna make it onto my list. From a design-perspective I use Flex to add transitions, bitmap filters, do layout, etc. I’ll jump into Design View or CSS Design View to make sure everything looks the way I want it instead of compiling the application.

Bridge/Version Cue (RIA Edition)

Okay, this is not a real product, but it’s something I see lacking in the current collaboration between designers and developers. Developers are familiar with version control systems like CVS, SVN and the like, but what about designers? How will designers be able to tap into those same repositories to maintain the fluid collaboration? Use a command line, Flex Builder, FTP? Probably not.

I’m thinking it would be great if a familiar application that designers already use, like Bridge or Version Cue, would make it really easy for designers to interact with a repository. Developer’s might cringe at the idea of a designer having that kind of access, but maybe it isn’t direct. If Thermo allows for designers and developers to directly interact with the same code base I think this would be a nice feature. There’d also need to be a way to cycle back and forth with files and probably need to be able to check them in and out.

Degrafa (Not Adobe)

Degrafa is not Adobe, but every project I work on gets Degrafa added to it. Why? Because bitmaps and static vector artwork can only go so far. I make 80-90% of my skins in Degrafa. This allows me to open up any properties of the graphics to CSS, which means one Degrafa Button skin to create an infinite number of variations versus making separate graphics for each variation. There’s things I can do with Degrafa that I can’t with bitmap or static vector graphics and with the the things planned for Degrafa Beta 3, it’s a no brainer.

So, there’s the rundown. It’s a mix of a little present and future, and I’m sure there’s some tool out there that I just don’t know I want yet I’m looking forward to smoother work flows and tighter collaborations between designers and developers. When that happens there’s more time for innovation.

For the past 6+ months I’ve been working on a book with Andy McIntosh titled “Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0″. Well, I’m happy to say we turned in all our material last week. Right now we are reveling in the fact we actually made it through the whole process.

Our goal for the book was to distill everything we know about customizing Flex 3 and AIR applications. Basically everything we wish we knew when we started trying to customize Flex applications. This includes layout, styling, skinning, filters, effects, transitions and many, many other visual aspects of Flex. We even threw in some very helpful (at least we think so) reference material and exercises.

In the beginning we were a bit skeptical how our various experiences would meld together into a book, but as it turns out everything seemed to compliment each other. Andy and I both do design and development. Andy is stronger on the development side and I’m stronger on the design side. This helped tremendously in addressing both perspectives from a beginner to advanced level. However, we wrote the book with the intention that the reader already knew the basics of Flex.

During the process my feelings were mixed, but now that we’re “done” I can say I’m happy I did it. Of course, talking to Deepa Subramaniam and Doug McCune during their process helped me realize I wasn’t the only one going through it. Now I get to wait for the printed version and the comments on Amazon

For more information, check out the “official” site for the book. If you’re thinking about writing a book and want to know about my experiences feel free to email me juan [ at ] scalenine [ dot ] com. With the book done, I can focus my attention back on this website (big plans), Degrafa and some other side projects.