Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ CS5 Classroom in a Book: Preparing a Design Document
- Choose your design application
- Use a single artboard with multiple layers
- Group complex objects
- Flatten artwork with filters and effects
- Name everything
- Embed images in the design document
- Manage fonts when sharing files
- Set component properties in Flash catalyst
- Create sample artwork for a list of images or text
- Hide, show, and lock layers
- Exporting an FXg file from adobe Fireworks
Note: This excerpt is from a draft manuscript and may not be representative of the final published work.
Knowing that you can turn your static artwork into working applications is pretty exciting. But before you get started, take a moment to review these best practices for preparing your design document. The way you approach the design and organization of your artwork has a significant impact on the structure of the project in Flash Catalyst and the underlying code. The following ideas will help protect the integrity of your design and minimize re-working or re-structuring assets after bringing them into Flash Catalyst.
Choose your design application
Flash Catalyst imports files saved in the Flash XML Graphics format (FXG). You can generate the FXG file from any document created in Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Illustrator, or Adobe Photoshop.
In fact, if you create your design using Photoshop or Illustrator, you can save yourself the step of exporting the FXG file. Flash Catalyst has an import feature that makes opening PSD and AI files a cinch! We’ll get to that in a moment.