flashcatalyst_225x50Adobe is quite well known for releasing designer tools. While Microsoft is more on the developer side. However when Bill Buxton who happens to be an excellent interface designer exhibited his magnificence in Microsoft Expression Blend at MIX09 conference which was held in March this year, that sent alarming signal to Adobe which said to them “Wake up”.

In response to that wake-up Adobe has released a web development tool which goes by the name Catalyst. Besides that, Adobe also highlighted the fact that Flex Builder has been renamed to Flash Builder 4. Flash Builder 4 IDE would be sold for a price that is yet to be announced. Currently it is available as a beta downlaod, of course free of cost.

Adobe is making claims that this development tool is expected to steal the limelight from Microsoft Expression Blend and is sure to attract designers. Even though Blend supports the importing of the file types of the most popular design tools: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, Catalyst provides support at the native level. Once the designer has completed building the final interface, this work can be handed over to the developer to put life into it and make it useful, by implementing logic in Flash Builder.

David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe said:

People are now expecting the same richness and ease of use in their workplace applications that they have in their daily Web experiences, but companies today are faced with strained development resources and less time to create intuitive applications.The new Adobe Flash Platform tools help solve this challenge by reducing time to market for generating compelling applications and content. Using Adobe Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst, developers and designers can now work together more productively to create rich experiences that employees, customers and partners expect.

To get hold of these latest tools, please visit Adobe Labs.