Yes, Adobe made some changes to the file format when they went from Beta 1 to Beta 2. That’s what is causing the incompatibility. I recorded the Lynda.com video before Beta 1 was released.

In addition, there are also some user interface changes that Adobe made which could make the training hard to follow at some points. Alas, these are the challenges with trying to record training on products so early in development that version 1.0 of the product isn’t even out yet

I believe that Beta 2 files will be able to be opened in the final version of Flash Catalyst though.

I’m not sure about the font issues you’re seeing, but of course, you can just open the file in Illustrator, update the fonts and resave if you’d like.

I’m glad that you enjoyed the Flash Catalyst training — there’s more on the way

Mordy

When I look at the time stamps of your fxp files they say May 19th 2009. Are they beta 1 files? And if so the question arrises what to do with fxp files of my beta 2 in the future? Will I be able to open them in FC beta 3 or in a final version?

Then I tried to import the ai and psd files. That, at least, was working. With a “minor” glitch: a message popped up saying “Incompatible fonts: Myriad Roman” when I was trying to import “forecast_widget.ai”. It should have said “Myriad Roman” missing, because there is no “Roman” styled Myriad installed on my system.

I’m running FC on a German Mac OS X 10.5.8

So actually, you WON’T be able to do that with Flash Catalyst (sigh). Flash Catalyst produces SWF files based on the Flex framework, not ActionScript — so you can’t embed ActionScript code into a Flash Catalyst. In fact, Flash Catalyst lets you VIEW the code it writes for you, but it’s read-only — you can’t embed your own code.

In the case of AS code that can track click-thrus (as used in ad banners), the only way to do that would be to open your Flash Catalyst project in Adobe Flash Builder, where you could add it there.

In general, using Flash Catalyst for ad banners isn’t a good idea, because the Flex-based framework it uses requires support files and additional libraries, and generally produces large SWF files — and most sites that use SWF for advertising have strict rules for file size limits — something you’d have a really hard time dealing with if you use Flash Catalyst. For ad banners (or advertising in general), your best bet is still Flash Professional.

Flash Catalyst is great for microsites, widgets, rich internet applications and site portfolios. I also think we’re in the early stages of distribution for these kind of SWF files – Adobe has put some pretty cool stuff in the FlashPlayer 10 version and as things begin to develop over the next 1-2 years, I think we’ll see more infrastructure in place not only in the browser, but as the adoption of AIR takes off as well. For example, Adobe just last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona announced that AIR will run on the mobile Android platform.

Mordy

http://www.indesignusergroup.com/chapters/vancouver/events/1376/