Creating a Four-State Button with Flash Catalyst CS5

Creating a Four-State Button with Flash Catalyst CS5

Flash Catalyst CS5 is a brand-new addition to Creative Suite. And Flash Catalyst is all about workflow.

In my book , I introduce Flash Catalyst by noting that one audience for Catalyst is illustrators who are "designing in a large environment with a rigid division of labor and an army of programmers and database geeks." In that situation, Catalyst artwork is handed off to Flash Builder 4 coders, who can integrate illustrations seamlessly into their applications.

But Catalyst can fit into another workflow: You can use Catalyst to generate interactive Flash objectssuch as a four-state buttonand pop those Flash objects directly into a Dreamweaver website. The vast army of small scale web designers will appreciate that side of Catalyst.

In the book, I explore in detail the dynamic synergy between Illustrator, Photoshop, and Catalyst. For this article, we want to focus on adding interactivity in Catalyst, so we'll skip the process of integrating Illustrator artwork. Instead, we'll create a simple button right in Catalyst, using Catalyst's essential drawing tools. Then we'll make that button display differently in the four statesnormal, hovered, clicked, and active (or some variation of those states)and we'll embed that button into a Dreamweaver web page. This process isn't quite as intuitive as you might wish, so I've included some detailed steps to guide you.

Again, we're going to bypass the Illustrator/Photoshop part of the workflow I just described, in order to focus on creating interactivity with Catalyst. But in a more real-world situation, you'd likely create button artwork in Illustrator (video tutorials) and then pop it into Catalyst for activation.

Generating the Four-Step Flash Button

Let's begin by using Catalyst's minimalist toolset to create artworka button and textvideo tutorials. I can dispense with a quick intro to the Catalyst interface, because the learning curve for acclimating to the Catalyst environment is a short, flat line, and navigating through Catalyst's very limited toolset is easy.

Here are the steps:

On the Flash Catalyst splash screen, choose New Project from Illustrator AI File or From Adobe Photoshop PSD File. If you don't have a button graphic handy in either of those programs, click the Adobe Flash Catalyst Project button in the Create New Project section of the splash screen. Name the project (I'm using 4-state_button as a filename). For the Artboard size, enter 200 in the Width box and 50 in the Height box. Click OK in the New Project dialog to launch Flash Catalyst.

Press U on your keyboard to activate the rounded rectangle tool. (This tool is also available from Catalyst's very limited drawing toolbar, which is always visible.) Draw a rounded rectangle large enough so that you can type a bit of text on it. After you draw the rounded rectangle, the Properties panel displays parameters for this shape. Use the following values or invent your own (video tutorials): fill color: yellow

stroke color: red

stroke weight: 6

width: 200

height: 50

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