Then I tried doing what you mentioned in the post, still a tedious job.

Looking forward to an easier roundtrip.

We are working to improve this. Trust me :)

In the meantime, could you provide a utility to ease the transfer of projects? Maybe even an update to FC that would allow it to open projects modified by FB?

Basically, if you keep the same project/solution/file structure throughout your lifecycle/tooling this isn’t event a topic for debate, it just works as all the Silverlight developers will happily tell you.

C’mon adobe, if it’s hard you need to go back and understand why you made it ‘hard’. You own the whole stack!

signed, “frustrated and waiting FC developer…”

As designer as well as developer you have often enough to face the problem that, like Jeff described above, you will need to change some design data in a way only FC can do..

not even to speak of the usual customers requests to add this and that or change something.

and then not being able to work on ther already advanced project just fails.

And since FC really improved, its is leaving its status as pure small application creator, and by that it needs defenitally the round-tripping to get fully access to all that its capable to do.

I hope that the existing import-funtion for FXP files in FC, and the general round-tripping policy adobe shows off with the new CS5 releases are a good sign that this will be included.

And i kinda am not understanding why it didn’t already happen with the CS5 releases, as they here really build up roundtripping in between almost all apps.

*cheers*

Hey, I’m just reviewing this product for my company and just wanted to say I whole heartedly agree with @Faz

This is such a step in the right direction for Adobe but totally let down by not having this feature. I’m not a MS fan, but I too have used Expression blend and VS and it just works… Adobe need to get this right or suffer the consequences I’m afraid. Which would be a real shame.

The whole Flash, Silverlight and HTML5 arguments go by the wayside if developer tools (and browser support) exists to ensure we’re encourage in one direction or another. The ability to have round-trip development between developer and designer is a big factor in encouraging that direction.

All that said, this is an interesting idea and thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Regards

I don’t think anyone thinks that this feature is low-priority. But I think many believe that even without this feature (yet) it is still a great tool to have it in your toolbox.

Having experienced the full workflow between Expression Blend and Visual Studio for Silverlight projects and seen the workflow interaction between UX/Graphics and the developers, this is what FC/FB ‘must’ be aiming for in v1. It’s crippled without it. There I was Beta2 would have it in :-(

If you can resolve this as well as the performance issues in the product it’ll be a game changer. Until then, I’m a seriously frustrated fan!

My job is to prototype user-experiences as fast as possible – mainly to put into user testing. I’m presently evaluating Catalyst and Flex.

Despite having a degree in computer science, my background is heavy in graphic design experience, so Catalyst looks like a great tool to me, but round-trip editing looks like it would be pretty crucial. Let me give you an example of why:

1. Made some artwork into a button component in FC and attached an interaction to it.

2. Noticed that the cursor didn’t change to a hand when hovering over the button. Couldn’t find a place to change this in FC.

3. Opened up the FXP in FB, found the button and added ‘buttonMode=”true” ‘ to the code. All good, hand cursor shows when over the button now.

Problem is, now I want to go back into FC to add some more states. FC won’t let me…

I understand the problems outlined above – it would be easy to add stuff in FB that would be very difficult to represent in FC. However, I think it would be worthwhile allowing folks to take a FXP back into FC and give a warning like “This project has been modified outside FC, these modifications may make this project unstable”.

In a case like the one outlined above, where the code modification is fairly innocuous I can’t see why FC should have any big problems. If someone is skilled enough to be modifying an FXP outside FC, they’re informed enough to know how risky taking it back into FC is. Let the user make the decision.

BTW, I’m seeing a lot of potential for FC to make my life a lot easier – fast enough to prototype on the fly, good enough code generation to build on later.

:) – jeff

[warning: Adobe N00b just arrived from Java world -- please forgive :-) ]

What other alternatives are there?

My initial thought was similar to Georges’ using separate projects. E.g. Fc project(s) have all design files never to be touched by the developers. Fb project(s) integrate them by kicking the Fc files off after injecting hooks (handlers, etc) in (perhaps by finding pre-agreed points by ID — rather akin to a JavaScript approach).

Is this possible? (could someone point me at references if this is common lore that I just haven’t seen yet? please + thank you!)

Cheers, R.

I am not calling it a round-trip, but a solution for the time being. Thanks!

This is an excellent idea :) Why not creating an Eclipse plugin? Any one with Eclipse/Java experience wants to take up on this task?

I think this is a valuable point of view. thanks for your input.

So in a recent case a designer put together a new shopfinder design for our website. Instead of putting it into the existing project, she created a new project just for the shopfinder module.

So working in Fc on smaller projects eliminates the urge to have the ability to round-trip back and forth. It would be great to have it, but in my opinion, it’s not the most needed feature.

And because you can already show a Fc project to a customer as a working prototype you only send it to the developer as soon as it’s finished.