I did two main things over the break: learned C# and played with Flash Catalyst. For the first, I highly suggest Head First C# – great, great book. With the MAX announcements I got excited about the Flex and C# worlds coming together so I’m looking to pump out some data services examples with the new .NET stuff. But I also wanted to make the most out of Flash Catalyst and since it’s an early build, I noticed that as the content I created got more complex, Flash Catalyst slowed down. So I asked Cory West, the engineering manager for some performance tips when using Flash Catalyst. A couple of these are pretty obvious, but if you’re running into issues, it’s good to keep these in mind:

1. Turn off “auto effects” for all your transitions. This is a two-step process for an existing document: 1) from the “Timelines” menu, make sure “Auto Effects for New Transitions” is UNCHECKED, and 2) make sure auto effect generation is off for all existing transitions (this is the weird toggle button on each transition that looks like an alien radiator)
2. Minimize the number of states in your document.
3. Minimize the number of objects you create.
4. Avoid using VERY large bitmap images unless you have a TON of RAM.

I’ve also got an in-depth walkthrough/tutorial that I’ll be posting here in text form and screencast form that should help cover most of the features in the MAX release.

Related posts:

1. Roundup of the Flash Catalyst News
2. Flash Catalyst on the Edge
3. The Flash Platform (again) and Hello Flash Catalyst
4. Measuring RIA Performance
5. WPF, WPF/E, DHTML, Flex performance test