SWCs and FlashDevelop

I'm thinking my Bits of Blender episodes are really cutting into my blogging time! But I thought I'd put a note out on my latest development approach in FlashDevelop for Flash/ActionScript 3 projects.

Previously, I'd set the main class as the Document class. Then I would set the parent class of Symbols to a corresponding ActionScript 3 class. I'd turn off the automatic declaration of variables so that it would force me to declare them in the class. This was nice because I would have a reminder at the top of the class that there were named instances in the symbol. I'd also add a "//MC" after the declaration as another reminder why I had those members set to "public" (I'd also set "//MC" as one of the tasks so I could quickly find all the named instances on the stage).

But for a recent project, I decided to go with compiling in FlashDevelop instead of Flash. When I'd used FlashDevelop for some Flex work last year, I was always impress with how quickly it compiled. Flash seems to take much longer. I think it may be because FlashDevelop uses the Flex compiler which is doing incremental compiles and Flash is always compiling everything (I'm guessing). So instead of working in Flash, my main Flash class is not running in Flash. Instead, I'm bringing all of my Flash assets in via an SWC. This gives me the advantage of compiling straight in FlashDevelop (and not having it switch to Flash, in fact Flash does not even have to be running). Plus, my compiles are faster. But there is one downside, now instead of my Flash symbol extending an AS3 class, I'm having my AS3 class extend the symbol. This means any named instances in the class are in the symbol instead of in the AS3 class, so I no longer have that reminder of the declaration at the top of the class. The instance is still declared and still appears in the code completion, but it just does not feel quite as good. Overall, though, this approach weighs in feeling like a better way to go.

FlexBuilder vs FlashDevelop

I've been using both FlexBuilder and FlashDevelop at work lately. I'm a long time FlashDevelop user, so I've a little bias towards it. Lately, I've been trying to look at FlexBuilder with regards to its strengths. I've found that if I am doing a lot of MXML coding, FlexBuilder is a better tool. You have a class view of the MXML and it is good about hinting for MXML attributes. If you need to do absolute positioning, FlexBuilder also wins because of it's WYSIWYG editor.

But when it comes to ActionScript 3 coding, I'd much rather be in FlashDevelop. FlashDevelop's code hinting is much more powerful, for example it does NOT require you to type exactly the right characters. It's a breeze to jump around to declarations of code as well as nice features for creating getters/setters, promoting local variable to member variables, and creating event handlers. The look and feel of FlashDevelop is also nice, it launches and runs quickly. It has good defaults, a user-friendly UI, and good choices for fonts (I guess that could fall under "good defaults"). FlashDevelop is also free.

FlashDevelop 3.0 Beta

Yes this has been the weekend of Flash technology...

I've been messing with ActionScript 3 today as I read through Essential ActionScript 3.0 and Programming Flex 2. Being one to be easily distracted by shiny objects, I found a shiny object. FlashDevelop 3.0 is in beta and it works pretty nicely. I'd messed with FlashDevelop 2.0 but hadn't used it in quite a few months. I downloaded 3.0 tonight and it works great with Flash CS3! You can create a Flash IDE project from a template. It works better than the Flash code editor (so did the previous version). It makes coming up to speed on the new APIs much easier.

FlashDevelop

I just discovered a cool, open source tool for creating Flash (without Flash) called FlashDevelop. It is for folks who prefer coding to the Flash timeline. The UI for working with a project is very good, it is similiar to Visual Studio. You can view a project in class view, where each class shows what it extends, imports, its methods, and properties. It makes it very easy to jump around in a class or even jump up the inheritance heirarchy to look at the method stubs of the parent. The code completion works for the classes you create and for other classes you import(like Tween). It uses MTASC as the compiler, which can help catch errors.

Give it a try. Here is a good introduction to the tool at flashmagazine.com. You'll appreciate it even if you only use it as an editor for ActionScript (and not for the entire development of a project).