Can I develop flash without buying anything?

Question

I'm a little lost here. I don't know flash, but I want to learn - especially since Adobe's opened up the spec. I don't want to learn badly enough to shell out for the real tools, though.

What sort of toolchain is available for flash/swf/flv/etc compiling, processing, converting, etc? What do I need to know, and where should I start?

Rich pointed out that there's lots of similar information in the question "Best way to learn Flash", so I'm closing this one, if you have something to add, put it in the other question. Thanks for all your help!

Answer 1

Please check out this site. Loads of information for you there...

http://osflash.org/

Answer 2

I personally don't know anything about flash but maybe FlashDevelop is what you are looking for.

Answer 3

Alright, it looks like Flashdevelop is one of the better options, and includes all the tools needed to develop a "hello world" (ie, no need to get and use a separate compiler).

There is a pretty good overview and tutorial from Flashmagazine, and many tutorials in the Flashdevelop forums.

Now I just need to dig in...

Answer 4

OpenLaszlo is great for developing flash applications. And free.

Answer 5

Ok, this deserves a new answer - OpenLaszlo is amazing. I'm going to have to check this out in more detail.

Thank you so much! This may be the solution to a related issue I've been mulling over for a few years!

Answer 6

This is very similar to a previous question, check that one out too: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21174/foss-tools-for-flash-development#25196

Answer 7

You can use the Flex SDK to develop Flash web sites. The mxmlc compiler is not just for Flex, it can be used to compile pure ActionScript code too.

Just make sure that the class you compile is a subclass of DisplayObject.

Answer 8

HaXe provides a free Flash compiler, but it lacks any kind of graphical IDE. The FlashDevelop site claims that FlashDevelop can integrate with HaXe.

Answer 9

I use a combination of MTASC to compile ActionScript code and SWFMill to combine compiled code and graphical resources into an SWF file. Admittedly, I did get the hang of ActionScript with the Flash IDE first, although I guess if you've already been programming for a while (especially JavaScript) it's easy enough to get the hang of.