IDE for developping in ActionScript (Flash). Any suggestions ?

Question

Hi,

I started to work with Adobe Flash a few days ago and I'd say that the code editor lacks a few features before even being considered as an IDE (it sucks actually).

Do you know any other solution for developing in Flash ? For AS3 coding only, I don't care about designer and timeline... I just want to work efficiently with the code.

Thank you !

Answer 1

I'm not a Flash dev, but I've heard of Sepy:

http://www.sephiroth.it/python/sepy.php

Answer 2

Check out the Open Source project. Never used it but maybe you will like it.

Answer 3

Check out this thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/55075/can-i-develop-flash-without-buying-anything#55303

Answer 4

Flex Builder is an IDE from Adobe built on top of the Eclipse platform. While it's pretty decent, it's also costly.

I just use the free Flex SDK and a text editor which can run external shell scripts. Then again, my last project had a somewhat complicated build process and I usually had to debug the applets live, so I didn't have much to gain from using an IDE.

Answer 5

I was recently looking for an ActionScript 3 IDE as well, but I didn't find the links on http://osflash.org/ to be particularly helpful. That site used to have good information regarding the once-popular FAME setup (Flashout/ASDT/MTASC/Eclipse), but some of those tools are outdated (MTASC is only ActionScript 2) and there are better open-source options now.

For coding ActionScript 3 in a free IDE, you should consider AXDT. It's a set of plug-ins for Eclipse. It provides syntax highlighting, code completion, outlining, etc. and it uses the open-source Flex SDK from Adobe.

Answer 6

I'm surprised nobody has come up yet with FlashDevelop:

http://www.flashdevelop.org/

Probably in the top 2 of AS code editors. It's also free, the problem is it's Windows only.

Then, if you like Eclipse, there's another really good editor called FDT:

http://fdt.powerflasher.com/

But this one you have to pay for. From what people say it's totally worth the money, I don't use it simply because I don't like Eclipse and when I tried it in Linux it had various glitches here and there.

Cheers,

Juan

Answer 7

You could also look into Haxe. It is a variant of AS with the ability to compile to SWF and alternatively compile into JavaScript, PHP, and Neko (apache) code. It is also free. They have a good list of free IDE's as well. Look here: http://haxe.org/

Answer 8

The truth is that you never have to use flash or its ilk for code editing. You can set the classpath in your publish settings inside of flash and point it to a directory of .as3 files and it will automatically pull them into your project.

Then, you just have to choose one of your classes as 'main', and call it from inside of flash. All of your code except for this one tiny snippet (and your preloader code of course) is outside of flash. You can edit it with emacs or vim or Eclipse or whatever you are most comfortable with.

-D

Answer 9

Netbeans has a nice plugin to develop actionscript. Actually most of the actionscript that I have done has been in textpad with the language syntax plugin. very simple and easy to use.

Answer 10

Also check MiniBuilder http://code.google.com/p/minibuilde