I always try out any new ActionScript-targeted editor I hear about. Thus far the winners in my book have been PrimalScript and Eclipse. I mostly preferred PrimalScript because it could be a lightweight, single AS file editor or a full-blown coding IDE, depending on what you needed at the moment. Eclipse is powerful, but requires the installation of several plugins and a full blown project set up to just view and edit a single AS file, and was never quite as responsive as Primal.
A close third place was SEPY, but it just never felt quite robust or solid enough for me. I could never get code hinting to work right, for example.
One I checked a while ago and dismissed, was FlashDevelop. It’s free and open source, but last time I checked into it, it was in its infancy, and not really ready for prime time flash development. But there’s been a bunch of posts on the OSFlash list, saying that FlashDevelop was “getting really good”. Time for another look…
One word: WOW!
This editor is solid. And has a ton of useful features. It integrates with MTASC and SWFMill and Flash 8 seamlessly. Even does in-editor syntax checking. It has project management features, file explorer, class tree, snippets, trace output capturing, bookmarks, AS2API documentation integration, and Flashout integration for viewing swfs right in the IDE. Those are just the features I’ve discovered in the first half hour or so of using it.
FlashDevelop makes MTASC compiling EASY. One of the biggest learning curves with MTASC for new users (I think) was learning all the command line parameters and figuring out all the necessary class paths and how to store all that stuff in a way that it could be executed easily. In FlashDevelop, building a project launches MTASC with all the necessary parameters automatically figured out for you! This creates a swf with your project name, which will show up in your project panel and then you can launch it right in the IDE. All you have to do is set the path to mtasc.exe in the program settings dialog, and hit F8 to build your project. Amazing.
Alternately, if you are not using a project and want to compile a file with MTASC, you can just do a “Quick MTASC Build”, which compiles the file with default parameters and launches the swf. If you want to specify some of the MTASC parameters manually, you simply add a comment with an @mtasc tag with some of the basic parameters, and it fills in all the rest, including all the classpath stuff. Example:
/** * @mtasc -swf "C:\Test.swf" -header 500:400:24:EFEFEF -main */
PrimalScript 4.1 will come out this spring and promises to have some very cool AS only features. But the battle of the editors just got a serious new competitor.
Yeah, it’s looking damn nice. It’s hard for me to get rid of ultraedit after so many years using it, but I’ll give this program a try.
Wow, been developing with it all day now, and I must say it’s beautiful. I miss the Ctrl-F3 (auto find next) and Find in Files most so far, but otherwise it is outstanding – Good find! 😀
IMO, this is more like the Flash IDE should be.
I also discovered FlashDevelop again not too long ago. Back when it was first released I could never get it to run at all, but you’re absolutely right, it’s maturing very nicely. I used Eclipse at work and on all my personal projects, but now it’s FD all the way. I even wrote an integrated help plugin for it, and I’m hoping to contribute more.
Wow is right. That thing is wicked fast. I like how you can open up any single AS file and it tracks down all of the imported or extended classes associated with it (without having to set up a full-on project). Very cool!
Will have to give FD a try. I’m a Primalscript fan and user but have had issues with the project feature, when adding an existing project with a lot of files it seems PS takes a while to ‘parse’ the project files…but maybe I’m doing something wrong?