Flash Dev & Design Workflow

I am currently working with Eclipse / FDT, I used FlashDevelop allot whilst at Saatchi’s as I was on a Windows XP machine and really liked it. I never had the time to get into Eclipse and FDT back then. I’ve also never really had the need to give Flex Builder a try… I have had Flex Builder installed in the hope of having time to learn a little Flex, this has not happened.

The main reason that I am working with FDT is because I’m back on a Mac and whilst working  @ Frost* Design a few of the existing projects there were setup in Eclipse / FDT. After working on these existing projects so far FDT seems to be the best solution for Flash development on Mac OS X.

The main things that I like about Eclipse / FDT are:

  • Cross Platform! If I have to use winblows I can fairly seamlessly.
  • swc assets, the swc workflow in FDT is pretty cool. This guy has a nice little tutorial covering a simple swc workflow.
  • Navigating code within FDT, command clicking on a variable takes you up to that definition and then from there you can go in to that Class / Class generated from a swc, this has really helped when working with third party libraries, namely Papervision3D, so easy to have a quick read of the code that you are working with.
  • Integrated version control with subclipse, don’t really want to have extra app open to handle this, however Versions is nice .
  • Code formatting, you can define quite a few parameters (Preferences / FDT / Code Style / Formatter) and then just hit Command + Shift + F.
  • Compiling, I don’t have to have Flash open to compile, and its quick.
  • Debugging, the debugger (apparently the same as JDT and Flex Builder) in Eclipse / FDT  helped me solve some pretty nightmare problems in a recent project fairly quickly. This is an FDT Enterprise only feature.

Those are just what I can think of right now. Also Eclipse is very customisable.

Back to the actual work flow… Setup graphics in Flash, give MovieClips Class definitions, compile as a swc, add the swc to FDT’s Class path and you are ready to start using these elements. You just import these as Classes and you get all the great code completion that FDT offers, i.e. if you have a button that is a custom Class all of the available methods of that Class will show up.

It really is that straight forward. As I mentioned earlier there are some really good articles around outling this kind of work flow, here, here and some general FDT tip’s at blog.flashmech.net under the FDT category.


Comments:

  1. flashdude said on the 7. December 2009 at 09:07

    hey Shaun,

    I came across your info on FDT while trying to find some tutorials how to to set up loading assets from an external swf, basically that was how I worked when just using flash IDE to code. Now I got FDT I am finding a bit of trouble, can you give some simple direction on how to create the SWC and adding it to the FDT class path? THanks a bunch…

  2. Shaun said on the 7. December 2009 at 16:01

    @flashdude, make sure that your assets have Class definitions (right click the asset in the Library and check Export for ActionScript), then go to the publish settings in the Flash IDE under the Flash tab there is a check box, Export SWC, make sure you check that, the SWC will output to the same folder that your SWF is going to.

    Then in FDT create a libs folder copy your SWC to that folder. Then right click on the FDT project folder, select properties > FDT Build Path, then the Library tab. Click Add SWC’s, navigate to your libs/ SWC and select it, click OK.

    From there you will be able to instantiate any assets in your custom Classes. The Class definitions will show up in your code completion.

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