Comments on: Coding in Flex Builder, Compiling in Flash Authoring

By: jp

jp — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:34:24 +0000

You can use the debugger in Flex Builder for apps compiled with the Flash IDE. Be sure to select “Permit Debugging” from the publish settings. You may want to unselect it for production as it does add to the size of the file. Check this link:
http://bigbadcode.com/2008/04/10/flexbuilder_for_flash/

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:20:26 +0000

Hi Adam,

I agree. You may be interested in the follow up post I created at http://www.benclinkinbeard.com/2009/09/coding-in-flex-builder-compiling-in-flex-builder-a-better-flash-workflow/.

Ben

By: adampasz

adampasz — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:29:48 +0000

I’m with Troy. Compiling in Flash IDE is next to worthless without the Flex Debugger. I use the debugger constantly as I’m developing. I hardly ever write trace statements anymore because of it.

By: Coding in Flex Builder, Compiling in Flex Builder: A Better Flash Workflow « benclinkinbeard.com

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:33:59 +0000

[...] couple of weeks ago, I posted about a workflow I had devised that allowed me to utilize Flash library symbols but still write my [...]

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:03:44 +0000

Nevermind, I have it figured out, update to come. Thanks for the tip!

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:15:14 +0000

Hi John,

Can you explain what you mean by “extend those SWCs”? I am interested to hear more.

Thanks!
Ben

By: John

John — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:17:14 +0000

Lee Brimelow, Adobe, did a series on Pimp My Eclipse where it built a set of plugins for Eclipse & the Flex Builder plugin that allowed you to test Flash from within Eclipse. It works really well. http://theflashblog.com/?cat=45

Like Troy, I’ve started to get out of having Flash as my build environment. I’m using Flash to export SWCs of just the movieclip assets. In an AS3 project, I then extend those SWCs to add any necessary logic for that assets.

By: Troy Gilbert

Troy Gilbert — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:16:36 +0000

But what I want — and I’m still shocked that Adobe hasn’t provided this out of the box yet — is to use Flex Builder as my debugger (or profiler) as well. Why, Adobe, why can we not do this?

I’ve fortunately avoided having to use the Flash authoring tool as my “build environment” (except for a few mini games — and it was painful there as well). In fact, I’ve gone as far as to completely develop a game inside of FB and then, once finished, build a FLA that references it (so that artists could later skin it).

The approach I’ve ended up with that works best is treating Flash as just a vector animation and drawing tool, just like Photoshop/Fireworks for raster assets, loading or embedding the SWFs. It’s a shame, because there’s a lot of power when the artists and coders can properly work together, both inside their best tools. Maybe we’ll see that finally with Flash Catalyst.