The Ultimate Flash Development Environment

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by in Blog

I’m going to start this probably rambling and definitely arguable post by saying there is No Such Thing. There.

Flash projects come in many guises, and what tools you use on one may be unsuitable for another, so instead, I’m going to list and explain my personal choices, hopefully if you are new to Flash, or venturing out of the Flash IDE and looking for a more substantial development environment, you’ll find this useful…

First, lets get this out of the way… Mac or PC? (I’m not going to go into linux here – I haven’t used it for flash development, and I’m not convinced anyone sane would) ;)

I use a Mac. I haven’t used a Windows box for around 3 years. Initially this wasn’t a choice, I was given a Mac to work on in a new job and after 2 weeks realised I’d never go back. Other people have a different opinion. The rest of this post is relating to Mac based development but most tools are available for both platforms.

So, to the specific tools. Firstly, the basics, you are going to need some portion of Adobe’s Creative Suite, at the minimum Flash, but in all likelihood, at least Photoshop and Illustrator as well… I’m lucky enough to have been bought the Master Edition and (since the latest updates at least) all seems well and I’m finding myself becoming familiar with Soundbooth, Premier (not so good), After Effects etc as well. It’s unfortunate that Adobe seem to have a monopoly on these products, but whilst I have some minor gripes with CS4, overall it’s not a bad suite of software at all.

So far so good. Now to your coding setup.

On the Mac you have 2 decent, if subtly different options. FlexBuilder 3 (soon to be FlashBuilder 4) and FDT – Flash Development Tool. There are a few different versions of FDT, with increased features the more you spend, I’d say the Professional level edition is the minimum for serious development, and Enterprise being optimal if you can afford it (you’ll get proper support), although all the crucial features are included in the Pure or Basic editions. (If you work on an a PC, and are interested in a free option, check out FlashDevelop I’ve not personally used it, but have heard some good things).

I’m still evaluating the FlashBuilder Beta and while it has taken on some of the features (the change of name is clearly a change of intent, not just a rebranding) of FDT, browse SWC’s in the file explorer for instance, I feel that in terms of quality of the actual code editor FDT is still the best option, FlashBuilder still has to wait for a save before any problem highlighting which just seems clunky and irritating and it’s slower to compile than FDT. That said, FDT’s implementation of an MXML editor isn’t usable yet, and if its Flex or AIR that you are developing for, then its FlashBuilder you need.

Both products are available as standalone applications, or as Eclipse IDE plugins. Which you choose to use is up to you, I use FDT as a plugin and FlashBuilder as a standalone. Mainly because I once tried to install FlexBuilder as a plugin, and had all manner of problems making it play nice. This may well not be an issue for others.

There are two other fundamental tools I use every day, both as plugins to my Eclipse environment.

First up… Aptana, fundamentally it is a frontend web development suite, available in both a standalone application or Eclipse plugin. It makes for easy XML / CSS creation and editing without leaving Eclipse. It is vastly more powerful than I need really but since installing it a few months ago, I’ve used it every day in some form or another. There are other tools out there that do the same job, and are probably a bit simpler, but its a very useful edition to my workflow.

This leaves Subclipse. I’ve used several separate applications to manage my subversion repositories but since switching to an integrated solution, I’ll not go back. Put simply, Subclipse pushes the handling of SVN directly into the Flash Explorer of FDT / FlashBuilder. All commits, updates and merges can be handled from right inside your development IDE. On top of the obvious efficiency benefits with this approach, it is the best client I have used in terms of not b0rking repositories, and when one does inevitably get “a little confused”, makes it much easier to untangle it than with say, Versions. I haven’t had to recursively delete .svn folders and go through messy move / copy procedures for a long time… If you are so inclined, it also allows you to create local repositories; powerful stuff.

So, to summarise, the perfect flash development environment* is, pretty simple actually:

  • Adobe Creative Suite
  • Eclipse IDE (plugins: FDT, Aptana, Subclipse)

and if you are planning on working on Flex or AIR bits, you’ll need Flex/FlashBuilder.

I should point out that FDT is more expensive than FlashBuilder, and it is perfectly possible to have a very usable environment in FlashBuilder, its just that, if you can afford it, or get your company to buy it for you, in my opinion, FDT is eventually where you’ll end up spending more time if you are writing pure AS.

*may or may not be true depending on your point of view ;)

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