Monthly Archive for December, 2009

New Features of Flash CS5 IDE

Published on December 16, 2009 in Flash Player. 0 Comments Tags: .

Today I came across a really nice walkthrough by Lee Brimelow (@leebrimelow) of the Flash CS5 IDE:

http://gotoandlearn.com/play?id=118

He demos and discusses the features with some detail, or you can read my cliffs notes version below:

  • Major upgrades to video support in the IDE
    • Create cuepoints in the IDE
    • Play the video while its on the stage
    • Manipulate the video on the stage while its playing
    • More video player skins
    • Live video player skin switching
  • Font Embedding Improvements
    • New Panel UI
    • Embedded fonts are globally managed through the new panel
  • XFL Format
    • Replaces FLA format
    • FLA data is contained in multiple XML source files
    • Can version control XML files rather than binary FLAs
  • SWF File size History is tracked
  • Code Snippets included to implement simple functionality quickly
  • Editor now has code hinting and completion for all imported classes (just like Flash Builder)
  • Selecting an error in the Compiler Errors brings you to the source
  • Tight integration for code editing with Flash Builder
  • New brushes for Deco tool (Designers will love these)
  • SWFObject2 used as default embedding method (just like Flash Builder)
  • TLF (Text Layout Framework) gives you tons of options for doing awesome things with text
    • flow text between multiple TextFields, TextAreas
    • Multi-column text fields
    • Possibly automatically scrollable
    • Easier Internationalization, including right to left (Arabic) and vertical (Japanese)
    • Highlighting conforms to customized text flow

And a bonus!  Here is a walkthrough of how to export your ActionScript project as a native iPhone application!  http://gotoandlearn.com/play?id=116

FlexPMD

Published on December 10, 2009 in Flex and Programming. 0 Comments Tags: , .

You probably haven’t heard about FlexPMD.  It’s an open source plugin from Adobe for Flex or Flash Builder.  You run it against your source code and it alerts you to “bad smells,” or potential bad practices, in your code.  These types of tools, from FlexPMD’s older brother, PMD from the Java world, and “Lint” from the C world have been around for a long time, checking over the shoulders of developers, and frustrating computer science students who are required to compile with no lint warnings.  (All my programming homework in college had this requirement, ugh!)

I ran FlexPMD against the source code for brandondement.com and was really impressed with the results.  Some of the results were of the “I don’t care about that” variety, but Flex PMD can be configured to ignore those, and many more were in the “Oh really?  You’re right!” category.  I’ve only just begun to use it, but even then I would highly recommend it for anyone who’s committed to becoming a better programmer.  More information about installation and use can be found at:

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexpmd/FlexPMD+Eclipse+plugin