AIRTIGHT INTERACTIVE

Image by Robert S. Donovan.

When working with other Flash developers, I am sometimes surprised when they are not aware of some dev tools that I consider essential. I thought it would be useful to list out the tools that I use everyday as a Flash Developer. All of these tools are free and cross-platform unless otherwise stated. None of this will be news to the seasoned Flash devs, but some will find it useful. Let me know in the comments if I’ve missed anything.

Applications

Desktop apps and browser plugins.

• Firebug. This firefox plugin lets you view a HTML page’s elements load in realtime, among other things. Great for debugging dynamic data loading into a SWF. Essential for any web developer.
• Flash Tracer. Firefox plugin to view your SWF traces in the browser. Invaluable.
• MAMP (Mac) and WAMP (PC). MAMP is a one-click install personal webserver for the Mac. WAMP is the same for Windows. Useful for debugging load timing issues on your own box, especially when combined with a web-proxy throttler.
• Charles and ServiceCapture. These web-proxies allow you to view your SWF’s dynamic data loads in realtime. They also offer throttling, which lets you simulate slow web connection speeds (both are not free).
• IETester (PC). Allows you to run IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP. Good for debugging IE6 weirdness.
• Flash Builder. Everyone has their own favorite ActionScript editor, and this is mine. If you are still coding in the Flash Actions panel, now is the time to stop – you won’t regret it! Flash Builder is an Adobe product so you know it’s going to be well maintained. As a bonus it uses the industry standard Eclipse UI, so the shortcuts you learn with it can be transferred over if you choose to develop in some other programming language later (not free).
• Versions (Mac) and Tortoise SVN (PC). Source control is not necessary for smaller projects, but if you value your dev time and want to be able to keep multiple versions of your code available, it is a must. Versions (not free) is the nicest SVN client ever, and Tortoise is the most popular Windows SVN client.
• Free Ruler(Mac) and JR Screen Ruler (PC). These little apps allow you to measure pixels on the screen without having to do a screen grab.
• Pathfinder (Mac). A Finder replacement that is hard to live without once you are used to it. Includes tabs and a split pane for dragging and dropping. Not really a Flash dev specific tool, but I’ve seen enough people be amazed at seeing tabs in the Finder that it was worth including here (not free).

Flash Libraries

Why re-build the wheel? There are tons of great, free ActionScript libraries made available by generous and talented developers.

• TweenLite. The fastest, most robust and easiest to use Tween library out there.
• Away3D. The best 3D library out there. Although Papervision seems to win all the awards, from my experience Away3D has the most features and has the best documentation. Also has a great user forum.
• casalib. A great collection of robust utility classes. Check here before writing that utility class!
• SWFAddress. Has quickly become an industry standard for building flash sites that support deep-linking. Handles lots of gnarly browser specific issues so you don’t have to. Built on SWFObject which is so useful I didn’t even list it here
• Hi-ReS! Stats. A very handy little class to show when your SWF framerate is choking.
• BIT-101 MinimalComps. A set of ActionScript-only UI components for use in non-Flex projects. Very easy to use and small in filesize. The code is also worth looking at to see how to build a super simple component framework.
• as3corelib. A collection of utility classes by Adobe for handling encoding and serialization among other things.

Bookmarks

To round out this list, here are 3 webpages that I am always hitting:

• ActionScript 3.0 Language Reference. Why memorize stuff when you can look it up? Flash Player 10 version is here.
• Flash Player Version Test. When your client wants to know why your awesome site looks like a grey box on their crappy PC, send them here first.
• BrowserLab. A great free resource from Adobe to test your site on multiple browsers/OSs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Flash, Useful. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.