Tools for Flex and AS3 Development
Here’s tools that I use for Flex and AS3 development:
1. Flash Switcher for switching between Flash players. Actually, I don’t use this tool yet, but I plan to start using it soon. I just installed it after reading Oliver Merk’s post on it.
2. Charles for looking at HTTP traffic. If you aren’t using Charles, Service Capture, or something similar, you should download one of them now. It’s extremely useful for daily debugging. Charles has some additional features that I like to use, like the ability to test a SWF from a remote location.
3. tail for viewing flashlog messages. I know there’s a lot of GUI flashlog viewers out there, but I find that all I need is a window open with “tail -f flashlog.txt”.
4. FlexSpy for inspecting component properties. I don’t use it as often as I expected, but it helps to pinpoint components in new code and make design changes.
5. FlashMute for keeping me sane. This is a tool that’s really helpful if you want to keep your computer unmuted but work on any Flash applications with sound. Especially if that sound is the same thing, over and over and over. Update: I removed the FlashMute link for a bit, because I was very concerned with an alert from Symantec that it was installing Adware.BetterInternet on my machine. I just needed to email the creator to find out what was really happening. He has a long explanation on his site for why FlashMute is getting flagged as adware. But it’s not, so I’ll still be using it and enjoying it.
6. And, of course, FlexBuilder 3.
7. Apache Ivy – Helps you to manage your dependencies http://www.metadudes.com/?p=13
8. Ant – More or less obvious. Automatize whereever possible (Antennae, Your Own targets,…)
9. Flexunit – Not really a tool, but at least a unit test framework with proper support in creating junit reports and so on.
10. Flexcover – Still very alpha, but it already gives you first glimpse on your code coverage.
Flex-Mojos for building Flex with Maven, Hudson for continuous integration
http://flex-mojos.googlecode.com/
https://hudson.dev.java.net/
RIALogger for logging, though looking at ThunderBolt as well
http://renaun.com/blog/flex-components/rialogger/
http://code.google.com/p/flash-thunderbolt/
A great tool i use for Flex Introspection : KapInspect
http://lab.kapit.fr/display/kapinspect/Kap%20Inspect
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