The Flash CS4 Actionscript Panel Stinks?
See now, this is the sort of stuff that really bugs me about the Flash IDE sometimes.
Now personally, I don’t care about the IDE actionscript panel all that much. I regularly use FlashDevelop as my primary edtior.
The way I see it - is that this is somewhat of a cop-out on Adobe’s behalf. There are several things they could do to improve this editor, and to neglect it and just say “use another editor” is a cop-out.
Sure, you really, really should not be using it as if it is some kind of robust OO actionscript class editor. I don’t have the “solution”, but I sure think they have other options than just saying “we couldn’t get to it”.
One suggestion I think would be pretty sweet, is if they were to acquire something like TextMate or E Text Editor and integrate it somehow into the AS panel. That would be pretty cool.
I also don’t want to take away from the fact that the improvements in Flash CS4 from what I have seen - are fantastic and significant. But with a release this large, from a company as large as Adobe. Sorry to say, but I expect the best when they have huge product releases like this.
I have a laundry list of other tiny little things flash bugged me in the CS3 launch of flash last year, that I will hold off on mentioning until I see if they’ve changed them or not.
But back to Lee’s point , he is right that you really should consider looking into using an external editor. I use FlashDevelop and I love it.
jon said,
November 29, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
I can’t even use Flash CS4 because of the awkward panel interface, I often can’t access panels because they get buried and minimize and become lost amoungst each other.. I can’t find good places for them, it’s as if there is no room for the standard panels I always use. I absolutely hate it. The whole program seems slower too. I downgraded back to Macromedia Flash 8, which I love and have no issues with.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Elliot said,
April 14, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
CS4 AS editor is buggy as hell!
I used to use it for everything but I cannot rely on it. if you use the auto format button it removes pieces of code, and the check syntax gives you errors that aren’t really there!
Philip said,
March 27, 2009 @ 1:59 pm
Well, not being a Flash programmer I really don’t have any comment about flash’s AS editor because I’m developing in Flex and doing 99% of my AS in Fex Builder and it seems a lot better than Flash. I love Flex and Flex Builder 3…I’m developing an new version of Sportz-Photo.com using Flex and the Cairngorm Archietech Framework…There are some awesome tools like amfphp and AS3FlexDB Kit…
Rapid Prototype said,
February 7, 2009 @ 10:33 pm
Interesting comments on the different Flash editors.
Matt said,
January 6, 2009 @ 10:02 am
I don’t know of a package as nice as FlashDevelop, but I have been building my latest project using BareBones’ BBEdit and the mxmlc compiler, and it’s been working great so far!
It would be nice to integrate into the IDE though, I have this habit of saving my file, and then Cmd-Return to build — which of course just adds a line break in BBEdit!
Benny said,
September 26, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
I myself hate it to be forced to use an external tool for action script editing. I do want/need advanced editing features to get my job done quickly and efficient. All projects I do are always a combination of flash design and related action scripting. To be forced to do that with two non integrated tools doesn’t serve an optimal workflow and is a daily frustration for me. Maybe for a big company where design and development tasks are done by different persons this isn’t such a big deal but if you run a one men show it is!
Furthermore I don’t get it why it is such a big deal to come up with a mature editor (or buy one), this editor (component) could be reused amongst all the Adobe tools that have some form of coding needs like Dreamweaver, FlexBuilder and of course Flash. And if this is really a too big challenge for Adobe then they could consider to provide an editor API in their tools so that third parties could fill in the gap (in an now possible integrated way).
senocular said “Lets face it. Flash is a designer tool, not a development tool.”
Well that’s what Adobe seems to be moving the Flash tool to, but historically it has been both a designer AND a developers tool and that’s the way I always used it to my very content. But now AS has become a much more mature language - and customers/projects are more demanding - I would expect the integrated editor to follow suit. Since CS3 I get the feeling Adobe is trying to force the developers to other solutions forgetting that a lot of us freelancers or small agencies wear both the developer hat as the designer hat.
Steven Hargrove said,
September 26, 2008 @ 7:32 pm
@Julien - I’m just saying, from a company the size of Adobe, one would expect more than the likes of notepad with case insensitive code completion.
P said,
September 26, 2008 @ 1:22 pm
I heard NotePad was prety cool.
zedia.net said,
September 26, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
I much prefer that Adobe put time and efforts in giving me more possibilities with the flash player than that they improve the ActionScript panel.
John said,
September 26, 2008 @ 11:55 am
Mark - for Mac, I’ve heard a lot of good things about FDT, but I prefer FlexBuilder. I don’t think anything quite matches FlashDevelop, unfortunately, there is no Mac version. Although some people on Mac like it enough to use it under VMWare or Parallels.
senocular said,
September 26, 2008 @ 11:30 am
Lets face it. Flash is a designer tool, not a development tool. Their efforts this release went into a new UI, enhanced stage integration with 3D and video, and new tools like the IK and Deco tools. If you’re interested in writing code, use Flex or another dedicated code editor. It’s not hard to hook up external classes to a project made in Flash.
julien said,
September 26, 2008 @ 10:40 am
Personally, I think integrating mate or ‘e’ in flash would be the weirdest thing to do, Flash is Flash, it’s not a text editor, … and speaking about text editors, when you read people’s “wishlist” since a couple of months for THE text editor, it’s really nonsense, people would like the editor to do their job, and possibly do it better than they actually can …
Mark McDonnell said,
September 26, 2008 @ 10:35 am
Can you let me know if there is a Macintosh equivalent as FlashDevelop is only available for PC. If you could email me that would be great.
Many thanks.
M.