Aral Balkan

Andrew Edwards just posted a case study on his team's experience in using open source Flash tools as part of their development process on the PlaceAd RIA for TradingPost.com.au last year.

In the study, Edwards mentions how their use of open source tools saved them over 110 hours in compile time and allowed them to integrate better with their overall .Net development process. He also relates how it resulted in fewer bugs, "better code" and a "better development environment".

Andrew and his team were using the FAMES system, which is not fully open source. In the case study he recommends that developers today use the fully open-source AMES system instead (a call that I support fully!) :) You can find out more information on AMES and other open source Flash projects from OSFlash.org.

Although Andrew doesn't mention it in his case study, there is also a new solution emerging for using the Flash IDE as your primary development tool while reaping the benefits of a faster compile time and improved workflow. The two recently released open source projects that make this possible are John Grden's Flasc, for compiling in the Flash IDE using MTASC and Xavi Beumala's Alf (Advanced Library for Flash), a library panel extension that allows for filter-as-you-type and the editing of multiple symbol properties. This Alf + Flash IDE + Flasc suite (AFF) allows you to stay in the Flash IDE and yet take advantage of the workflow improvements provided by MTASC and Alf. Add to this setup the non-open source (but non-the-less excellent) gProject by Grant Skinner and you may just GAFF your next project in your favor :)

Comments

• Well, i've read your article, and got curious about AFF. After downloading AFF, i've tried it with a project fully working with the Flash IDE compiler, but when i compile with AFF i get the following errors:
  
  C:/Documents and Settings/joao/Local Settings/Application Data/Macromedia/Flash 8/en/Configuration/Classes/mx/transitions/Tween.as:1: characters 494-515 : Warning unsupported #include
  D:/webfuel/projects/onfashion_pt/fla/tools/md5.as:22: characters 0-6 : parse error Unexpected String
  
  Sorry about my ignorance, but since i'm using Tween.as from Macromedia, why is MTASC throwing an error? ...
  (this is the first time i'm using MTASC, and it's a completely new world for me :D)

  by dravenPT on 2006-03-29 14:48:50

• There some info on this in this email from the OSFlash mailing list.
  
  The OSFlash list and the MTASC list (see http://osflash.org/mtasc) would be good places to ask as someone will likely have encountered the same issue or resolved it previously. (Searching through the archives, is, of course, invaluable!)
  
  Hope this helps! :)

  by Aral Balkan on 2006-03-29 15:07:52

• Thanks for the write up Aral :). To be honest I haven't looked at Flasc or ALF yet. But I'll give them a shot for sure - I think that Flasc is a fantastic idea and a good bridge to bring people into the OS Flash world. For me though I'm too tied to Eclipse (AMES). Most of my development involves some kind of backend (php or even xml) and the ability to be able to do everything in the one editor is a real time saver.

  by ae on 2006-03-30 01:09:50

• Aral dude, you are so addicted to acronyms!
  
  Very cool though

  by DannyT on 2006-03-31 00:07:55

• Aral, thanks for your help (above)! I am new to the Flash open source world, and your work in this area is impressive!
  I am using now (since yesterday :-) ) a FAME workflow and enjoying it!
  It seems that everything is working fine (done some tutorials, and examples, without problems), except one little thing: it seems that the auto-completion feature in eclipse is not working, and i can't find out why. I know this is a "dumb" question, but eclipse (and asdt... and everything else :P) is new for me, and i wasn't able to activate this feature (i saw it working on flashout presentation video http://www.potapenko.com/flashout/presentation.html )... Can you give me a little help on this? :D
  
  Thanks in advance!!

  by João Saleiro on 2006-04-01 00:54:13

• And, by the way, just another dumb question:
  
  Is there a way to put Eclipse Help working with Macromedia documentation, by pressing F1, for example?

  by João Saleiro on 2006-04-01 01:02:44