FDT 3.0

Developed for internal by PowerFlasher, the FDT (Flash Development Tool) wowed freelancers so much that the company decided to launch it as a commercial product. Like Flex Builder, FDT is built upon the Eclipse framework and therefore has many similarities with other Eclipse-based tools, not least JDT upon which it is based.

FDT 3.0 assists ambitious Flash-developers in many ways The Eclipse plug-in FDT 3.0 helps single developers and teams equally and has a lasting effect on code structure and productivity. FDT 3.0 combines features like no other IDE for Flash- and ActionScript development.

Background Check

If you search the web a little bit, you’ll find out that Powerflasher – the company behind FDT – is Germany’s biggest Multimedia Agency specialized in Flash. In 1997 the agency was founded by Carlo Blatz, best known for speaking appearances at several conferences all over the world. You might ask yourself: What drives a Multimedia Agency to develop a development tool?

In the beginning the team was small and could handle the projects using the tools that were available. But soon – confronted with a growing demand – the company`s projects became more complex and asked for more advanced tools. Team-work and time were always of the essence.

Most of the developers were familiar with Java and the JDT and missed the comfort of this IDE in their Flash IDE. So they planned and conducted a plug-in for Eclipse which was able to take over many small but yet time-consuming tasks. FDT – Flash Development Tool – was born. Powerflasher shared FDT with every Flash developers and freelancers they knew. The demands and desires of this huge community were crucial to FDT's further development and their influence made FDT big. By now more and more flash developers everywhere on the globe certify FDT to be a breath-taking tool: fun to work with, easy to handle, simplifying workflows, increasing efficiency and structuring source code well.

Developing Flash Applications with FDT 3.0

Over the last ten years the technology Flash changed. What once was a perfect way to simply animate graphics has now become a powerful way to design sophisticated applications. Unfortunately Flash's own development environment doesn’t keep up with this change. That’s where FDT 3.0 comes into play. Many amenities like code completion for individual classes, automatically included imports or live syntax checking and error highlighting are only a few features you won’t give up when you get used to them. FDT supports both ActionScript 2 and ActionScript 3 and lists the content of AS3-library-files (SWCs) neatly arranged in an explorer window. Many templates and an individually configurable formatter make coding a lot easier and help disorganised coders to organise their source-code. Errors can be avoided by code completion. If an error occurs, it will be highlighted and FDT suggests how to fix these errors. If required, the FDT implements the fixes automatically. In contradiction to FlexBuilder the error checking and syntax highlighting happens in real-time – no compiling required.

Several quick views of structures and data types help to survey classes and allow an easy navigation from one code-block to another code-block. Very helpful and powerful is the Refactoring. This feature assists you when you rename packages, classes, methods or attributes or when you move classes. If desired, FDT adjusts the affected sources automatically. All things considered FDT 3.0 offers coding comfort and is the perfect solution for Flash- and AS-developer who consider themselves satisfied with only the best.

Give-and-take

Since March 2008 FDT 3.0 is available in three different versions: Basic, Professional and Enterprise. The difference between those three versions lies in their feature range. All available features are described thoroughly at the FDT homepage: http://fdt.powerflasher.com. Demo movies show some of the core features in action.

FDT 3.0 Basic is available for 299 Euro and is the perfect fit for upcoming professionals. FDT 3.0 Professional is available for 399 Euro. It brings all the basic features and additionally provides developers with Quick Views, SWC-Browsing and high-speed search and type hierarchy. First choice for developer-teams or developers who have to deal with complex projects is FDT 3.0 Enterprise. This sophisticated product is equipped with advanced refactoring features and a debugger. A qualified support service responding to inquiries within 24 hours tops complete the offer. Students are entitled to purchase FDT for half of the regular price. As mentioned above, FDT is close to the Flash-community, that's why Powerflasher supports open source projects. All OS developers get FDT 3.0 Enterprise for free. All they need to do is to visit the FDT website and fill in a registration form. And nobody has to buy a big in a poke: a 30 days trial version is available online and on the magazines CD.

Future Events

One of the major additions coming with one of the next free updates will be a MXML parser. This enables FDT to handle MXML files within ActionScript projects so that features like auto-completion are also available for classes defined in MXML. In a second step the implementation of a text editor is planned. This will offer the chance to use the FDT features which are currently available for AS-coding with MXML projects. Right know Powerflasher concentrates on an extended support for Macs. Few FDT features don't work properly on Macs. With the next free update those problems will be fixed.

FDT-team

You can chat with Nico Zimmermann, founder of FDT and still one of the core developers at Flashbelt, Minneapolis on June 9th, 2008. If you would like to see FDT in action please contact Ariane Lucke-Vossel, alv@powerflasher.de and fix your appointment.