What is the best (most productive) FLEX IDE?

apache-flex flash

25,874

Solution 1

Step by step debugging with variable view (and often with additional views like stack or global variables etc) is working in some IDEs. FlexBuilder, FDT3 Enterprise (only the enterprise version allows debugging), FlashDevelop (with extra plug-in). You can also try the (free!) Visual Studio plug-in Tofino (Ensemble), so you can debug inside Visual Studio.

But the best implementation for debugging I found in the Eclipse based IDEs. I'm not much impressed with FDT3 at all, so I recommend FlexBuilder for debugging (+profiling) and of course coding of AS and eventually (visual) design for MXML.

You can try FlashDevelop with the FDB plug-in. Many people prefer this free IDE for coding because of the nice code assist (IMHO the best of all known IDEs). Debugging is working with this plug-in but I wouldn't say that is the "most productive". But give it a try, its free!

Solution 2

There are only 2 I know:

Flex Builder

IntelliJ Idea

Solution 3

I've used them all and I can say without a doubt IntelliJ is the most powerful of them all. http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/flex_ide.html

It also is the best JS IDE, and unless you are using .NET on the back end it is probably the best IDE for your back end language. These guys really have it going on.

Solution 4

FlashDevelop from FlashDevelop.org is another free editor that appears to be gaining momentum. It's windows-only but seems to be pretty feature rich.

View more solutions

25,874

Author by

Suresh Kumar Narayanasamy

I started programming in high school, making my own versions of popular games (Lunar Lander). I wrote some parts in Assembly Language. I eventually bootstrapped a healthcare startup to $3M revenue. I began my professional career working for consulting firms, then started my own software company and created 17 programs providing speech therapy to stroke survivors . I marketed and sold it worldwide. A few years ago, I fully automated my company so it wouldn’t need my involvement, freeing me for new challenges. I’ve spent my career helping technical and non-technical stakeholders understand each other’s needs. A few years ago, I returned to consulting, sharpening my skills in areas that I most enjoyed as a business owner. As I took classes and read a wide range of books, what particularly resonated was the importance of listening. For example, each sale happens in the prospect’s mind. They know what they want. They’ll tell us if we ask and listen with genuine curiosity. I first learned this selling our software. After I explained what a patient needed, caregivers often asked “how did you know exactly what we need?”. I just smiled, never revealing my secret: I asked curious questions. You told me. I listened. It turns out, that’s helpful in all sales, and all communication. I’ve loved consulting with a variety of businesses, but I miss learning & growing with a team working toward a common purpose. My Resume Portfolio

Updated on July 05, 2022

Comments

Suresh Kumar Narayanasamy about 2 years
Some requirements:
- Step-by-step debugging & Break Points
- View variable values while debugging
- IntelliSense (auto-completion). Ideally done with "smarts" so it only shows you the syntactically valid options to complete something. E.g., Textbox. would trigger members of that class (.Text, .BackColor), etc. And then Textbox.BackColor= would trigger a list of valid colors.
- Drag'n Drop style GUI design.
I'm not concerned about cost (Ok, over $1K gets a little pricey looking :-)
Suresh Kumar Narayanasamy over 15 years

Does Flash Develop let you do GUI style design?
MarioRicalde over 15 years

No. The only Flex IDE I know of that has a GUI builder is Flex Builder. However, I much prefer FlashDevelop for code editing.
MarioRicalde over 15 years

I didn't realize there was a debugger plugin for FlashDevelop. I'll have to try that out.
devarni over 15 years

You can find the debug plug-in on their 3rd party plug-ins page. The svn version (upcoming 3.0 rc2) has this plug-in included, so I think the next version of FlashDevelop will be shipped with the debugger always included.
davr about 15 years

In my opinion, FlashDevelop is the nicest to code in, and much less bloated than FlexBuilder, but FlexBuilder has very nice debugging & profiling.
davr about 15 years

The GUI drag-and-drop designer isn't all that useful for large applications. For a quick mockup it's nice to throw things together, but once you start building anything kind of complex you really have to dig into the MXML yourself. FlashDevelop is much nicer for that, due to its better autocomplete
Tianzhen Lin over 10 years

After using IntelliJ IDEA for some time, I don't go back to Flash Builder. Despite a bit of learning curve and lacking of savvy CSS/skinning scaffolding, IDEA is awesome in terms of speed, stability, and suitability for large-scale AS3/Flex development.