24 June 2009
Top 10 Resources for ActionScript Development
ActionScript is awesome, but developing with it can be tedious. I have compiled a list of 10 resources that I use on a daily basis to help speed up development. I have purposely not included any animation, 3D or physics frameworks because there are far too many to include in a top ten list. If you have any that I didn’t include, feel free to post them. So here we go, listed in no specific order.
Monster Debugger
I’m loving this new debugger. It’s very easy to include in your code and it even has live editing! Moving that sprite over a couple pixels has never been easier.
Degrafa
I’ve been using this a lot lately. If you are doing any skinning in Flex you’re crazy if you aren’t using Degrafa.
Actionscript 3.0 TextMate Bundle
Here at BKWLD we LOVE TextMate. Although I still use Flex while developing with the Flex framework, I use TextMate for all of my Flash projects. The AS3 bundle makes Flash Development a breeze. Imagine being able to create a class file with the constructor, package declaration and custom class comments already there. At BKWLD we have taken it a step further by creating a huge list of custom snippets and templates that work with our AS3 library.
Pure MVC
While there are many great AS3 frameworks out there, this one is my choice. There are better solutions out there as far as frameworks for Flex development go, but the beauty about Pure MVC is that it is compatible with both Flash and Flex.
Flash Tracer
I use this thing all the time! It’s a Firefox add on that enables you to see all the output generated by any running flash swf, even the ones in your browser. It works great for debugging live content. Also, you get to see all the curse words that other developers have “accidentally” left in their trace calls.
Firefox Web Developer Toolbar
Every web developer who uses Firefox should have this. I mainly use it to test various screen sizes with liquid flash layouts.
Flash Player 10 Debugger
An absolute must have for any flash developer. Make sure you have the debugger version and not just the regular flash player.
Tour de Flex
This is really nice Flex component inspector that also allows you to quickly view the documentation of any component you are looking at.
Losum Ipsum Widget
Quick, randomly generated lines of lorum ispum text.
SQLite Admin
A quick and simple tool that allows you to view the structure of any SQLite database and execute queries. This is a great tool for anyone who is developing for AIR.
Doing research for a pitch I found the



