nil desperandum: Using Fiddler with Firefox
I’ve been using Charles as an HTTP proxy/debugger for over a year now. It’s a useful tool, but I confess I get mighty tired of the (almost weekly) updates and downloads. When we’re running it on 3 test machines, as well as 5 developer machines, it begins to get repetetively annoying to keep installing minor updates and bugfixes. Even so, Charles does give us bandwidth throttling, and Macintosh compatibility, and currently it’s hard to live without those when we need ‘em.
Today I came across a freeware tool called Fiddler (PC only folks, so Mac users can stick with Charles) that comes highly recommended by our Lead Tester here at Endemol.
Check it out folks – nil desperandum: Using Fiddler with Firefox
mentalaxis » Debugging with Flash Player 9,0,28,0
Windows-based Flash developers (especially working in a corporate environment with a roaming profile) will appreciate this comprehensive rundown on the new Flash Debug player from Jason Milkins.
mentalaxis » Debugging with Flash Player 9,0,28,0
NB – One difference between the old and new mm.cfg files that isn’t made abundantly clear is that the newer version should *not* include the ‘TraceOutPutFileName’ parameter. Since the player now looks in a fixed location for the logfile, if you change this parameter to anything but the correct location you won’t see your debug output.
Also, hard-won experience taught me that the mm.cfg file can live in different locations depending on your network and hardware environment. The 2 locations that I always try are:
- the root of your ‘home drive’ (if you’re a networked user), or;
- the root of your ‘Documents and Settings’ directory.
haXe Blog – News from the haXe Community
Nice article by a developer using open source Flash development tools (including Eclipse, ANT, haXe and the open source SWHX wrapper application) to produce bi-lingual CD-ROMs for the Welsh education market.
(Mostly) Open Source Flash development standards
Looking for a hassle-free way to ensure consistency across a large team of Flash developers? Do you frequently engage contractors and need to speed up their integration into your systems? Or maybe you’re just after a rock-solid solution for your personal development environment and aren’t sure what the best options are…
I’ve spent the last 2 years working outside the Flash IDE as an AS2 OOP developer. The smallest projects involved just me. The largest involved 6 Flash developers. Everyone here is a contractor, and the contracts range from one month up to six months. Integrating new developers in a hurry and ensuring consistency has become second nature. Here’s how we do it…
Use a Wiki
After the developer has a login they need to get up-and-running fast. A Wiki (like Trac) is useful for projects, but it’s also useful for providing a knowledge base. Creating a ‘Flash Dev Team’ project allows important information (like how to setup your workstation) to be shared and updated reliably.
Use Version Control
There are some assumptions that I’ve already made about the ‘right’ development environment for Actionscript. Firstly, version control is essential, and in the spirit of standards-based open-source development I’ve adopted Subversion as the ‘weapon of choice’.
Keep the Development Environment under Version Control
Next, I’ve assumed that it’s a good idea to keep as much of the development environment as possible contained in the version control system. In particular, it’s essential to the process that ‘non-code’ resources are kept in the version control system too. This means that any changes to the Eclipse development environment, any Eclipse plugins, the Flash Debug Player, the MTASC compiler or the Macromedia ‘core classes’ (as well as the obvious class libraries used in development) can easily be deployed to all developers on any team by a simple ‘update’.
Identical Eclipse Workspace Settings
Another critical time-saver is the requirement that all developers maintain exactly the same Eclipse Workspace environment. By using ‘C:\_workspace’ as the default workspace location on every developers’ workstation it’s now possible to add ANT automation scripts to the repositories of any project and have them operate correctly for all developers.
FDT
Currently I’m not aware of any useful competitors to FDT in the open-source arena. There are options other than Eclipse for writing Actionscript, but there aren’t any that provide such a broad range of integrated open-source development tools (like Mylar for Trac integration, or Subclipse for Subversion integration). With fully integrated code-completion and a host of other useful features I figure 199 Euros is a small price to complete the otherwise completely free toolkit.
Read more detailed information here.
