People keep telling us, that they have heard some rumors, that the FDT Team doesn’t appreciate Flash Builder. We want to make sure, that everyone knows, that isn’t true. Since we have been both “creators of FDT” and until just recently an “Adobe Interactive Agency Partner” – we want to clear up any gossip. If anyone, inside or outside Adobe, has ever heard any Powerflasher attack Flash Builder, please leave a comment below.

Even though we don’t hesitate to talk about FDT’s advantages, we believe that everyone in the Flash community shares the same goal: to make Flash successful. Any negativity among the community only makes it harder to achieve this goal.

To our power users, we want to thank you for fighting for FDT, but please stay objective and positive. We want to start:

For our agency division, Flash Builder is the tool of choice when we have a MXML development project with an advanced graphic workflow. It has specific features, such as great MXML integration, Design View, CSS Design mode and Creative Suite Integration. All this makes our job easier. We also love it for its powerful data visualization components and round trip workflows between Flash Builder, Flash Professional and Flash Catalyst. Kudos to Adobe. Flash Builder is a great tool for enterprise business applications.

Since FDT focuses strong on a fast coding workflow with AS3, MXML and haXe (for HTML5/JS/WebGL, PHP…) we would never create such features, so thank you Adobe for covering that. We’re aiming to be THE tool for interactive coders and game developers. In working toward this goal we’re proud of the fact that Adobe itself has purchased over 50 FDT licences. Thanks a lot.

It’s unfortunate that both tools do not work better together within Eclipse. Some people have found tricky ways (http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=D830B) – but that can’t be the final solution and we can’t manage that without Adobe’s support. Let us renew the communication about working together that was started in 2007.

We love choices as you do: http://www.adobe.com/choice/flash.html

Monday, September 27th 2010 you will be able to buy the new FDT 4 Pure, Plus or Max.

We are excited that FDT 4 is being considered the best Powerflasher release ever, and it’s thanks to you!

A bit of history

When Powerflasher was founded in 1997 as a digital interactive agency, many flash developers were missing a professional ActionScript code editor to build cutting edge software applications. In the year 2001 we decided to start building our own IDE based on Eclipse. The developers loved it and it spread like crazy. FDT 1.0 was born!

FDT 4 and the community

Starting in January 2010 with the release of FDT 3.5 we traveled the world to meet you at work, conferences (and of course some great parties). We openly shared the FDT 4 roadmap with you and, being big agile advocates, we made our internal iterations/sprints public free Milestones! We worked iteratively with you and we worked hard! Your contributions, constructive support, and great ideas were an integral part of the FDT 4 release and we think you’ll be pleased with the spectacular list of new features.

ActionScript 2 support

As Adobe is moving away from ActionScript 2, so is Powerflasher putting more effort into future languages as well. We however acknowledge there are still many projects developed in AS2, including some new exciting embedded devices applications. For this reason, we have decided to still offer FDT 3.5 with the full Enterprise features with AS2 support as an option for all FDT 4 customers for 99$

FDT Labs

In parallel to our milestones, we created the FDT labs, an open playground. We built the SDK  to empower you to create your own plug-ins and you did: The haXe (Beta) plug-in supported by Influxis and the FDT Code Metrix Pflection plug-in from iceX33. The Dependency Visualizer and Font Creator born from the labs playground as plug-ins are now core functionality of FDT 4!

We are committed in providing a cross-platform experience. We are very proud to have the opportunity to extend Linux support in our Labs with the help of the community.

New product names: Pure, Plus and Max

We kept the name Pure because we could not express better what the FDT Pure Coding Comfort is about. Pure great editing features enables the smooth workflow you are all raving about. FDT Professional is now called Plus. In addition to the Coding Comfort, Plus adds the navigation features to help you become more productive and work collaboratively. FDT Enterprise becomes Max. FDT Enterprise is not only for corporations, if you are either a freelancer or working in a team of power developers, performance is what you need! It’s about enabling developers to break barriers and maximize their productivity by taking advantage of state of the art IDE features power developers truly deserve.

New Prices

Since then we have released several upgrades, mostly for free. The last upgrade we charged was in the beginning of 2008 with the FDT 3 Enterprise release. For about tree years all upgrades were available for free, including FDT 3.5. We also decided to give all new FDT 3.5 buying customers a free FDT 4 upgrade! It’s now time to pay the bills and further invest to keep the engineering team and you happy.

Check the prices on our website.

Now get your hands on FDT and start coding.

Please use this temporary license until a new pesonalized key is available starting this Monday, September 27th 2010

Follow this link to Register and Download FDT 4

Special thanks…

The FDT 4 release is a result of this journey, thanks to your support and the passion of the big Powerflasher FDT family!

Stephanie, Meinhard, Philipp, Sebastian, Simon, Florian, Maxim, Keisuke, Olli, Britt, Stefan(s), Timo(s), Andre, Mattes, Alan, Clement, Bruno, Michael, Nico, Robertina, Sabrina and Carlo, the Powerflasher Developer and Designer Team (aka FDT guinea pigs) and last, but not least, you!!!

Hi folks,

we talked a lot about it, you asked a lot about it, the topic feels like it´s creating buzz for more than a year already. And now, we are finally there:

The first of the two next MXML Release versions (3.2 and 3.3.) is gonna be revealed to the public at March, 13th! You now have a few options of how you can attend this:

First option (best):

We are throwing a party!! Location to be confirmed, but it´s likely happening in Cologne. Visit us, have a beer on us, and see what is inside. Chat with the developers of Powerflasher, meet the whole team and party with us into the MXML-FDT-ERA!!

Second option (second best):

If you can not be there, no worries, we will send our live stream into the world. A link will be published soon, so that you can drink your beer at home, but still be “with us”. Or you want to throw your own little release-party at this date with your friends. The first parties are already organised. Our guys in Singapore are already on board. If you want to party a little with us, let us know!!

Third option (still good):

update your FDT version from our beta site and just see what we have to offer…

Hope to see some of you on March, 13th!!

cheers,

Frank