Since FDT can also be installed as a plugin on the latest Eclipse IDE, the FDT Team also looks ahead and tests against the latest Eclipse releases.

In Eclipse Juno the installation of the Subversive SVN plugin has changed a bit. The SVNKit/JavaHL selection screen no more appears right after the Subversive installation finishes so the SVN connectors need to be installed separately.

Following steps will help you to get Subversive going:

• Install Subversive from the Juno update site http://download.eclipse.org/releases/juno
  You can find it under Collaboration > Subversive SVN Team Provider
• Add Subversive Connector update site from Available Software Sites > Add…
  Define the Update site name of your liking and use http://community.polarion.com/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/3.0/update-site/ for the location.
• Install Subversive SVN Connector by choosing the added Subversive SVN Connector update site, e.g. Subversive SVN Connectors > SVNKit 1.3.8 Implementaton (Optional).
  NB! If the SVN server you’re using runs SVN 1.7, make sure to select the respective SVNKit 1.7.x Implementation.

Useful references:

• Subversive
• Subversive installation guide for Eclipse Juno by Polarion
• FDT download
• Eclipse downloads

Feel free to add your experiences or ask your questions.

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,

very short post, just an info of a very nice tutorial by hexagonstar of how to get a quick and lightweight installation of Eclipse with FDT running.

I find it very useful, so thought sharing it with you here:

cheers,

frank

Impressive introduction on how to setup Eclipse/FDT and more!

Complete Guide

Update:

Please note that developing AIR applications with FDT 3 is very easy now. Simply create a launcher for viewing and debugging your application and one launcher to release it as .air file. To create an AIR debug launch configuration select your Document Class in the Flash Explorer and then open the Run Dialog (Run > Open Run Dialog…). Double click “FDT AS3 Application “ to create a new launch configuration. After that select the “Start” tab and choose “AIR Debug Launcher” as viewer.

Press the “Run“ button to compile and launch your AIR application. FDT automatically generates a default application XML file into your output folder.
To release and package your AIR application open the Run Dialog and double click “FDT AIR Application Release” and configure the settings on the right-hand side. See new post: http://fdt.powerflasher.com/blog/?p=94

Previous Post:

On October 1, 2007 Adobe released the beta 2 version of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), formerly known as Apollo.
As a cross-operating system runtime AIR provides developers with the possibility to deploy RIAs to the desktop. This is very promising regarding the users interaction with the web because it provides a faster access to related data by using native desktop applications. On top of this, AIR applications can have a great look and feel by using customized windows.
All you need to do if you want to build those cool things is to download the Runtime, which is required to run any Adobe AIR application and to also download the Flex 3 SDK. The latter includes as well the AIR SDK as the AIR compiler, the AIR debug launcher and the AIR packager. These tools can be used together with ANT to map the whole AIR workflow.
To distribute AIR applications means to pack the required files like swfs, assets and the application descriptor file. These packages are used by the runtime environment, which should be installed at first, to make sure that all AIR applications will work.
Nico Zimmerman promised that there will be an add-on for FDT to support the AIR workflow with which it will be much easier to develop AIR applications.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the current workflow and let’s build a “hello world” Air application step by step.<!–[endif]–>

1. Download and install the Runtime (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/air.html).
2. Download the Flex 3 SDK (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/sdk/flex3sdk.html).<!–[endif]–>
3. Now you can start your eclipse in the FDT perspective and add a new AS3 core library.
   • Window -> Preferences -> FDT -> Core Libraries -> AS3 Core Libraries -> Add…
   • 2. Choose Flex 3 SDK with AIR as Type, type in “Flex3_AIR” as Name and choose a path variable by clicking the “Browse…” button. If there is no variable linking to the Flex 3 SDK, click “New…”, type in “Flex3SDK_AIR” as Name and add the Path to your Flex 3 SDK folder. Press a few times OK, to get back to eclipse.
     
4. Now you’re prepared to start with your first AIR application in FDT: create a New Flash Project with the Name “Hello World”. Choose Action Script 3 with your new core library (“Flex3_AIR”) as the project language and press “Finish”.
   
5. Downloading this zip-file and copying the content to your project folder is the easiest way to go on. The zip-file contains a settings folder within an assets folder. The settings folder contains the application descriptor file which is essential for running AIR applications. This file contains parameters as well for the AIR application as for the first window. You have to customize these parameters as explained in the comments in the file.
   Note that the content tag and all tags marked “required” are very important to run the AIR application! Rename the application descriptor file like shown in this example: “-app.xml” (e.g. “powerflasher-app.xml”).
   
6. Add the “src” folder to the classpath and double-click the “Build-Air”file. The most important properties which you have to customize are marked with comments and are located at the top of the file.
   • Clean -> Deletes the built directories.
   • Build directories -> Creates directories. “Debug” contains the compiled swf for debugging, “build” contains the compiled swf for publishing and “publish” contains the final AIR file.
   • Compile for debuging -> Uses the mxml compiler with a special air parameter to compile the AIR swf. Instead of that you can use the amxml compiler as normal as you use the mxml compiler.
   • Compile for publishing -> Does the same as “Compile for debuging”.
   • Test application -> Uses the AIR debug launcher (ADL) to start the AIR application without packaging and installation. The ADL uses the application descriptor file to set up the window.
   • Package application -> Uses the AIR development tool (ADT) to package all required files to an AIR package.
   • Create certificate -> Uses the ADT to create a certificate which is required to sign and build the AIR package.
7. Now you are ready to create the ActionScript Classnamed “HelloWorld”. The code should look like this:

   package
   {
       import flash.display.Sprite;
       import flash.text.TextField;
       import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize;
   
       /**
        * @author Stephan Partzsch
        */
       public class HelloWorld extends Sprite
       {
   
           public function HelloWorld()
           {
               var textField:TextField = new TextField();
               textField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.CENTER;
   
               textField.text = "Hello world!";
   
               textField.x = (stage.stageWidth - textField.width) / 2;
               textField.y = (stage.stageHeight - textField.height) / 2;
   
               this.addChild(textField);
           }
   
       }
   }

8. Open the ANT view. You can find it here: Window -> Show View -> Other -> ANT. Drag the “Build_Air” file to the ANT view and double-click number 4 to test your application. Create a certificate with number 7 and than double-click number 6 to package your first AIR application.
   
9. Finally you find HelloWorld.air in your project directory in the publish folder. Double-click it to install it on your desktop.<!–[endif]–>

Of course, you can also download this sample project right here.
That’s it and I hope I could demonstrate the workflow of AIR so that you can go on with developing ultra-cool AIR applications. 🙂

Stephan