A little known fact of FDT 5 is that we shipped it with the powerful Eclipse Color Theme plugin! We didn’t develop it our self, but Philipp (our QA lead) came across it and checked it for FDT compatibility. With a few tweaks to our build process, we were able to easily add it. This worked out great for us because many FDT customers were asking for it and we could easily have a solution for everyone.

If you aren’t already familiar with the site ( http://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/ ) check it out. It’s a great place to download other people’s themes or build your own.

A big thanks to Felix H. Dahlke & Roger Dudler for building this plugin!

Hi guys,

the holidays are coming up and we just wanted to say thank you for an amazing year. You, the FDT community, are the ones that made FDT what it is. You posted many feature requests and also bugs in our issuetracker and and we can’t imagine a better way of developing a software for users.

For this we already came up with a little present for you! If you are not using FDT 5 Max yet you have the chance to try it for 30 days.

Since we brought out two major versions in the last one and a half years we decided to close our office for the days between December 24 and January 1. Our support will still be available during this time but please understand that some questions might take a little longer to answer than usual.

Merry christmas and a happy new year to all of you!

To a great next year!

The FDT Team

Christmas is coming up and even though Santa is still packing his bag, we already have a gift for you.

With the recent release of FDT 5 and FDT Free, the trial version of FDT has become obsolete. While FDT Free is great for small projects, this Christmas we want to share the full experience of FDT Max with all FDT Free developers.

Starting today*, we’re giving away 30 day FDT Max licenses to everyone using FDT Free. This will give unrestricted access to all of FDT’s powerful features when developing for Flash/Flex, Mobile and HTML5/JS/WebGL/PHP with Haxe. Get the most out of your coding experience with FDT 5 Max and help save yourself from a winter depression.

Gift URL: http://fdt.powerflasher.de/xmas-special
Special Code: XMASBL

The whole FDT team wishes a merry christmas and a happy new year!

*promotion valid until December 24

A Twibbon is a badge that you can add to your twitter profile picture. Some of you may remember that we used to have one of them but didn’t update it regularly. Introducing the new FDT Twibbon:

You can simply add the FDT 5 badge on: http://twibbon.com/join/FDT. Have fun pimping your pic, I know yours will look better than mine 🙂

We’ve released our Google+ brand page. Google+ is a great way for the team and the community to all get together and discuss news, features, issues, ideas and share projects.

Add us to your circles! 

After receiving questions both via emails and at conferences about how to get ahold of on some FDT duds, we’ve decided to open a FDT-Fan shop on Spreadshirt. To kick off the new shop, we’re giving away 5 customized  fan shirts!

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You asked for it and we built it. FDT 5 is now available as an Eclipse plugin.

Many developers prefer to have FDT installed into an existing Eclipse setup. Starting today, you can install FDT as a plugin and it will function as FDT Free until you enter a license key.

To install FDT as a plugin:

1.Choose “Help->Install New Software…”

2. Click the “Add” button.

3. Enter a site name (such as FDT).

4. Insert http://fdt.powerflasher.com/update/fdt5/ in the Location field and click OK.

5. When the screen refreshes click on FDT 5 and click ‘Next’.

6. Follow the rest of the instructions to complete installation.

For anyone using the standalone version and has experienced this bug with linked libraries, go ahead and go to Help>Check for Updates and update to this latest version. We’ve added a small patch to address this one issue.

Enjoy!

We’d like to call attention to a great free Flashevent on Dec. 4, 2011:

Flashtent is a livestreaming event hosted by John Barrett (HFUG) and Ben Fhala (EverythingFlash) and will cover Mobile, 3D, AIR, Gaming, and HTML5. Speakers include Dee Sadler, David Gamez, Chris Griffith, James Wagstaff, as well as FDT’s Alan Klement.

Alan will give a talk on mobile and haXe development with FDT 5 and thereby show what the new FDT has become capable of. Don’t miss this easy and free opportunity to learn about state-of-the-art coding in FDT 5.

Did you know Powerflasher and FDT have 160 Videos, 10 Channels, and 4 Albums on Vimeo? We are regularly adding tutorials, tips, tricks, and other stuff. Stopping by every once in a while is not only educating but also entertaining and definitely worth the visit. You can also subscribe to FDT’s video feed (RSS).

Just jump in at the deep end, for instance with the overview on FDT 5 and haXe:

When we launched FDT 5 with all its novelties, we also renewed everything around it. When browsing our new website, you may have already noticed the new documentation and support pages. In this blog post, we want to give a little introduction on where to find first aid.

The Docs are generally divided into:
The FDT Starting Guide
Videos
Flash Tutorials
haXe Tutorials
Community Resources
Online Workshops
References
Features
Downloads
Suggested Eclipse Plugins
FAQs
and Release Notes.

You will find a lot of useful information on FDT 5 and FDT in general. We encourage you to let us know whenever you are missing something in the docs. They are constantly evolving as we plan to invite the FDT community to contribute. If you are interested in helping documentation grow please contact us.

We hope you will enjoy the new docs and the popularity will grow, so everyone has the easiest way starting with FDT 5 🙂