Welcome to FDT

The flexible development toolkit. The FDT team has put together a collection of tutorials and reference materials to help answer any questions you may have while using FDT. This wiki is constantly evolving as we plan to invite the FDT community to contribute. If you are interested in helping this documentation to grow please contact us.

We're always adding new tutorials and walkthroughs to make sure you get the most out of using FDT. Tutorials will include detailed text and screenshots that demonstrate a particular topic. Some tutorials also include project files, videos and sample materials for you to download.

If you're new to FDT, check out our FDT Getting Started Guide.

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Contents

FDT Getting Started Guide

Michael Plank, from pro3dgames, has written a great tutorial on activetuts. Check it out here.


These short guides will lead you through the installation and will introduce you to some of the highly efficient and time-saving features and the basic structure of the FDT work environment.

Quick Fixes and Quick Assists

Our Videos page has all our Quick Fixes and Quick Assists in video format. A great place to learn about FDT's most popular and powerful features.

Tutorials

Shortcuts

Forget the mouse! The FDT shortcuts are one of the most important techniques to increase coding efficiency. Here is a cheat sheet of the most popular shortcuts for quick reference

FAQ

If you're confused or having a problem getting yourself going. Check out our FAQ.

Videos

We're always adding new videos of tutorials, FDT's features, workflows and new ways of using FDT. Check out our Videos page.

Flash Tutorials

Installing And Running FDT

If you haven't installed FDT, or are having trouble getting FDT to install or launch, check out this tutorial. We'll make sure you have Java installed and walk you through downloading and installing FDT on Windows and OSX.

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Basic AS3 Tutorial

Learn the basics of creating, building and compiling your first FDT project. You'll use the Project Wizard to create a project, then create your first Class and compile and view your application.

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Flex / AIR Tutorial

See how quickly you can code and run an AIR application with the Flex framework. Similar to the Basic AS3 Tutorial, you'll go a little further by adjusting compiler options and being introduced to some of FDT's Smart Editor features.

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Writing Code With FDT

FDT is packed with features designed to help developers write code efficiently and quickly. This walkthrough will go through many, but not all, of the most popular Smart Editor features.

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Navigating Your Code and FDT's Workspace

With all the ins and outs of an IDE like FDT, a developer can get lost is seemingly endless windows and views. It's important to know how to get around the application and make sure you stay in control of what you're looking at.

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Launch Configurations

Eventually, you're going to want to make some tweaks to your .SWF's settings (name, background color, size, frame rate ) as well as start using some advanced features such as viewing your .SWF in a browser.

This tutorial goes over these important topics, as well as introduces FDT's new Launcher Chain feature.

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FDT and Ant Tutorial

Ant is a build tool that developers can use to extend FDT. It's an XML based syntax and can be used to extend FDT's built in launcher or used instead of the launcher if developers want to have even more control over their build process. It also has many built in tasks such as uploading to FTP, checking out from .SVN and creating .ZIP files just to name a few.

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Intro To Profiling Applications

The FDT Profiler helps developers to detect performance issues within a flash application by providing two different approaches for profiling:

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Creating Code Templates (snippets)

FDT’s code templates, also referred to as code snippets, allow for quick generation of user defined code. Although FDT ships with many templates pre-installed, users can edit existing templates, create new ones and even share templates with other FDT developers.

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Sharing and Archiving Projects

Become familiar with how easy it is to share and distribute projects with others with FDT. This tutorial will show you how to import and export projects with FDT.

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Setting Up and Using FDT & SVN

Sharing FDT projects is very easy to do. Follow this tutorial to learn how to:

  • Activate a SVN plugin for FDT
  • Add a project to a repository
  • How to checkout an existing FDT project using a SVN repository.

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SDK Management

With the release of FDT 4, developers now have granular control over their SDKs. Not only is adding and removing SDKs to projects easy, you can also easily add and remove specific parts of the SDK you may or may not need. You can also easily manage custom SDKs.

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Using FDT's Debugger

FDT Max includes a powerful debugger. During the development process, a debugging tool is useful to help discover and fix bugs. Armed with FDT's debugger, you'll be prepared to crush any bugs that stand in your way.

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From Flash Builder To FDT

If the differences between FDT and Flash Builder were boiled down into one word, it would be Flexibility. Beside having powerful code editing features that are missing with Flash Builder, FDT is flexible with your project management whereas Flash Builder is going to harness you with constraints. While, at first, these concepts will seem foreign to the long term Flash Builder user - as you master them you'll quickly understand the power and flexibility they provide.

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Font Library Creator

FDT now includes a Font Library Creator. This is a very hand GUI tool that is designed to make font management much, much easier. Developers can use the Font Library Creator to not just add fonts but also control which glyphs and characters are used.

In this tutorial you'll learn how to use fonts via:

  • Actionscript Embed
  • SWCs
  • SWFs - both at compile time and runtime

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Project Templates

FDT developers can create sophisticated project setups that can be customized just before generation.

In this tutorial you'll learn:

  • An overview of project templates with FDT
  • Where templates are located and their structure
  • How to create a simple project template
  • How to create complex templates

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Project References

This enables powerful ways for developers to share source code between multiple projects.

In this tutorial you'll learn:

  • An overview of project references
  • How to share source code between projects

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Working With Linked Resources

Some developers like to have source code, either via a folder or .AS files, added to their project that is saved on their workstation outside of their project. The solution for this is to use FDT's 'Linked Resource' feature.

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Apparat & FDT

With FDT 4.4, we've began to support Apparat. Apparat is a powerful framework to optimize ABC, SWC and SWF files. It's open source and looks to push the boundaries of ways for Flash developers to enhance their workflows and applications.

In this tutorial you'll learn:

  • How to enable Apparat for your projects

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Adding The Flex 4.5 & 3.6 SDKs To FDT

Learn how to add the latest SDKs to FDT.

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Migrating Projects & Using Project Types

Watch this simple video on how to move a project to a new SDK and Project Type.

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Setting Up and Using Mobile Templates

Watch these two videos on how to merge the Flex 4.5.1 and AIR 2.7 sdks.

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Flash Tutorials (FDT 5)

Building Mobile Applications

With FDT 5, a new mobile workflow has been introduced. This tutorial will give an overview of what it's like to create mobile applications with FDT.

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Advanced Refactoring

With FDT 5, the team has added powerful refactoring to your workflow. These refactorings have been integrated into our Quick Assist workflow, so you won't be slowed down at all - in fact you'll see how quickly you can restructure your code.

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AIR SDK Merging

Until now, when developers wanted to merge an AIR & Flex SDK it had to be done by hand, often using the command line. With FDT 5, developers can have this process automated for them.

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ASDoc

Whenever the code in your project has ASDoc notation, FDT will read it and display it both in the ASDoc View and in the editor. This is one of our most voted features.

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Source Attachment For SWCs

With FDT, you can easily include the source files for your favorite SWC libraries. This enables you to get the speed and convenience of a SWC and the power of debugging and ASDocs.

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Breakpoint Support in Flex SDK

When source code has been added to a SDK, FDT will then scan for ADocs and integrate the sources to use with breakpoints.

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Building Mobile Applications

With FDT 5, a new mobile workflow has been introduced. This tutorial will give an overview of what it's like to create mobile applications with FDT.

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New Features (FDT 5.5)

SWFBridge

At the core FDT has always been about comfort, customization and community. With FDT 5.5, the team delivers a new feature that is a powerful combination of all 3 – SWFBridge.

Blackberry Support

Easily create, debug and publish applications for Blackberry directly from FDT.

ANE Support

With FDT 5.5, Native Extensions have been fully integrated into FDT. Add, remove and package you applications with ANEs with just a few clicks.

Setup Wizard

FDT's Setup Wizard helps you customize FDT to your needs and will get you coding quickly. This is helpful for those experienced or new to FDT.

Debugger Enhancements

See some of FDT's newest additions to the debugger, including Exception Breakpoints and Watch Expressions.

Improved Quick Assists & Fixes

The FDT team has improved upon existing Quick Fixes and Quick Assists to provide more refactoring options.

New Ant Tasks

The new 'fdt.invoke.launchConfiguration' task enables the execution of any launch configuration directly from Ant.

Haxe Tutorials (FDT 5)

An Overview of Haxe & FDT

Developed in collaboration with Powerflasher and Influxis, the FDT Haxe plugin provides developers a powerful tool for authoring the haXe multi-platform language.

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Adding a Linked Folder (Resource)

If you have source code located outside of your workspace, FDT allows you to create a link to this folder and have access to any source code therein.

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Community Resources

We really appreciate the of efforts the FDT community, it's a big part of what makes FDT so great. Check out our Community Resources page to learn about tutorials and tips that fans of FDT have created.

Online Workshops

Every Last Tuesday of the month at 9 to 10am (PST)

Join our next Live Broadcast FDT4 workshop. Register here to keep you informed on the latest activities.

The sessions will be contingent on the audience attending. Tell us what we should cover when you register.

You will learn how to use FDT or help getting started, while covering some of latest new features. This is also an opportunity to discuss code and best practices developing multi-target applications in ActionScript, Flex or haXe for the Desktop, Mobile and Web.

Most of all, this is also a great opportunity to ask any question directly to the FDT team and give us feedback.

The session will be live on ustream.tv

Here you can find the recordings of our past workshops:

Reference

Project Template Syntax

The new project template model introduced in 4.2 greatly extended the syntax of the description.xml including UI components and expressions.

Learn more by reading about Project Template Syntax

Ant Tasks

Ant is a tool that allows developers to extend FDT and automate various tasks. It's XML based and easy to learn. Ant on it's own has many built in tasks, and even better, FDT has various Ant tasks of it's own for you to use.

Learn more by reading FDT Ant Tasks.

Features

Smart Editor

Navigation

Project Management

Launching, Testing and Deployment

Downloads

Example Projects

Visit our Downloads page for more.

Media Resources

Decorate your workspace with FDT artwork.

Jump to our Media Resource Page.

Legacy FDT Downloads

If you need to download an earlier version of FDT, please visit our archive.

Suggested Eclipse Plugins

Because FDT is part of the Eclipse community, there are many plugins that can be integrated with FDT. Visit our Suggested Eclipse Plugins page for some plugins we think you might find helpful.

FAQs

If you're confused, run into a problem getting started or looking for a place to download legacy versions of FDT. Check out our FAQ.

Otherwise, contact us.

Downloading, Setting Up & Using FDT

Continue to the Downloading, Setting Up & Using FDT FAQ

Sales & Marketing

Continue to the Sales & Marketing FAQ

Subscriptions & License Management

Continue to the Subscriptions & License Management FAQ

Release Notes

To update to the latest FDT version follow the instructions in our FAQ otherwise you can download the latest FDT here.

Latest version information:

Get FDT5