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From FDT Documentation
Welcome to FDT – the Development Tool for Flash. The Powerflasher 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 the FDT community edits and adds to it.
The Powerflasher team has created plenty of 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 and sample materials for you to download.
If you're new to FDT, check out our #FDT Getting Started Guide.
FDT Getting Started Guide
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.
Tutorials
- Installing and Running FDT
- Basic AS3 Tutorial
- Writing Code With FDT
- Navigating Your Code and FDT's Workspace
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 run into a problem getting yourself going. Check out our FAQ.
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.
- Read the Installing and Running FDT tutorial.
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.
- Read the Basic AS3 Tutorial tutorial.
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.
- Read the Flex / Air Tutorial tutorial.
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.
- Read the Writing Code With FDT tutorial.
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.
- Read the Navigating Your Code and FDT's Workspace tutorial.
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.
- Read the Launch Configuration Tutorial.
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.
- Read the FDT and Ant Tutorial.
Intro To Profiling Applications
The FDT Profiler helps developers to detect performance issues within a flash application by providing two different approaches for profiling:
- Read the Intro To Profiling Applications tutorial.
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.
Read about Creating Code Templates
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.
Read the Sharing and Archiving Projects tutorial.
Intro To haXe Development With FDT
Developed in collaboration with Powerflasher and Influxis, the FDT haXe plugin provides developers a powerful tool for authoring the haXe multi-platform language. Our goal is to provide the best haXe coding experience and that it feels like coding in the AS3 or MXML editor of FDT: same shortcuts, same syntax coloring, same coding comfort.
Read the Intro To haXe Development With FDT tutorial.
Reference
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
- Live Error Highlighting
- Syntactic and Semantic Highlighting
- Advanced Code Completion (context and convention based)
- Code Templates
- Quick Fixes
- Quick Assist
- Organize Imports
- Code Formatter
- ASDoc support
- Project Tasks (TODO, FIXME, ...)
- Customizable Hotkeys
- Rename Refactoring (for files, types, variables and functions)
- Outline View
- Jump to Declaration
- Open Resource
- Live Flash Help
- Quick Outline for fast navigation
- Type Hierarchy
- Open Type
- Dependency View
- Reference Search
- FDT Search
Project Management
- Creation Wizards
- SDK Management
- Multiple Source Folders
- Linked Libraries Linking of external source folders
- SWC Support Linking of external SWCs
- Version Control Support [SVN]
- SWC browsing and source code representation
- Refactoring
Testing and Deployment
Flash Authoring Support Customizable Compilation FDT and ANT Launch Configuration SWF Viewers Profiler Debugger
FAQs
If you're confused or run into a problem getting yourself going. Check out our FAQ.