Problem:

I have been struggling with the ActionScript editor in Flash Profesional CS4 lately and have found my self jumping back and forth between Flex Builder and Flash Pro for the same project. This particular project was quite graphic heavy and was best suited to be build in the Flash Pro IDE. The ActionScript became quite heavy and I ended up using Flex Builder to write the code so that I could take advantage of the autocomplete features and class introspection available in Flex Builder. It become annoying to have to switch to Flash to compile the swf because Flex builder is unable to compile a .fla file. The other issue is that Flex Builder could not see the library items within the Flash library which were linked to classes. This caused Flex to report a bunch of errors so degubbing was not as good as it could be.

Solution:

Flash CS5 has greatly improved the Flash ActionScript editor and now does class introspection and code hinting/completion similar to what Flex does. Also Flash Builder 4 will have a Flash CS5 plugin that will allow you to edit your Flash based project from Flash Builder. When you test your application it will automatically switch to Flash Professional to compile the .fla file and then switch back to Flash Builder. I am also assuming and hoping that Flash Builder 4 will be able to see library items and MovieClips on the stage and not report errors for these items you are referencing in your code.

Also very excited by the announcement that Flash CS5 will compile AS3 projects into native iPhone applications. I have played around with the current games that Adobe snuck onto the Apple App store and they seem to run a little slow but I think that will improve. The greatest advantage that I see is that it will cut iPhone application development time down significantly for small casual games and applications. Content can be distributed to iPhone with out having to rebuild it with the iPhone SDK. One bad thing I see is that the iPhone market place will become saturated even more that it already is. I think that eventually it will become harder to sell smaller applications on the app store and they will need to rely on advertising and other means for revenue. I could go on and on but over all very excited to see my 2 favourite things, Flash and iPhone come closer together. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

I remember about 5 years ago getting excited about the Flash Lite player for mobile phones until I tried to buy one. The sales lady thought I was looking for a phone with a flashlight on it to help me see in the dark and I was unable to explain to her what I really meant (way over her head). I quickly learned that there were virtually no phones in North America with the Flash Lite player.

I am very excited by the announcement from Adobe that Flash player 10.1 is coming to most of the smartphone platforms. This opens up a lot of possibilities for Flash in the future which is good for a guy that makes his living from it. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200910/100509AFPforMobileDevicesandPCs.html