Comments on: Setting up Eclipse for Flash Developers

By: marcel_B

marcel_B — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:21:50 +0000

adobe sucks and should be very ashamed of themselves. the flash ide is indeed too bad to be true. why can’t they make a proper ide with decent auto completion and auto import. it’s really sad.
if you want to develop some flash apps and you don’t want to spend money, you’re stranded. you got no options.
following the above steps isn’t very easy to. too much effort and too much money.
adobe is just as bad as microsoft. they only want money. i’ve had it with flash.

By: san

san — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:31:35 +0000

after experimenting with a lot of different settings, this is what worked best for me personally:

-nosplash
-vm “C:\Program Files\JRockit Real Time\jrrt-4.0.0-1.6.0\bin\javaw.exe”
-nl
en_US
-vmargs
-Xms1280m
-Xmx1280m
-XX:MaxPermSize=400m
-XX:PermSize=312m
-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
-XX:+AggressiveHeap
-XX:+AggressiveOpts
-XX:+UseParallelOldGC
-XX:ParallelGCThreads=3
-XX:ThreadPriorityPolicy=1
-Xverify:none
-XX:MinHeapFreeRatio=20

By: Mari

Mari — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:27:24 +0000

Aptana just released Studio 1.5, and the plug-in site has changed to: http://update.aptana.com/update/studio. You can also access plug-in information on our wiki at: http://www.aptana.com/docs/index.php/Plugging_Aptana_into_an_existing_Eclipse_configuration. Thank you!

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:24:50 +0000

Just wanted to point out – on step 3 – you have a mistake in direction.

Top line of that config for eclipse.ini, you say do this:

-vm “C:Program Files (x86)/Java/jrrt/jre/bin/javaw.exe”

When actually, that did not work for me until i changed it to this:

-vm
C:Program Files (x86)/Java/jrrt/jre/bin/javaw.exe

…maybe because im an eclipse noob, but figured it would help somebody

By: sascha

sascha — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:25:13 +0000

Patrick, you can install both Flex Builder and Eclipse, they won’t clash. You could also d/l the Plug-In version of Flex Builder and add that to your existing Eclipse install, although I prefer the standalone next to my Eclipse because I rarely use Flexbuilder anymore and I think the FB plugin makes Eclipse quite heavy and slow (but that might be just me).

Flex builders advantage is the visual design editor with that you can lay out components very comfortably. However you could also write Flex apps in 100% ActionScript as long as you use the Flex compiler. In fact Flex is just components that are written in AS.

And AIR is another option. You can write bare Flash AIR apps, but you can also use Flex for AIR applications.

Flex is good if you wanna write RIAs or applications in AIR that profit from a sort of standardized graphical user interface.

I personally use Flex Builder only to prototype my Flex GUIs and then I go over to FDT and code all in ActionScript. That’s because I don’t like MXML. I dislike the way how you have to mix up MXML with ActionScript. Some die-hard Flexers may yell “blasphemy” but this way it gives me a lot more control over the code.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:38:44 +0000

That’s what it sounded like. I’m relieved to know Flex isn’t any earth shattering progression over Flash. I’ll just build my environment according to this thread and take it from there. I can always run Flex on another machine and port the code over, or even install it alongside the version of Eclipse you suggest. Looking forward to getting into the swing of the IDE, as I’ve been forcing myself to work from the commandline for a touch of the old Karate Kid approach. Wax on. Wax off.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:30:50 +0000

Flex and Flash are both ‘Flash’. Flex is a ton of prebuilt Flash components that one uses to make RIAs.

Flex = heavy, prebuilt components geared for RIAs and Data services.
Flash = [very] limited prebuilt components. Good when not doing RIAs and Data services.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:21:08 +0000

Right on…thanks for the answer. If anyone on here knows any of the specific reasons I should be considering Flex in addition to Flash, I’d be pretty curious. I can’t really tell what Flex has over Flash, as Flash can be busted down into AIR, it seems, as well. I wonder what Flex Builder adds to the mix that’s not in FDT.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:19:26 +0000

The standalone of Flex Builder is a stripped down version of Eclipse ( I believe they took out JDT). As such, it is missing many, many features.

FDT is for ‘serious’ Flash developers, as such it is pricey. Flash Builder has one or two features over FDT, but those are more for doing Flex work. I guess, it’s kinda a hard question to answer to give. Because I think you need to decide how much time you will be spending working with Flash, and then also determine if you want to use the Flex framework or not.

They both have 30 day trails so try them out.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:08:50 +0000

Awesome breakdown. I am learning java with the intention of migrating into flash and flex as well as the usual web tools (php, sql, etc.) Amibitious, I know, but I started in java as there’s a lot more help online for understanding coding concepts via java. I figure it’ll be easier to migrate from java than to it, and so far that’s working.

I found this thread while hunting for information on Eclipse and Aptana. Looks like I can mash up most the tools I want.

Here’s my question: It seems Flex builder sucks in comparison to using FDT. I just want a confirmation of this before I start into this install sequence. Also, the version of Eclipse I have is the Flex Builder one from Adobe…can this be used with all these other tools, or should I install the Eclipse version you recommend and uninstall the Flex Builder version. Can I leave both on, or will they clash. I might benefit from seeing the code Flex Builder generates when I use their gui layout tool, but I could always run that on a different machine if the two version clash.

Thanks in advance…