Then there’s the Options dialog with Trace options opened where you will be able to set font, colors etc. On the File Loggers Options you will be able to optionally enable up to two File Loggers that can be used for example to log the flashlog.txt to see output made by ActionScript’s own trace method.
There’s of course the new Object Inspector and a new Help panel for Quickstart Help and API Docs. Alcon 3 is being written 99% in ActionScript 3 using FDT (the 1% left being the Main.mxml that is necessary to compile a Flex application). It’s only a matter of a few days now until release, some bug fixing, finishing touches and a few more documentation to write and it will be out so please endure!

- Output of up to four log files. You can define which log files to output by changing the settings in the AlconConfig.xml file. Like this it is easily possible to watch the flashlog.txt file that can be created with the Flash Debug Player (more info on this here and here).
- Alcon now features an Inspect panel for inspecting objects.
- A hexadecimal dump of an object can be made. Don’t ask me what this might be useful for now but you never know.
- Alcon now features a stopwatch that can be used to measure passed time more easily.
- You are now able to monitor the current host application’s stage framerate and memory usage.

For more info and download check out the Alcon page over at osflash.org.

Please note that this is a beta version! It still has bugs and the Debug class for ActionScript 2.0 is not yet included.

Filter Forge is a new software for Windows that allows creating Photoshop filters in a tree node based editor. Yep, thats right! You design filters by connecting components together with virtual wires. Imagine the possibilities! The application ships with a standalone tool as well as a Photoshop PlugIn and after you played around a bit with the trial version you might want to file this tool under “apps with that I could spend the whole day long, experimenting with it”!

[ad#gog_arcanum_box]Using the filter editor is a super smooth and intuitive experience. It’s possible to create a wide range of image manipulation filters and texture generators with Filter Forge by connecting components together in the editor environment. You basically get an instant preview of any change you are doing and the tool offers a crapload of other features that make it fun to work with.

Created filters can then be submitted to the Filter Forge website’s Filter Gallery which also is done from within the tool and with these submitted filters the designer gets a chance to receive a price reduced or even a free copy of Filter Forge depending on the popularity of the filters. While you’re at the library check out all dem filters to get yourself a picture of what’s possible with this neaty. I’m sure there is room for improvement and in fact the tool is still beta but it already rocks immensely!

All in all Filter Forge is a brilliant idea and makes you wonder why it took so long until somebody came up with it. Either way, while you’re there check out my submitted creations!

127.255.255.255 link.altova.com

This redirects every access to link.altova.com to the local machine, thus blocking of connection attempts. With that you’re free to let Eclipse access the net while XMLSpy has to stay inside the system.

You can lay out all imaginal hierarchical structures, be it your shopping list, you time plan or the story concept for your next game. After creating a new document with FreeMind, it has one root node. From now on you can add child nodes with the Insert Key, add sibling nodes below with the Enter key or above with Shift+Enter. This way it becomes a breeze to create a large tree structure of your project.
You can assign different color and font styles to your nodes. Another useful feature is the ability to link two nodes together with a bezier line. The tool has a MinMap and a Browse Mode and you can even browse your harddisks file structure with it if you want. You can also link files to nodes.

This is the number one tool I would recommend for brainstorming but it is very useful to lay out projects in more detail as well. There is also a FreeMind Document Reader that has been written with Flash, though I’m not sure if it can be downloaded and used offline.

[ad#ad_content_small]“At the moment, approx 700 Methods & Properties are implemented which are documented in the included Help File. Several new features are included which are not yet available in Zinc (e.g. audio recording and CD ripping, SFTP, better Joystick support, create forms at runtime, load encrypted movies from memory stream, nested context-menus).”

(btw the mdm support forum is one of the best support forums I’ve encountered so far! I really wish some other forums would take that as an example …. *FDT forums* … *cough* *blink blink* ).

Personally I’m not very interested in developing .NET applications but there’s another good news coming our way … mdm is also working on a Zinc for AS3. Imagine the possibilities! With AS3 now being fast enough for many compression algorithms (JPG et al) and stuff that wasn’t possible before (C64 emulators) and Zinc adds many new features that Flash doesn’t natively own for security reasons or whatever (e.g. file writing). I just hope they are offering an update option for Zinc 2.5 users for this!

After I was fed up with Suitcase I went with OT1 fontmanager for quite a while but this manager, while a crapload better than Suitcase, runs a bit unstable and doesn’t support some important formats. It also can only install/uninstall fonts but not activate them temporarily. There are also a ton of other font managing tools out there but almost all I’ve came across so far didn’t fulfill my requirements.

[ad#ad_content_small]These frustrating times are over with MainType! It supports all the common font formats like TrueType, OpenType, Postscript Type 1, Vector and Raster fonts, it has a clean and customizable GUI, it has font groups, fonts can be either installed/uninstalled or only activated temporarily (which is very useful when working on projects that require several fonts to be active, just make a new font group for that project and activate that bunch of fonts for this project), preview text can be changed, theres a palette with the character set, fonts can be stored anywhere on the harddisk etc. etc.

If you fell into despair so far because of the lack of a good font manager then I recommend to give MainType a try. I’m currently using the trial and when it comes to managing fonts on your system this seems to be the best choice currently (unless you prove me wrong and there is an even better tool that slipped my attention).