Whatterz

FDT 3.0 ActionScript Development Tool

by Simon. Average Reading Time: less than a minute.

For a long time now Adobe’s Flex IDE has been the one of the only tools for developing ActionScript 3 applications. Now there is an alternative in the form of PowerFlasher’s FDT 3.0.

Developed for internal by PowerFlasher, the FDT (Flash Development Tool) wowed freelancers so much that the company decided to launch it as a commercial product. Like Flex Builder, FDT is built upon the Eclipse framework and therefore has many similarities with other Eclipse-based tools, not least JDT upon which it is based.

It is great to see competing tools out there on the market and it can only serve to strengthen the popularity of the technology.

PowerFlasher’s tool can be found at http://fdt.powerflasher.com. It is really worth a look.

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  • http://mrsteel.wordpress.com MrSteel

    With Flex SDK you can make application anywhere but for the IDE FDT is great but it costs

    you can also check FlashDevelop which is great for me
    http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/

  • Rick

    Without a debugger this is is basically a glorified editor. I.e useless.

  • http://www.simonwhatley.co.uk Simon

    @Rick In FDT’s defence, the debugger is ‘coming’ soon as is an MXML parser and advanced refactoring, and since the tool has a whole host of great features already, see the product comparison, I think terming the tool useless is not entirely accurate.

  • Steve

    I wouldn’t want to live without FDT or it’s equivalent. Even as a “glorified editor,” its’ features save me *so* much time while programming. I haven’t spent the time wtih FlashDevelop to know the differences, and I agree FDT is pretty expensive. Can anyone point to a feature comparison of the two programs?

  • http://www.handys-mobile.de Handy

    I can’t make sense of this program. What are the benefits of FDT? I miss screenshots or something like this on the website, there is only a list of key features. Is this program better than flexbuilder?

  • bryanc

    @Handy. i hear you. they seriously need to update their site.

  • Jay

    What? Flex Builder the only IDE for as3 apps !?!
    How can you not know about FlashDevelop?
    It’s been around for a long, long time now and it’s used by thousands of as3 developers worldwide, including me and all my developer friends.

    Please consider changing your post and giving credit where credit is due.

  • http://www.handyversand24.com Nokia

    Is this program better than flexbuilder?