ActionScript 3 Log

Flash MiniBuilder: Online AS3 IDE – Part II – Install it!

July 8th, 2009 Victor Posted in MiniBuilder, advanced, beginner, intermediate | 11 Comments »

Flash MiniBuilder: online AS3 IDE, edit (with code assist) and compile swf online.

Flash MiniBuilder Part I
Flash MiniBuilder Part II
Flash MiniBuilder: Part III – AsWing

First of all, thank you all for the precious feedback!
You are part of a project that will help making the web a bit more friendly.
Think about CMS’s or admin-panels that allow you to edit sources of your application in an integrated way.
Apps written in a type-safe language, unlike most of the ones on the web today, are easier to maintain and develop.
Type-safe languages are self described, the IDEs can easily discover all the relationships between entities.

Also, MiniBuilder is a step forward towards having the same language both on the client and on the server.
More on this subject later, in this series.
Just a small note, Haxe is already a great choice for this, as it targets both FlashPlayer and Neko, on the server.
But currently, there is no good cross-platform IDE for it, and the language is a bit hard to lex from the scratch.

Now, let’s come back to MiniBulder
After a first run of Fixes and addons:

correctly resolve “return” type of a constructor. used for expressions like new Array(…). and Array(…). (reported by senocular)
update scroll properties after loading new file (reported by senocular)
catch has now a scope, like any other closure (reported by senocular)
hints list popup closes correctly when you click outside. it was ok if you presses ESC (reported by senocular)
scrolling inside flash app does not scroll the html window
tab key focus out after list show bug fixed
playground – add unload button
… and a few others

, I am ready to release a first working version of MiniBuilder that you can download.

MiniBuilder is free and open-source.
You are allowed and invited to use it on your website/blog to display ActionScript examples in a interractive way!

To install MiniBuilder, just copy the directory minibuilder and add this HTML to your pages:
(replace 400 with your desired height)

<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="minibuilder/main.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">minibuilder('examples/SomeScript.as', 400)</script>
</body>

Note1: For the original look and feel, download and install Liberation Mono open-source font from Redhat
Note2: On Linux, FlashPlayer starts alot faster.

Download from googlecode MiniBuilder downloads

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Thijs Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

Very cool! You should consider using a regular compression technique like tarball or zip instead of rar files.

Victor Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 6:16 pm

@Thijs
10x!
true, i will

Ionut Tabirca Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 10:49 pm

Nu mi-ar pare rau sa renuntz peste putin timp la FlashDevelop 3 ptr a folosi Flash MB.
Dak ai nevoie de o mana de ajutor in AS3 sau Java (server-side) nu ezita – mi-ar face placere sa lucrez cu alt ‘compatriot’ care e de parere ca “ActionScript 3.0 Kicks Ass”.

Victor Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

as a matter of fact, i do need all the help, there’s huge work
mulţam de oferta!

i’ll try to make a plan for contributors, to split the tasks so ppl can start work on slices. the core of the project is there, we need to do a bit of refactoring, but not much

Ben Garney Says:
July 10th, 2009 at 4:54 am

Awesome work! I’m definitely going to be tracking this very closely.

Brendan Says:
July 20th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

Make it an AIR app