This is one of the reasons why I like image sliders developed using Flash. I look at them and imagine how wonderful life would be if I could easily use it and some lines of text in a .txt file to create a presentation. Nice graphics, beautiful font rendering, smooth effects (including blur and glow) and maybe some physics, why not?

Trying to make my dream come true, I found two amazing image/content sliders in Flash: MegaZine 3 and CU3ER. The first one is an open source pageflip/flashbook engine, written completely in AS3.

The other one is a content slider with 3D transition effects, such as spinning.

Certainly those two projects have lots of cool features and they can perfectly fit into a wide range of uses. If I have the change to save some time for my personal projects, such as my own Flash slide presentation, I will use MegaZine 3 and CU3ER for sure.

]]> http://www.dovyski.com/2009/10/flash-instead-of-powerpoint/feed/ 0 http://www.dovyski.com/2009/05/flashdevelop-a-powerfull-and-free-as3-development-tool/ http://www.dovyski.com/2009/05/flashdevelop-a-powerfull-and-free-as3-development-tool/#comments Sun, 31 May 2009 19:22:10 +0000 Dovyski http://www.dovyski.com/?p=178 Continue reading →]]> If you work with Flash like I do you probably have said a bunch of bad words while you were coding AS3 using the native Flash IDE AS editor. I like Adobe, I really do, Flash can do amazing things and the IDE is getting more and more powerfull, however as a AS3 project manager, the Flash IDE sucks.

I could have saved tons of working hours if Flash IDE had some sort of smart code completion, or if it had a better project manager panel (a simple one that hides the SVN directories, for instance). The logical choise for me would be change to another IDE or methodology, such as Flex Buider, but sometimes I'm binded to the Flash IDE because I can't use a different approach.

Tired of wasting my time coding like that, I've decided to search for a better AS3 development tools. Thanks to the open source community, I've found FlashDevelop, a  free and open source ActionScript 2/3 and web development environment.  It seemlessly integrates with Adobe Flash IDE, Adobe Flex SDK, Mtasc, Haxe and Swfmill.

Some of the features:

• AS2 Project management with seamless Swfmill and Mtasc integration (using a portable standalone command line tool).
• Advanced ActionScript 2 and ActionScript 3 completion & code exploration with automatic classpath detection (even without project).
• Smart contextual Actionscript code generators.
• SWF and SWC classes and symbols exploration.
• Test movie in Adobe Flash IDE and with clickable error results (Flash CS3).
• MTASC compilation/code checking with clickable error results.
• Types Explorer.
• Automatically cleans ASO files of modified AS2 classes.
• Files explorer (can create Flash 8 Trust Files for you).
• Automatic JavaDoc creation from methods.
• Smart Actionscript help websearch on F1.
• Jump to class/member declaration on F4.
• XML, HTML/PHP, JS, CSS code highlighting.
• Multibyte character encoding.
• Program menu customization with XML files.
• as2api GUI for documentation generation.
• Snippets, lines bookmarks, code folding and zoom.

FlashDevelop has enhanced my production cycle and I think it can do the same for you. Download it now and enjoy!