IntelliJ Idea Flex and Actionscript 3 Workflow: [Part 1] Creating a Flex Project

I’ve been using IntelliJ Idea 9 quite a bit in both production and personal work lately. It is a great IDE, with lots of useful features. This is going to be a series of short screencasts that highlight the workflow in Idea for Flex/Actionscript development. The first is a quick introduction and how to set up a Flex project. If you have any questions or requests for future videos in the series please feel free to leave them in the comments.

direct link to the video (42mb QT)

Resources

IntelliJ IDEA EAP Download Page
Jesse Freeman’s IDEA Workflow series on InsideRIA

Creative Commons License
The IntelliJ Idea Flex and Actionscript 3 Workflow: [Part 1] Creating a Flex Project by Joel Hooks, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
  • Razouille

    Thanks for the video. Ready to see some more and find out why you prefere Idea to Eclipse.
    You should put the link to the Idea download url in the post it would have been easier to just click on it for getting the same version as you.

  • https://www.helmutgranda.com/ Helmut

    I would like to see how long it will take you to be able to fly in Idea as fast as you did in FDT :) .

  • https://joelhooks.com Joel Hooks

    That was Mr Lindquist flying in FDT. That is one thing I do need to work on in IDEA (my hotkeys)

    https://pv3d.org/2009/11/18/robotlegs-hello-worl…

  • https://joelhooks.com Joel Hooks

    I don't know that I prefer it yet. I still use Flash Builder. They have different strengths. I will try and cover the cons as well as the pros in the series.

  • Razouille

    Thanks for the video. Ready to see some more and find out why you prefere Idea to Eclipse.
    You should put the link to the Idea download url in the post it would have been easier to just click on it for getting the same version as you.

  • https://www.newtriks.com/ newtriks

    Nice one Joel, I am in the same camp as yourself i.e. enjoying IntelliJ but also using FlashBuilder. I can see the pro's of both and am continually undecided which camp I am leaning towards more. IntelliJ seems to be a lot more powerful as a _developer_ IDE but FlashBuilder seems to be better for all the Flex related functionality. With SourceMate FlashBuilder is most certainly improved but there are still niggles, especially the longer you spend developing within Eclipse. Time will tell….

  • https://twitter.com/rickcr Rick Reumann

    Anyone know how to get IDEA to display the actual string value of XML when using the debugger? It seems to only display some object reference. I'm stuck having to manually put in log.debug or trace statements to output the xml string value. (Still think IDEA rocks though, it seems a billion times better at refactoring than Flex Builder or flash Builder.)

  • https://www.helmutgranda.com/ Helmut

    I would like to see how long it will take you to be able to fly in Idea as fast as you did in FDT :) .

  • https://joelhooks.com Joel Hooks

    That was Mr Lindquist flying in FDT. That is one thing I do need to work on in IDEA (my hotkeys)

    https://pv3d.org/2009/11/18/robotlegs-hello-worl…

  • https://joelhooks.com Joel Hooks

    I don't know that I prefer it yet. I still use Flash Builder. They have different strengths. I will try and cover the cons as well as the pros in the series.

  • https://www.newtriks.com/ newtriks

    Nice one Joel, I am in the same camp as yourself i.e. enjoying IntelliJ but also using FlashBuilder. I can see the pro's of both and am continually undecided which camp I am leaning towards more. IntelliJ seems to be a lot more powerful as a _developer_ IDE but FlashBuilder seems to be better for all the Flex related functionality. With SourceMate FlashBuilder is most certainly improved but there are still niggles, especially the longer you spend developing within Eclipse. Time will tell….

  • https://twitter.com/rickcr Rick Reumann

    Anyone know how to get IDEA to display the actual string value of XML when using the debugger? It seems to only display some object reference. I'm stuck having to manually put in log.debug or trace statements to output the xml string value. (Still think IDEA rocks though, it seems a billion times better at refactoring than Flex Builder or flash Builder.)

  • Razouille

    There have to be some good pros as it costs about the same price as FB4 Premium who has some new cool stuff and to which you can add Sourcemate for some extra cool stuff)

  • Razouille

    There have to be some good pros as it costs about the same price as FB4 Premium who has some new cool stuff and to which you can add Sourcemate for some extra cool stuff)

  • sine1

    Many thanks… looking forward to more. IntelliJ looks like an impressive ( almost overwhelming) collection of tools for a developer – but aesthetically it's pretty ugly. I wonder, is it easy to theme the coding environment? E.g. code on black…that's a pain in eclipse. One thing: on mac, when I right click on the mxml file as you suggest, there is no option to run that I could find.. I had to go and set up a run configuration in Edit configurations.

  • https://joelhooks.com Joel Hooks

    Changing colors and customizing is coming up next! I've got a sweet
    dark theme I cooked up.

  • sine1

    Many thanks… looking forward to more. IntelliJ looks like an impressive ( almost overwhelming) collection of tools for a developer – but aesthetically it's pretty ugly. I wonder, is it easy to theme the coding environment? E.g. code on black…that's a pain in eclipse. One thing: on mac, when I right click on the mxml file as you suggest, there is no option to run that I could find.. I had to go and set up a run configuration in Edit configurations.

  • https://joelhooks.com Joel Hooks

    Changing colors and customizing is coming up next! I've got a sweet
    dark theme I cooked up.

  • hpeide

    Link broken?

  • https://joelhooks.com Joel Hooks

    It is back now. I changed hosts so not everything made the switch :>

  • https://www.gardentractorattachments.net/ Garden tractor attachment

    No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar.

  • k9d

    Do you know how to specify dependencies on folders that contain both .swc and .as in IntelliJ? I couldn't find a good how to for this so I posted a question on the forum:

    https://devnet.jetbrains.net/message/5277552

  • philtre

    Great post! I just recently switched to Mac and I've been desperately looking for an IDE to replace my trusty FlashDevelop. IntelliJ IDEA 10 looks very promising compared to FDT and Flash Builder. Projects are very easy to set up.
    However, I'm missing one thing. Is it possible to have IDEA trigger a “test movie” command in the Flash IDE (and map that to a shortcut such as Cmd+Return). FlashDevelop has that option and it also displays all the compiler errors from the Flash IDE. Any ideas?

  • philtre

    Actually, I've found the solution to this at https://www.rossgerbasi.com/201…/
    Remember to replace “CS4″ with “CS5″ or whatever.

  • https://flexmechanic.com Nikos

    for me you gotta stick with either one or the other to compile with, esp if using both in the same project

  • https://flexmechanic.com Nikos

    I've found the source mate 2.0 to kill FB4 pretty much

  • Uno Dos

    Joel, have there been any further screencasts in this series? I’d be particularly interested in seeing a TDD workflow with IntelliJ Idea.