Official Rules for Win a FDT Entreprise License!

[shunjie]

Contest starts on 1th July 2008 and end at the 13th August 2008. Results will be
posted on the 20th August 2008. Chance to win yourself a FDT Entreprise worth
$1200SGD!

How to enter:
1. Download the trial version of FDT software from Adobe website
(http://fdt.powerflasher.com/products/fdt-30/enterprise/)
2. Developed an Actionscript / Flex or AIR sample project using FDT
(http://fdt.powerflasher.com/)
3. Post a review, description and a link to your project on
http://dev.fug.sg (contact us if you need a temporary hosting space)
4. Email the link to your review, together with your personal
information to contest@fug.sg
5. Personal Information includes your Name, Contact number, Email
Address and Occupation
6. Review period will be end at 20th August 2008
7. Results will be posted on http://fug.sg
8. All participants will receive a discount coupon via email.
9. 1 winning participant will receive an Entreprise FDT license worth $1200SGD (
10. Winning project will be posted on FDT website.

Sample Project Guideline
1. Project must be built in either Flex or purely AS3
2. Any external libraries, frameworks are allowed
3. Participants are free to build applications of all type
4. Project can be a web project or build with Adobe AIR
5. Project may use external API / can be Mashups
6. Participant retains all copyright of the source codes as well as the project.



Terms and Conditions
1. Applicants must be currently working/studying in Singapore during
the period of the review
2. All reviews must be posted to http://dev.fug.sg. Links to personal
blog will not be considered. If you, however, post at your blog as
well as at http://dev.fug.sg
3. There is no minimum length for reviews. However, participants are
advise to post quality review to increase their chance of winning
4. FDT reserves to rights to the final result
5. Plagiarism and/or entries that have infringed on copyrights, will
not be considered

Prizes are sponsored by FDT (http://fdt.powerflasher.com/).

[ArulKumaran]

The project that I developed using FDT is a template engine http://blog.luracast.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/templatingEngine_v1.3.zip

Powerflasher FDT 3.O Review

FDT is an Eclipse based IDE for Actionscript coding. I heard about it a lot but never tried it on my own.

When I came to know Nico Zimmerman is about to present in our FUG. I wanted to try it before that so that I can better understand the platform and raise any issues that I come across.

FDT is a plugin for eclipse, so I have to install Eclipse first. Since fdt site did not specify or recommend a eclipse version I dared to install Ganymede which is the latest eclipse version (3.4) and then followed the install instruction to get the FDT plugin installed. Ganymede has whole new way of installing plugins which were not compatible with FDT install, so it provided me old way of installing, and I got FDT installed. I could get the basic feature to work, but enterprice features never worked for me . I think they FDT should provide a complete install package that includes eclipse or at least specify supported eclipse version information clearly in their site

Then I tried eclipse version 3.3.2 with no luck on the enterprise features. I was little frustrated and decided to wait until the Nico's presentation. During the QA session I got the answer, recommended eclipse version is 3.2.2, with which I got it finally working

After restarting eclipse with the new FDT basic, professional, and enterprise plug-ins, I was greeted with the following screen. I have changed the eclipse.ini and restarted eclipse, that problem went away


fdt memory dialog

Using the free flex 3.0 sdk I could compile, trace, and debug action script projects. Another glitch I came across is re-factoring. Even though I'm trying enterprise version and the 30 days trial supposed to be fully functional, I keep seeing the following window


fdt refactor dialog

I needed a good as3 project to try out FDT. So I created a template engine which supports expressions that contain string and numeric literals actionscript variables and functions, if then else condition as part of the template text.

Since Flex builder is the first Eclipse based IDE I've used for action script development I can't resist comparing them.

FDT is much closer implementation to the Java editor and brings in all the favorite eclipse ide features that java developers love is ported and made available to actionscript developers. The advantages that I see are

* Problems view is not totally tied to compiler, it does not even need the file to be saved, it can show problems as we type
* Code template support for easy code generation of all the boilerplate code like for loops event listeners
* We can customize and even add our own code templates, and access them by typing Ctrl/Command + Space after typing few characters
* Problem solving by generating needed code, say for example if you make use of a function that does not exist FDT can create it for you. It can even create a missing class for you
* Code Auto formatting, I love it
* Source code generation from compiled swc libraries


Flexbuilder excels in the following

* Tighter integration with the compiler
* MXML support and live preview
* Profiling
* Pricing

It is even possible to get best of both worlds, we can install FDT to Flexbuilder and add Flash Nature to Flex Projects and then get the FDT goodness to all as files in there.

FDT supports opensource by providing their ide for free, which is a good news for the community. I'm also planing to opensource my templating engine, that will be the content for another post

[shunjie]

Super Arul Kumaran. Thanks for the entry!

[flashmech]

OMG!!

I dint even know that the deadline was yesterday! There goes my chance at FDT!~

[hagane]

respect Arul!
I didn't have a time, but will try FDT surely and post about experience, I am interested mostly in advanced Flash testing capabilities...

[shunjie]

I have spoken with FDT guys for an extension. I will post up the official stuff today.

[flashmech]

That's cool~ awaiting for your email blast!

[hagane]

today I've found some time to play with FDT, unfortunatly download from the site don't work
I thought you might let Powerflasher guys know about tihs
I am going for the standalone version so will post about that ...

[shunjie]

Remember that this contest will close next wednesday!

Cheers,
Shunjie

[hagane]

I will post small and usefull AIR app,
I've got FDT standalone running, that still counts right ?