Switching from Eclipse FDT to FlashDevelop 4

In this post, I’ll explain how to make FlashDevelop much more comfortable for an FDT user.

FDT is a great tool for Flash development but I found FDT 4 to be a real dog. I loved FDT 3 but I was forced to upgrade to FDT 4 because some newer syntax wasn’t supported. Using Eclipse has always been about a 20% love and 80% hate relationship. Eclipse has gotten slower and slower and more bloated over the years. With FDT 4 constantly freezing and eating over 1GB of ram (even on the tiniest of projects), I’ve decided to make a real effort to jump ship and try FlashDevelop. I’m working on a large project and FlashDevelop is using about 120MB of RAM after being open for a day!

FlashDevelop’s features have grown a ton over the years and the community support is great. You can even write plugins without having to get your Masters in Eclipse Plugin Development.

Steps I took:

1. Install FlashDevelop 4:

http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewforum.php?f=11

When you download FlashDevelop plugins, you will copy them to:
%localappdata%\FlashDevelop\Plugins\

2. Install the QuickNavigate plugin

This will let you navigate to class members using Ctrl+Shift+O. You can change this shortcut in Program Settings (F10) to Ctrl+O to mimic FDT. Then remove default Ctrl+O shortcut for Open in Tools > Keyboard Shortcuts.

http://flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5961

3. Install the Ant plugin

If you don’t use Ant, you can skip this. Make sure to download the version for FD4.

http://code.google.com/p/fd-ant-plugin/downloads/list

You’ll also need the Ant runtime:
http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi

In Program Settings (F10) under AntPlugin, set Path to Ant to your Ant runtime folder.

4. Customize your keyboard shortcuts

Open Tools > Keyboard Shortcuts. Then change:

- EditMenu.Redo to Ctrl+Shift+Z
- RefactorMenu.CodeGenerator to Ctrl+1
- ProjectMenu.OpenResource to Ctrl+Shift+R
- SearchMenu.ViewReferences to Ctrl+R
- SearchMenu.GotoDeclaration to F3
- SearchMenu.QuickFindNext to Ctrl+D or Ctrl+K
- EditMenu.MoveLineDown to Alt+Down
- EditMenu.MoveLineUp to Alt+Up
- RefactorMenu.OrganizeImports to Ctrl+Shift+O
- ModifyMenu.Reload to None
- EditMenu.DuplicateSelection to None
- NewMenu.AS2Document to None

I’ll update this post as I discover more…