In our Flash AS3 code, we have a lot of really long functions and when we're trying to navigate the code during development, it's so long that we often can't sit there and scroll for two minutes trying to find where an event listener leads to a function. We've figured out a trick with the search tool that makes it a little easier (search for "n functionname" because it will find "function functionname"), but it would be even easier if we could just click on the name of the function to jump right to that function inside the editor. Is this possible? I'm not talking about when the project is published - only in the editor. It's just hard to follow the code and remember everything it does when you also have to go looking for where it goes next. (By the way, we're using Flash CS4.)
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I'd advise you to work with an external IDE, and link your actionscript files to your flash project. – Romain Braun Dec 28 '14 at 22:41
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Would that allow us to link to functions inside a code editor? – Cyska Dec 28 '14 at 22:45
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Jump to functions you mean? Well if you use eclipse or any decent actionscript code editor they have great ways to help you developing. Using the Flash native code editor is really a struggle. – Romain Braun Dec 28 '14 at 22:46
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Where can I get Eclipse? Is it free? – Cyska Dec 28 '14 at 22:47
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More infos here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1385341/1873387 – Romain Braun Dec 28 '14 at 22:49
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Thank you! So Adobe's Flash editor doesn't have any feature like this? – Cyska Dec 28 '14 at 22:52
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No that I know of. And switching to another IDE will help you to produce much better code. – Romain Braun Dec 28 '14 at 23:26
1 Answers
Like some of the comments, you are going to want to use an external IDE (Development Environment). FlashPro is not designed for programming, but only basic scripting and thus doesn't include much along the lines of developer convenience.
Any code editor will likely work to simply edit your .as files. Here are some popular ones for AS3 development that can also debug and tell FlashPro to compile:
- Flash Builder (Paid, built on Eclipse, made by Adobe)
- FlashDevelop (free)
- FDT (paid, built on Eclipse)
- IntelliJ (Paid - free version doesn't support AS3)
- Eclipse with free plugins (free)
And a there's a few dozen others...
My personal recommendation (since you seem to be most interested in free), would be FlashDevelop. It is free, quite mature, and integrates nicely with FlashPro so you can debug in it and not have to switch back and forth for testing code changes. (most of the others listed do this as well)
For your primary concern, it has keyboard shortcuts for jumping to a function/object definition (F4 by default, Ctr+F4 to return to where you were), along with tons of other programming conveniences. (again, all the other IDE's listed can do this to)
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