Developing Flash on a Mac
Posted by Ben Jackson Mon, 19 Dec 2005 20:00:00 GMT
Update: read the HOWTO.
Most of my colleagues, when I tell them that I develop Flash on Mac OSX, ask me what would ever compel me to do something so frustrating (or, as Dave so generously put it, "masochistic"). If you've ever had the displeasure of using Flash MX 2004 on a Mac, you probably still wake up some nights in a cold sweat cringing at the memory. Calling it "unusable" would be akin to calling that paperclip character from Microsoft Word "a little annoying."
So what's the deal? Why not just buy a PC and get on with it? Three reasons:
- I am much more productive in my day-to-day tasks on a Mac than in Windows. This is partly because I was raised on them (thanks Grandpa!), but there are some great programs, like Quicksilver and TextMate, that I can't live without. I also just have more fun working on them, and as a general rule I find the OS much more transparent (i.e. it doesn't get in the way of me doing what I set out to do).
- I'm a Unix snob (OSX is built on top of Unix). I'm comfortable in the terminal. Yeah, I could learn DOS. But I already know Unix, and it's more stable and secure.
- I don't need Flash to make websites in "Flash". All the tools I need to generate SWFs are free and open source, and run cross-platform.
I suffered through using Flash MX 2004 on the Mac for a couple of years because of the first two. But now, I can write code, build, and preview my application, all without leaving my text editor. My graphics, instead of being locked into a binary Flash file, are instead organized into folders on my hard drive and imported into my movie the first time I compile. Changing an icon now takes a second or two to copy and paste instead of a minute or two to open up Flash, navigate through the shitty interface to create a new clip in the library, import the graphic (which could take a while depending on the size and complexity) and save.
I can hit a hotkey to compile my code, get a list of errors and click through to go straight to the file and line number. When it compiles without a problem, I can view the movie using my editor's HTML Preview, and see how it will actually work in the browser instead of the Flash MX preview, which behaves differently, especially with things like dynamic loading.
What's that you say? I could do all of this with Eclipse and some plug-ins? Yeah, I know. But Eclipse is written in Java and runs like molasses on my machine. And I was able to hack this together myself in under 10 hours.
And TextMate is just too wicked for words.
Hey, do you wanna share the textmate command you're using to publish? Would be awesome. Thanks
I'll be doing a write-up of my build process in the next week or two, and will put up examples, including the TxMt command.
This is good stuff Ben. I'm sure many, like myself, are eager to see a more in-depth write-up. Your TextMate workflow will pair beaifully with Actionscript 3 dev (mentioned here.)
interesting :)
Very interesting. Very interested as well. :)
Some of us can't imagine how you actually do this - but I would love to learn. You should write a book!