HI Ben, welcome to the colourful world of Flash development! :)
I guess by IDE you mean one of the Adobe IDEs, like Flash 8 or Flex Builder 2, because I'm using Eclipse and would call it an IDE, too. But yes, that's one of the (two?) problem areas you will face. As you already noticed, tutorials assume you have one of the two. Playing with one of them for a few hours might help your understanding of Flash in a visual way, but I don't think it's necessary. The other potential problem area is graphics. Flash is just damn good at making graphics and layouts for Flash... Remember, it was originally intended for designers and animators. However, if you don't use vector graphics you can use normal PNGs or JPGs made with your preferred graphics app. Even if you like to use vector graphics, there are some others that can produce (or convert to) SWFs. You can use swfmill to make an SWF with a library of your assets, it also has experimental SVG import. Other than that, I don't see any problems. I'm on Linux, too, and it works fine. I'd recommend writing for FlashPlayer 9, it's much faster, there is more you can do, the API is better, and if you're still learning you might be better off learning that what will stick around rather than what is phasing out. Flash 7/8 still have a larger install base, though, so if that is important to you, you should consider it. If installing the FP 9 Linux beta doesn't work for you, please file a bug report. You can also use the Windows standalone debug player with wine. Personally, I prefer haXe over AS3 -- it seems mature enough to me. It's great. I use it with EHX (<osflash.org/ehx>). If you like Emacs, that's fine, too. There were some scripts for it linked in a recent Eclipse vs. Emacs discussion here, but I don't know if they were for AS2 or 3 or if it makes a difference at all. Good luck! Mark On 1/12/07, Ben Crowell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm a linux user interested in playing around with flash and > maybe writing an open-source flash app (a musical ear-training > program). So far I've got mtasc working, and have compiled > "hello world." > > Is it practical to do flash development without an IDE? > Personally I've never liked working with IDEs, and just > prefer to use emacs and make. However, every flash book I've > looked at seems to assume you have flex. The O'Reilly > Essential Actionscript 2.0 book describes timeline-oriented > apps versus OOP apps, with a continuum stretching between > the two styles. Is it more practical to work without an IDE > if you're more toward the OOP end? I've written Java applets > before, so that style of programming is familiar. > > Two other slightly tangential questions: > > - If my goal is to do this with only OSS tools, am I going > to run into roadblocks? For instance, I realized that for > sound, I need to use MP3, so I downloaded and compiled LAME, > but that is theoretically illegal here in the U.S., I guess. > I'm wiling to risk the Patent Police knocking on the door > in the middle of the night, but it made me wonder whether it > was really practical to do everything using OSS from A to Z. > BTW, how can gnash handle audio if MP3 decoding is still under > patent??? > > - How practical is it to use AS3 on linux? So far mtasc seems > really solid, and I can run flash 7 in both gnash and Adobe's > flash 7 player in Firefox. But haxe gives the impression of > being less mature, and I wasn't able to get the Adobe flash 9 > player to work on my ubuntu box. > > Thanks in advance! > > Ben > > > _______________________________________________ > osflash mailing list > [email protected] > http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org > _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
