FlashDevelop is a Windows-only free and open source (MIT license) source code editor. I use it primarily for creating Actionscript 3 driven games. It is a pretty fantastic editor that I think rivals Adobe’s commercial editor, FlashBuilder. This guide will walk you through the install steps to get a test movie running quick and easy in FlashDevelop from a clean install.

If you’re not a Windows user and still want to use FlashDevelop, there are virtualization options for OSX and Linux users. I haven’t tried these myself, but here are some popular threads on how to set that up over at FlashDevelop.org:

• Setting up FlashDevelop and Parallels on Mac OS X
• Setting up FlashDevelop and VMWare on Mac OS X
• AS3 (dev) on Linux

(let me know in the comments if these links end up not being useful, or if you have other recommendations for Linux/Mac AS3 IDEs)

Pre Reqs

1. Debug Flash Player to run your movie in – get the ActiveX control (for IE) one
• Once downloaded, run the .exe and install the player
2. Java Runtime Environment 1.6 or higher (this is a link to download 6u23, latest at the time of this writing)
• Make sure you download the x86 version, not the x64 version, it won’t work with FlashDevelop.
• Once downloaded, run the installer.
• Bonus: if you’re like me and don’t like automatic Java updates (which are automatically set to on during install), follow these steps, but you may need to restart Windows before being able to follow these steps.

Download and Install FlashDevelop

1. Here’s a direct link to the version I got, FlashDevelop 3.3.2 RTM. If you want to ensure you get the latest, follow the other 2 steps below.

Or

1. Follow the latest release link at the top right of this page.
2. At the bottom of the linked page should be a download link.

• Once downloaded, run the installer.
• Make sure Install Flex SDK is checked and hit Next > and then Install
• At this point the installer will download and extract the latest Flex SDK for you!

Hello World Project

Select Project > New Project > AS3 Project.

From the project view at the right window, expand the src folder and open double click Main.as to open it in the editor pane.

At the bottom of the init() function, add this code:

1

trace("Hello World!");

Save, then hit Ctrl + Enter to test your movie. You should see a flash player window open and “Hello World!” printed in the console output panel at the bottom of your screen. That’s it!

What Next?