Question

Are there a good overview/comparison of Flash-authoring tools somewhere online?

By “Flash-authoring tools” I mean “Flash Builder vs. OpenLaszlo vs whatever”, not Silverlight or JavaFX.

Answer 1

Possibly related: What is the best (most productive) FLEX IDE?

No hard answer to your question, but from personal experience:

• Want to make art assets to go along with your Flash movie (buttons, backgrounds, complex UI layouts, etc.)? You need the Flash CS4/5 Professional IDE. Period. (there are some alternatives, but none of them are dependable enough for serious work). I personally find it hard to avoid making my interfaces look like ass without laying stuff out in Flash first, but that’s more of a personal thing.
• The Adobe-written Flash Builder is actually quite good (if you like Eclipse), but I personally prefer FlashDevelop for its excellent intellisense (it only runs in Windows, however).
• I would discourage you from using something like OpenLaszlo. The HTML it creates looks like ass and the Flash it creates is not terribly efficient. Pick either HTML or Flash, and develop for it.

What it really comes down to in this case is what kind of workflow you’re going for here. Just want to tinker around and teach yourself some things? Adobe’s default offerings will do you fine. Working on a really complex project with tons of code? You might need some serious compilation control ala Sprouts. Or maybe your workflow is really art-centric, in which case you can actually write your entire application from within the Flash CS5 IDE if you like.